Third Grade ESL Emotions Rap/Dance-off

Happy hump day everyone! I hope you're all having a splendid week thus far. The weather is finally getting nice and warm (and dry!) here in Luodong, so I'm feeling pretty okay despite a minor weather-change-induced head cold.But, however your week has been so far, I hope that what you're about to see can only make it better.

My fellow ETA, Ari, came up with the brilliant idea of having students say their vocabulary words to the tune of a rap beat to get them to practice saying them. This week, Siena and I decided to try this with our third graders. Our students absolutely loved it! They're currently learning about emotions. Specifically, they're learning the words happy, sad, angry, and sick. Having the kids write their own vocab raps soon turned into them also choreographing their own dance routines as well (and, if you don't already know, break-dancing third graders are just about the most adorably funny thing ever). These are some of my favorite results:

Robby may not be very good at English, but he's a great dancer. So he had his team mates rap while he showed off his skills. He pretty much single handedly elevated this assignment from vocab practice to an unofficial dance-off.

And here we have our class troublemaker. He takes things to a whole new level of awkward at about 0:24. When we asked him about it later, he told us that he had picked up his moves from Michael Jackson. Also, be sure to check out his big finale at about 1:21. Priceless.

This kid is just plain adorable. He's the smallest student in his class but he makes up for it with his huge personality. And who knew he was so aerodynamic?!? 

I hope you enjoyed these videos even a fraction as much as I enjoyed being there when they were made! If you're also an ESL teacher and you'd like to try making a vocab rap with your students, try searching "NY rap beats" on youtube. You can find the rap beat I used here.

My Life as a "Cultural Ambassador"

Taiwan is awesome and, in general, I think its home to some of the nicest people in the world. That being said, I have stumbled across some interesting misconceptions or just plain odd questions about myself and my country over the last month and a half.

Some of the best questions/comments I've heard:

• If you're from America, why aren't your eyes blue?
• Does everyone in America have a huge house and an SUV?
• Your family only has two kids?!?! But all Americans have huge families!
• Everyone in America wants to be a lawyer (but lawyers are professional liars)
• Do you have a baby? 
• First grader to Christine: Why are your boobs so big?

There is also a lot of interest in my nose ring. In fact, the reason I learned the Chinese word for nose is because children kept coming up to me, pointing at their noses, and asking me what the thing in my nose is. Unfortunately, I still don't know the actual Chinese word for nose ring and therefore often resort to pointing at my earrings and then pulling my nose ring part way out so that they can see that it is IN my nose. But curiosity abounds. This week, three of my third graders at wore sparkly pink gemstones on their noses to class just so we could all match. They were so proud of themselves when they showed up to class and pointed at their noses. It was pretty adorable.

Teaching demo

Today I taught my first English class! School doesn't actually start until next week but, in order to give us all a chance to practice with out LETs before our first day, everyone in the program made a lesson plan last Friday and participated in teaching demos today. An, happy day, my lesson went really well!

My LET, Siena, and I taught a group of 1st-3rd graders. Our lesson was based around a cute little book of opposites that I got from the dollar bin at Target. We made up little actions to illustrate the meaning of each of the phrases and taught them to the kids. They really got into it.

As you can see, the kids were adorable!

After our lesson was done, I became an honorary student in the next lesson to even out the odd number of kids. We played rock, paper, scissors and the winner had to name and point to a body part in English while the loser pointed at a different body part.

Paper covers rock! One of the few times I beat my partner.

All in all, it was a fun day. I made some new friends and we even had a surprise guest wander into the classroom during Christine's lesson:

I guess she was an honorary student, too

Group shot of all the students, ETAs, and LETs in group A. What a fun bunch!