Oh Second Graders...

Yesterday Siena and I were teaching our second grade class and one of the goals that day was to count to 20.  So for practice we had the students empty out their pencil cases and count each item in their pencil case.  Every student here has a pencil case and it seems like just about anything might be pulled out of those things.  Some of the highlights I saw the second graders count were a whistle, a watch, keychains, some kind of trading cards, many pairs of scissors (this is actually really normal and a lot of students have exacto knives as well...), bandaids (I don't think those were related to the previously mentioned items), lots of extra lead, rubber bands, random pen caps without the pens, of course normal things like pencils, pens, rulers and erasers, and a lot of other things I would consider "junk".

Next we taught them the little English mini dialogue for the chapter and it was "Have a seat!" "Thanks!".  We showed them the e-book and they repeated "Have a seat" several times.  Next

the e-book said "Thanks!"  Now these second graders have "Thanks!" down to a T.  It's one thing they actually have mastered.  So Siena exchanged curious looks when the e-book said "Thanks!" and the second graders shouted back "Effesuh!!" with great enthusiasm.  We played it a couple more times telling them to listen closely but after hearing various versions of "Effesuh" and nothing remotely close to "Thanks" we just switched to having them repeat us.  Not quite as exciting, but at least they were saying the right word.

Here I have a few pictures of these kids a few classes ago when we were playing a game where the teachers called out a letter sound and pairs of students tried to be the first to hold up the letter.  We didn't actually keep score or anything but they got super into it.

This was a practice round so the excitement hadn't quite built yet

Intense searching for the letter "T"

Success!

Nature Time!!

The other day I ran back to the office to grab some papers from my co-teacher, Siena's, desk for class and I couldn't find them so I started looking around and happened to open a flat box that was lying on top of her desk...not really paying attention to all the air holes punched into the top of the box.  To my horror it was filled with silk worms chowing down on leaves! All that registered in my head was, "they're alive!!"  So naturally I slammed the lid shut and fled forgetting all about the papers.  After class we examined the silk worms and she offered me one to take home...I had to decline...I knew I would let it die...I couldn't even bear the sight of it.

Anyway, that Friday I got to on a field trip with 502 to the Yilan Green Expo.  A couple days before we went my LET, Siena, handed me an ID badge and told me I'd need it to get into the Expo. Well I took a look at it and there was my grinning face...the only problem was that it was a picture from Halloween when I had dressed as a pirate!  So naturally I exclaimed, "This is the best picture you could find?!?"  But she said the rest she had of me were blurry and it didn't matter because no one would be looking at it anyway.  Well, before we even went inside on Friday, the students were all looking at my badge mainly to read my Chinese name, but then one of them noticed the picture, took a good look, and yelled, "Teacher Charissa used to be a pirate!!!" as he went running away. Wonderful.

Yep, this is what I wore all day

Well, the day was a lot of fun but one of the first things we did was watch a horrifying performance of these giant frogs who danced around and sang.  Later there was also a magician who was equally terrifying.  Basically, the magician wanted to steal the frogs' memories in order to somehow build a chemical plant where their homes are, but thanks to the littlest frog (there on the right of the picture) his plan was thwarted.

I thought the show was for children but the majority of the audience looked more like this.  And yes, the one in the red hat was most definitely asleep

The rest of the time we walked around looking at things.  They were going to have a more structured lesson that afternoon but I was only there for the morning.  I had a lot of fun hanging out with the kids outside of English class.

The kids are checking out the bees pollinating the flowers

Everyone became enthralled by this bee on the ground...well, except for the fellow who's using his umbrella as a gun