Pros and cons of teaching with Meddeas.

I finish my job with Meddeas next week, and I think now is a good time to review which things I have found good, and which I have found bad, while working as a conversation assistant with Meddeas.

First the pros:

• They find you a job. This makes your life much easier. Basically, if they offer you a job you are pretty much guaranteed that they will find you a place. If you don't like the first place they give you, it is possible to turn it down, but then there is no guarantee that they will be able to find you another place.
• You get decent money for not many hours. I got 840€ for working 20 hours a week (less in September and June because the schools have half days). This is more than enough to live off if you are living outside of Madrid/Barcelona. 
• There is a point of contact to help you with problems when you first get there. I had a lot of trouble getting my NIE (like NI number) and Jorge at Meddeas was very helpful in sorting it out.
• You won't have a class larger than 15 kids (says your contract), unless it's an extracurricular class (up to 30 students)

Now the cons:

• The university course that comes with the job. It is apparently worth 20 ECTS credits and is all done online (distance learning). I found it very badly organised, not well explained, completely useless and a waste of time. The course didn't even come online until two months after we were supposed to start, and then essay deadlines were not cleared up. It's awful.
• You can't choose where to go. There are a lot of places in Madrid and Barcelona, so if you want to go to these cities then you will most probably be able to, smaller cities have less jobs available.
• They pay loads less for living with a host family (400€ a month) and then claim that you will be better off because Spain is not as cheap as you think. My rent was 120€ a month, Meddeas claimed that average rent in a shared house is around 400€. This is not even true in Madrid. If you live with a family you have to spend 10 hours a week teaching their kids, not really leaving you much time to do private lessons. Your choice though.

All school are different, and people I know were doing different roles. I had to either assist the teacher in class, or take half the class myself (up to 16 kids), and I also did extra curricular classes of up to 30 children. Some of my friends had all their lessons planned for them, I planned my own (which I preferred). A guy I know just took groups of three or four kids out of class. All schools are organised differently and you have to be prepared for your experience to be different to other people doing the same thing! I personally had a great experience and I think it has given me a good insight into teaching, which I hope to continue with in years to come.

Hannah Z

Teaching with Meddeas.

So, I've been teaching in a small school in Gandia since September, and now it's coming to the end of my time there. There doesn't seem to be an awful lot of information about the company that I got the job through (Meddeas) online, so I'm going to write about my experience here.

First, the interview. 
1. Skype interview. If your application is successful, Meddeas will offer you a Skype interview. They basically tell you a bit about the job and ask you your preferences with regards to the school, age of kids etc. 

After this, they will ask you to talk about two different topics for two minutes. They gave me the topic of the Moon, and I managed to talk about that for four minutes so they didn't bother giving me a second topic. Friends of mine that did the interview got photosynthesis, Mars, the Earth and the Sun. Don't panic! They are not really testing your scientific knowledge here, more your ability to chat about something for a long period of time, and to improvise.

2. If you are successful in the Skype interview, you will be invited to a face to face interview. The choice of places when I applied were London or Manchester, they might have added more places by now. If you're successful, they will contact you about a month later and tell you, if not then apparently they just don't contact you.

3. If you accept the position, they will then try and find a school which suits your requirements. This will almost definitely be impossible, so just be glad if you vaguely get what you asked for. The less picky you are in the interview, the more likely you are to get a job, obv. They told me about my school three weeks before the start date and I had three days to accept or reject it.

4. The welcome day. Pretty much completely useless, but gives you a chance to meet other people that are in your area, and to see the course coordinators in person. This is a one day event on the Saturday before your job starts, mine was in Madrid but I think they maybe also do it in Barcelona. You pay for your own flights there, accommodation and transport to the next place.

So that's basically the process of getting a job. Next post will be pros and cons of Meddeas..




Hannah Z

Some more TEFL games..

It's been a while since I posted! Here are some more games that I've been playing with both primary and secondary.

1. Word Tennis:
Split class into two teams and write a topic on the board. Point to first student in the team, they have to say a word relating to that topic. If they take too long or say a non-related word, they are out of the game and cannot play the next round.

2. Articulate:
Write words on paper and put into a hat for students to pick out. They have to describe the word to their team without saying the word or parts of it. I wrote six words from six different categories and had them pick out a piece of paper and then roll a dice to decide which word to describe. Get an egg timer and see how many words each team can guess in a minute.

3. Call my bluff:
You will need a dictionary for each team. Start by writing a word on the board that the students are unlikely to know, then write three different possible definitions for that word. The students must decide which is the correct definition and which two are false. After you have shown them the example, they can make their own cards with words and definitions on, using the dictionaries.



Hannah Z

Film English

This is a really cute website I found that shows short films and provides lesson plans based around these short films. The level is generally intermediate, so I have used them with my older secondary students. 

http://film-english.com/blog/

Hannah Z

Vocabulary Games

This website has been very useful for revising various vocabulary topics for my primary age students.



Vocabulary Games



Hannah Z

Lesson Plans

Morning! I've just figured out how to upload lesson plans in PDF format to these pages. To download them just follow the link to Google Drive and you'll be able to download them from there. Most of the plans are for secondary pupils, take a look at the lesson plan page on the right ----> (and down a bit..)

Hannah Z

Games!

Happy Valentine's Day! Obviously I have a hot date later so I'm updating now.. :/

Anyway, I've just written out some ideas for games for all ages, take a look at the new pages on the right :)

Hannah Z

Real English!

Real English!

I have been using this website for higher levels of primary and secondary students. It offers videos of real people answering a question from a reporter, and provides activities to go with the videos. The videos are a little old fashioned and some of them are poor quality, but they are organised according to topic and with the level shown, which makes it easy to find a relevant video. I usually use some of the activities and then make my own worksheets to go with them. Shows a wide variety of accents, which is good listening practise.

http://www.real-english.com/

I used the following video to practise the past simple with a class of 12 and 13 year olds. They had learnt this grammar point in primary school, but I wanted to refresh this tense.

Welcome!

Hello and welcome to my blog; Hannah's English Emporium! I am currently working as an English language assistant in Gandia, Spain, and am going to use this blog to post any useful websites and games that I find to (hopefully..) make learning English fun :)

I have tried to organise the pages by age range, so take a look!

First, something for Infantil and early years primary; the alphabet with Peppa Pig..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=qux8CbHPlgw