April 15: 2nd class

Well I started out with a snapping circle chant and Mayas little sister, Gina looked terrified. luckily, I know how Maya was last year at the beginning of AS class, and how outgoing she is in it, now...so...I'm hoping she'll step up and get excited about being in English AS. I'll just be careful this month not to scare anyone away!
--Wendy and Gina--low level
--Everyone else-- pretty good.
so we're starting from the beginning and playinglots of games. today we focused on Feelings
Well, excited, happy, angry, sick, sad, tired, hungry, thirsty
instead of the the initial plan to focus on Actions--"What are you doing?"
I LITERALLY changed my entire program plan in FIVE SECONDS--because I knew it would scare Gina away. So we stuck to my original original plan, and are starting at the basics. I am incorporating a lot of dramatics in to make the kids who already kjnow this stuff be able to just have fun, and the lower-level ones feel on par with their peers in the AS English classroom.

So we reviewed vocab,
played around the World with feelings (Tom won a sticker to put on his class picture)
did the feelings gauntlet--with this class it worked really well, since they're all so outgoing
played LEMONADE
then made faces and bubble quotes to cut out and put on the windows.
We lined up in order of ABC and said goodbye
"Come again!"
"Thanks, I will!"

AFTERSCHOOL: SPRING 2010

What an interesting collection of kids I have here!

Gina is Maya's(from gr4) little sister, Tom lived in Florida and has an American uncle in Miami, Jacob is the typical turn-your eyelids inside-out kind of clown kid (just like Brian was last year, Wendy seems to be pretty new to English; Allie, Cedrick, Jack and Judy all obviously have been studying English for a long time and go to Hagwon.

It's clear to me that I'm going to have to scrap all (or most) of my grade 3 plans and start anew--higher up; because this crowd of kids is pretty adept. Still, they are young--grade 3, and I want to keep it fun, learn LOTS of new vocabulary, and do a lot of crafts and games. I intend to treat this like a conversations/activity camp-class.

Watch out new little thirdies; I have high expectations of you!

today we drew pictures of ourselves and shared them, then did my favorite action-name game. next week we'll play the sheet drop game: you are CEDRICK! and add to it some vocab: emotions? Cedrick is happy! sad! excited! etc...etc...

Much love,

Sus