A field trip to Granada's Science Park

On Wednesday, April 13th, my 1 ESO students and I spent the day at Granada's Parque de las Ciencias. Our day-long field trip was a sort of "culmination" of all the material that we had been reviewing in their math, natural science, physical education and English classes from the start of January through Easter break. This material that we have been studying has been the planets and our galaxy, the world's ecosystems, elemental components of the Earth, world population trends, measurements, how man imitates nature, world languages, and inside the human body. In addition to helping my coworkers explain and teach this material in our classes over the past few months, I also had my own personal "project" to prepare for our field trip. Together with my boss and English teacher, Lourdes, I spent the better part of two months researching and collecting images and information pertaining to these specific topics to make a "bilingual workbook" for the students to work on during our day in the Science Park. I'm really pleased to say that the workbook came out great! All together  containing sixteen pages of material, photos and activities, both in English and Spanish, my 1 ESO students were eager to complete it and show me their progress as we walked through the park together! I have another field trip tomorrow with another group of students- this time to the town of Antequera to view some ancient dolmens and visit a nearby natural park. Luckily for me, this time I didn't have to prepare anything special for the excursion and can instead relax and spend the day taking pictures and asking questions along with the group!

Here are some photos of my 1 ESO students from our field trip to Granada's Parque de las Ciencias.

At 10:00am, we arrived at the Parque de las Ciencias. Here Ramón, the Natural Science teacher, is handing out the workbooks to the class.

Some of the Parque de las Ciencias.

Sala Biosfera.

Nacho (Ignacio) and David Jose explain the elemental make-up of the planet to the class.

Luis and Alberto, best friends who are rarely apart!

Sergio, Guillermo and Laura present, in English, where English is spoken in the world today.

Rosa, the Math teacher, explains world population patterns to David Jose and David.

Hard at work completing their workbooks; this exhibit explains how man imitates nature in everyday activities and inventions.

On top of the Torre de Observación. (L-R) Me, David, Pablo, Juan Manuel, Fernando, Celeste, Daniel and Nacho.

A handful of students wanted to show Elihan (the student teacher) and me the Mariposario Tropical, which houses many different species of butterflies.

Daniel and Nacho in front of one of the Park's temporary exhibits, Animales de Museo. The exhibit teaches visitors about animals from around the world and the science of taxidermy.

Ángela, Laura, María, Celeste and Daniel.

So, unfortunately I've abandoned my blog lately and I haven't posted any entries in quite some time. The simple truth is that during Easter vacation I didn't do much of anything and was rather lazy! I promise to post another entry at some point later on this week about this year's Holy Week (Semana Santa) here in Granada. I've also taken a few day-trips this month and I'll be sure to post some pictures from those excursions as well! Now I'm off to eat lunch followed by a few hours of tutoring and lesson planning- yup, Easter vacation is over and I'm back into my normal routine! ¡Hasta pronto!