Halloween, Catalan Style

So, last week was Halloween which lead to a 4 day weekend :D Fortunately for me, All Saints Day, which is a public holiday here, was on a Thursday and most schools choose to take what is known as the "bridge" ie. the Friday after off too, thus making it a long weekend, happy days.

In Catalunya, Halloween is celebrated as a festival known as the Castanyada. Great once again for us as afternoon lessons were cancelled; instead the kids put on a concert with every year group singing songs for the rest of the school. Also, a veritable feast of chestnuts, sweet potato, sugared and chocolate almonds, jelly sweets and moscatell were available for consumption in the staffroom, which as new staff unaccustomed to Catalan fare we were heartily encouraged to try, no complaints here :P 

Another tradition of the Castanyada (at my school anyway) is the two newest members of staff dressing up as the Castanyeras, old ladies with head scarves, walking sticks and the like of generic old lady accessories to give out chestnuts to the kids, all of whom had made and decorated their own cones to receive them in. They were all very excitable and some of the keener ones even asked me and the other assistant whether we were the Castanyeras this year; clearly they'd been smart enough to realise that as the newest staff, we would be first pick. However, mercifully we avoided this fate; clearly they thought that as English teachers, completely unaware of this particular practice until the day before said occurrence, it would be kinder to spare us. Not just that though, part of the fun is the kids trying to guess which teachers are the Castanyeras. Due to our obvious Anglo-Irish looks and limited Spanish, I think we would have been busted pretty damn fast...

The last couple of weeks has been spent doing Halloween themed lessons with my classes. I've attempted to adopt a new approach, in that I have an exciting (speaking, videos, colouring, games etc) and dull (book work, reading, writing) plan for each lesson. I present them with the options, obviously they choose the fun lesson, to which I reply that it is their choice and if they choose to be well behaved, we will do the lesson they want, but if they choose to be noisy then we switch straight to book work. The success rate of this tactic appears to have been relatively high, especially when as soon as they get rowdy I hold the book up and count down from 5 as a warning. The suggestion of doing "boring" work seems to have been enough to calm them down, time will tell if it continues to do so.

The best bit of my Halloween lessons has been the excuse to trawl through childhood memories of appropriate songs and videos to do with my classes. Anyone remember the cartoon gem that was Funny Bones? The kids lapped it up and it was nice to engage in a bit of children's TV nostalgia on my part. Now to find a way to legitimately use Top Cat and/or Thunderbirds... mission before the year is out. The opening of the Nightmare Before Christmas was a good way of testing them on the themed vocabulary I had just taught and it was funny to hear the girls singing along as they designed their Halloween cards "this is Halloween, Halloween, Halloween". Incidentally (and unbelievably), I've never actually watched that film the whole way through, but seeing the opening of it 10+ times has made me determined to in this year's festive season.

Rounding up now with comedic/cute classroom moments; one of my third year classes spontaneously giving me a version of "You Don't Know You're Beautiful" by One Direction. I guess I can't criticise their stereotypical teeny bop pop music taste too much since they're only 7, and I did manage to show one of my classes the Thriller video for the Halloween lesson, so hopefully by the end of the year I will have played some small part in furthering their education of 'good' English culture and music. Finally, a ridiculously cute 4 year old from one of my first year classes grabbed my hand when I was helping to give out chestnuts for Castanyada and said to me in Spanish, "Miss Lizzie, how beautiful you are". Cue heart melting on my part :) nice to remember moments like that when I'm screaming at other classes to sit down and be quiet :P

Stay tuned for my next post about starting to attempt to teach the kids to perform English plays which we're essentially expected to write and direct, a challenge to say the least. Mum's coming for a long weekend in a few days time so expect a brief summary of me playing the tourist for the weekend and lots of photos at last, as I'll have a camera cable by then :D As usual, comments/questions very welcome but not a necessity. 

I leave you with an episode of Funny Bones, enjoy :)