When I try to pronounce the student's Chinese names they all end up giggling out of control because I'm so bad at it! I actually really enjoy the attempts and having them repeat it until I say it perfectly. It gives me a taste of my own medicine, I guess. They think it's completely hilarious when I try to say their Chinese names. Although I am now able to say my Chinese name somewhat normally now.
Lately, I've been trying to get the students to say, "Have a good day!" Instead of (or in conjunction with) "goodbye." Some of them have begun to catch on, but it's the cutest thing when they chant back at me, "Haff a goob day!"
I'm always excited when the kids do something extra smart that surprises me. Well, the other day I was tossing the ball around asking questions. One of my smarter kids, though, didn't throw the ball back immediately. Instead he gestured and pointed. I kept following his finger, trying to see what he was pointing at. He'd shake his head and gesture again. Finally, frustrated that his motions weren't getting the point across he struggled out some English words, "You... go... there... I throw ball to you. Can you go there?" Okay, so it doesn't sound like much on here, but this was actually very impressive in my opinion. He created that sentence all by himself.
I've been working on getting my fourth graders to make their own sentences without me spoon feeding it to them. I put a tic-tac-toe board up and split the class in half. Then, I put a word in each of the boxes like "library" or "classroom" (these have been their most recent vocab words). Then I pick a student from each team. The student must tell me where they want their X or O but they may not say the word, but must describe the word. So instead of "library" I wanted them to say "A place where I read books." Or instead of "bank" they'd say "A place where I get money." Unfortunately, I wasn't fully able to get the point across and I had to settle for "read books" and "money" instead. But I figure I'll take baby steps and make it harder as we go along. I also sometimes put letters and they must pick a word that begins with that letter instead of saying the letter outright. This gets fun, and it sometimes surprises me the vocab words they already know. The best part is that the kids absolutely LOVE it! They beg to play it so it's my bargaining chip to get them to behave during the normal lesson. (I draw a "good meter" on the board and as they're good the line goes up, but as they're bad it goes down. If it hits bottom the must be completely silent while it fills back up slowly to a normal level, but if it gets to the top, they get to play a game for the rest of class)
Another fun game I've gotten them to play recently is a whispering game. I'm still in the "teaching" phases of this game. These students are very competitive, and not at all shy about cheating (which could, partly be due to the language barrier, I should acknowledge). If there's a way to cheat, they'll do it which makes most games less fun, and my job very difficult. But I basically put them in two lines. Then I whisper a word to the kids at my end of the line. They basically play "telephone" whispering the word to each other all the way to the front and the person at the front has to spell the word, correctly, on the board (or paper... I had to switch to paper because they kept ruining my whiteboard markers). This game works better for my third graders because I was able to get the point clearly across in the beginning that saying the word aloud is absolutely not allowed and if I hear someone on your team say the word, then I dock a point from that team. The kids were pretty mad at me at first for taking the point, but they understood and got better. Unfortunately, with my fourth graders, they were so excited and talking so loudly that all I could do was continually dock points from their teams and make them redo and redo and redo to the point that I think both the kids, and I, were getting frustrated. I think I'll try it again with them on another day and figure out a better way to show them that they must not say the word loudly because then it's just a matter of who can write faster. Ah well.
Anyway, there are some random games I've played in my classes. Now I need to figure out some fun games for my first graders. They don't understand "get into a circle" (the few times I've tried it just creates utter chaos of the rest of class, basically) so that cuts out "ring around the rosie" and the "hokey pokey" and "pass the ball around." They are incapable of passing the ball from their desks. I've tried this a few times and no matter what, I can't get them to stop throwing it. And they don't yet know their letters so we can't play hangman. I really don't think they'll get tic-tac-toe either. I read somewhere to try Bingo, so I'm going to try that later this week. But I don't know if that will work either. When I give them papers, half of them become paper airplanes or some form of origami, some become scribbling sheets, and only about ten end up with what I want them to be used for. Mostly I've just been playing Slap with them and doing lots of songs and hidden pictures on the Powerpoint. And I've made a few stories to tell them via Powerpoint. It just feels weird to use powerpoint with first graders. This week we did body parts so I drew a face and said, "What does it need?" and the kids had to answer "He needs a mouth!" and when they did they could come up and draw the mouth. The problem is I can't even do much one-on-one interaction in my first grade class because the kids get jealous or beg to be picked on and if I can't pick all of them fast enough they burst into tears. And if I give the same student my attention for longer than about five seconds, I completely lose the rest of the class.
So there's a little taste of my every day life here. I didn't know if I've really documented it, so I figured might as well since I'm sitting at my desk playing my tenth game of Freecell today!
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