Cereal again?

I was just talking about how some of my former students still discuss events from our classes last year, and even years before. Then what happens? These very same students started a debate about a word we had used in one of our stories on my facebook page. 

The basic story is this:

Mike Tyson is famous. He is strong. Lots of people like him. But, he has a problem. He likes to eat people's ears. It is illegal to eat people's ears. The police come and arrest him. He goes to jail.

While he is in jail, he has an idea. He has to wait, because he can't do anything about his idea when he is in jail.

When he gets home, he makes Tyson Puffs - a cereal shaped like people's ears. Now he can eat ears and it isn't illegal. Now he doesn't go to jail. Now he is happy.

The debate was about the word "Puffs". One girl said it was Pufs, another thought it was Poofs, and one boy said it was Puffs. It turns out, they were all right. In the English translation, we had written "Puffs", as we asked the story, we pronounced it "poofs" and when we wrote it in Spanish, we wrote "Pufs" to keep the pronunciation.  But really, it has been more than a year and a half, and here they are debating, literally the semantics of our story about cereal, body parts, and jail. 

And, it's on my facebook page!  Which means one - these students have become autonomous learners of the language; two - they are making connections and using the language outside of school (ACTFL standards); three - we have succeeded in building relationships with each other; four - the students have truly acquired some of the language; and five - I now have to explain to my family and adult friends why my students think a story about eating ears is hilarious.  :)

Oh! The connections... this all came up because I told my son I was going to eat his ears.  :)

Thank God for the peacemakers

I got myself in a jam in a story the other day. The story was going great, I had control of it. And then suddenly I did not. I let the kids wrest it away from me.

It all started when a student didn't want to go to school, so she played hooky and walked down to a nearby gas station where she bought and ate a magic taco. The taco gave her magic abilities and she returned to school. She walked into my class where I asked her where she had been. Rather than answering like a polite child, she picked me up and threw me to the floor where I died. The class decided to have a party. They were thinking Arby's and they went.

And all of that was controlled. Fun, a little unconventional at school, but I had the story.

Then the principal walked into Arby's because it was her lunch break. She saw my students and--

And that's where I lost all control. Because, as in many schools, the principal is not the students' favorite person. There were many suggestions - all of which were chaotic, unprincipaled (heh), etc. And then there was the peacemaker with the perfect solution.

The students invited the principal to join the party. She accepted and they all danced the Macarena in the middle of Arby's.

Story ended.

Elephants, donkeys and moose

My students are very aware of the political process, and I have several students who wear shirts DAILY supporting their favorite presidential candidate. Without going into politics I wanted to honor these kids. I also wanted to get some more reps in with se llamaba (was named), fue (went) and había (there was)

I wrote a story about a student who wanted cats (blue walruses in one class). The student went to Washington DC to the white house. A man named George opened the door. The student asked George for cats. George said to him, " I don't have cats. I have elephants. I have lots of elephants." There were no cats in the white house. There were only elephants. There were no cats in Washington.

The student went to Illinois and talked to a man. The man was named Barack. The student asked Barack for cats. Barack said, " I don't have cats. I have donkeys. I have a lot of donkeys." There were no cats in Illinois. There were lots of donkeys in Illinois. Poor student. The student wanted to cry.

The student went to Alaska. The student talked to a woman. The woman's name was Sarah. The student asked Sarah for cats. Sarah said, "I don't have cats. I have moose. I have lots of moose." Poor student. There were lots of moose in Alaska, but there were no cats.

The student went to our school. There were cats on the roof of our school. The student was happy.

My kids loved it. They all wanted to be actors, and they laughed at the elephant and donkey joke.