Last class, was an unknown adventure for me... We suddenly decided to go to San Isidro to enjoy the patronal feast of this town, motivated by the professor who took advantage of the opportunity to enrich our culture class with some concrete experiences. I have always enjoy "turnos" as we call them in Costa Rica.
We all have our favorite thing to do there, some people just go to eat the "traditional food" that is offered and some other prefer to enjoy the activities such as concerts, entertainment machines, bingos, and so on.
Something that called my attention was the Colonial Catholic Church, probably because of my religious heritage, so I decided to research more about this region and I found out many interesting things that provide an overview of this beautiful place.
The name of San Isidro was chose randomly by religious authorities in that time. And they chose it because he was the Saint Patron of Spain. San Isidro was very important geographically because of their mountains and the water they pour over other regions including the "Central Valley", and it still happens. During the pre-colombian period it was ocuped by the "Huetar" tribe which was one of the most powerful groups at that time where and when the "Cacique Yorustí" used to live. A lot of indian artcrafts and sculptures have been found and digged after years of being under ground as proof of their cultural heritage. One of the most relavant findings related to our pre-colombian history and culture is a big and ceremonial table stone sculped called " Metate" which is an anthropological find that have only occured in "San Rafael de Coronado" and "San Isidro de Heredia". These monolithic altars were used for agricultural and religious ceremonies.
After the Costa Rican ex-president Julio Acosta and during many years the coffee agriculture was the economical support for this region and its main activity.
The experience was very interesting and funny, we could appreciate some typical escenarios from this "cantón".

References

Skycrapercity.com

Peer Observation

Peer assessment: Cultural Lesson Plan Observation.
Professor: Liliana Castro.
Institution: Universidad Tecnológica Nacional.
Location: Villa Bonita, Alajuela.
Proficiency Level: Beginners.
Level: Intro (Children from 10 to 12 years old).
Amount of students: 12.
Cultural content: Cultural values.
Language content: Cognates words.

Culture Lesson Plan Review
During the first stage of this assignation, we had to design a culture lesson plan for a 80 minutes class. Then we switched our plans with our classmate to make observation, corrections or suggestions to their work. Once we have corrected the plan, we carried out an observation to our classmate work place.
When checking my partner’s lesson plan I felt like she was teaching culture as a cross-curricular complement, but not as the main target of the plan, she was attached to the common four skills and the language- oriented objectives. I imagine that it was difficult for her to let go the language matter (the one we are used to develop) and concern more about teaching culture consciously.
I felt very thankful after receipt my lesson plan feedback and I could realize that sharing our ideas can enrich the process in such a way that we all learn from it. After shared my comments regarding to the lesson plan of my partner she took into account all my suggestions and changed her cognitive target for a culture-oriented target and she also omitted some of the linguistic skills and replaced them for culture skills and competences to develop in this challenging field of culture. That made me feels very useful and pleased, because she cares about her students’ cultural abilities development.

Brief description of the observation:

Teacher activities:

- The teacher motivated students to participate through a brainstorm about the topic of cultures, focusing in the similarities we have and not in our differences.
- The teacher allows the students to lead the conversation and she was the motivator and guider.
- The teacher took them out of their class routine and they were enjoyed the conversation and the activities planned.
- The teacher took notes of children`s comments in the board so they felt what they were saying it was very important.
- The teacher seemed to be very committed and interested with children learning towards the culture subject.
- The teacher took advantage of every single detail, example or/and situation to support the cultural understanding and the reflection surrounding this theme.
- Critical thinking and emotional development regarding to the cultural perceptions was carried out successfully.
- The class was very dynamic, they had the freedom to express themselves in a verbal way of communication or through plastic and graphical expression.

Students’ activities:
- Children enjoy the conversation; they did not want to move to another topic.
- Children were supported with an illustrated text book in relation to the topic under study.
- Students were so involved in the conversation and all of them wanted to participate.
- Students showed a high and deep analysis of cultural components; they did not stay in the surface of the topic.
- The group of students seemed to be very close and they always behaved in a natural way, they looked very comfortable.
- All values related to culture were brought to the conversation: tolerance, respect, equality, diversity, empathy, friendship, and so on.
I really learned and enjoyed this project, I loved the experience of being and observant and to check other people work, this person do the same I do but in a completely different way. I could learned a lot from teacher Liliana`s class, she was so kind with her students and I am sure they are learning something else than just English, they are learning culture, values and to be a better person every day.