Umbrella

We get a newsletter once and a while at school and it presents a bunch of student work. It's really cool and I'm sure the kids love it when their work is in it. This time around one of my favorite students wrote a poem that was put into the school-wide portfolio. It was only six lines so I plugged it into the translator and this is what it gave me:

Today is a rainy day
All the umbrellas Chardonnay

Holding umbrellas in various colors
Walking walking street

Pretty umbrella roadside
Me of the rainbow road

From this perspective its very eloquent, dare I say the most elegant piece of work to come out of google translator?  Regardless, I was impressed to say the least. This student is one of the higher achieving kids in my after school class. I wouldn't be surprised if she could translate half of it herself. Her parents are very cultured based on how she acts and the fact they both speak English.

In the end of it all it's really cool to see these accomplishments because I don't have the opportunity to see them do anything other than English and gives a little more insight into what they like without having these drawn out conversations to the question: "What do you like to do?"

This is just a bonus:  One section they have student art the half page consists of three Grade 2 works and one Grade 6 piece. Awkward? Embarrassing? I like the kid, I hope it's a typo.

I edididid

One of my co-teachers, Jennifer, has been planning an open class for the past two weeks. When she started this year we would be co-teaching the class but since I'm leaving in August I don't need to because it's a two-part presentation. I was a little disappointed about it in the beginning but now I'm happy I'm just an adviser.

She's a really good teacher and one thing I admire in her teaching style is her perfectionism. Especially something this important. I don't know what the story is because it was supposed to be due on Tuesday but now it's Friday and she's still touching in up. She has developed a six-page play-by-play lesson plan for the class that happens in a month! I'm not going to talk about what the lesson plan looks like but I'm going to give you couple common mistakes I've encountered while editing.

Sometimes you just hear words and never see them written: 

Jennifer came into my office a couple days ago (She's dropped by everyday, but this was probably the funniest one) walking me through her open class game. It's a really complicated game. Each student get  a worksheet and dice; if you can't read you need to grab the yellow worksheet and the dice with words; if you can read take the pink worksheet and the die with pictures.

That I understood. Then she started talking about grounds. "The students will roll the dice three times each ground. There are three grounds."

Seeing the printed word really in the lesson plan really confused me. I was just, like, "what is a ground." Then I was like, "Oh, a round."  We both laughed as I put my hands on my face in bewilderment and she did the same in embarrassment.

Wordiness:

Two of my CTs talk in a very eloquent way. Sometimes its very eloquent when they ask students, "How did the man address the woman in the video clip?" Other times it shows they haven't been to a recent course in education when they refer to children with learning disabilities as "handicapped," but we're working on it. Just like me, I try to make my writing more pristine when addressing my peers, but half the time you cut the crap out in editing. One thing that kept coming up was "write the name of the food," I guess if you said it with a British accent it might pass but not a Korean or North American one. I'd just say, "Write down the food." From experience when kids here the the word "name," there's potential at least one kid will write their name instead of a food. Tip to all teachers: Keep it simple, sexy.   

Speed-typing:

Jennifer, mother, new ESL teacher, master's student, and a secondary workhorse in the admin office, she's crazy busy and types super fast like everyone that isn't me. You can see it some days where she's just dog-tired but still plugs away. That's what I'll attribute to her minor mistakes. Sometimes words are stuck together, typos, mysterious upper case letters, all part of being fast. Plus, when you know you're not editing the piece you never look it over when you're done.

All in all, I'm hoping today is the last day of this because now I need to lesson plan. I've made a unit plan  for my Grade 3 and 4 after school programs. I did it in one lesson with my older classes but it left a lot to be desired and was a lot rougher around the edges. Since every kid likes animals I've proposed to make a mind map of the kids' favorite animals. They'll list 6-8 things about the animal and then draw their animal at the center of the mind map. I think it'll be fun, and it gives me the opportunity to put some student work up on the board in library and classroom. TGIF this birds flying the coop!