Thursday, March 16, 2006

Ode to the 6th Grade



In the pattern of Thai schools, today was a sudden last day of the term. I was originally told that today would be the last day, so at one point it would not have been a surprise. Then, however, the last day was changed to next Thursday, so I prepared myself for that. Just last week, the last day was changed to tomorrow, so I did know it was coming up suddenly. But I still wasn’t quite prepared to show up at school this morning and find out that in fact, today was the last day, after all.
So I am sorry to see my 6th graders go. They were an awesome class, and they head off to matiom (high school – grades 7-12) next term. 19 students – 12 girls and 7 boys – most of whom were interested in learning English, at least a little bit, and most of whom gave it their all. They were a class that loved looking up their own vocabulary to answer my questions, and loved drawing cartoon pictures on all their question-and-answer assignments. I’ll miss them.
In the photo, we are doing "Scrambled Sentences." I write a bunch of questions and answers on strips of paper, such as, "What is your favorite food?" "My favorite food is ice cream." Then I cut the strips into words, mix them up, give them to a group of students in an envelope, and their job is to put them back together again. I usually do color code the sentences as a little hint. Fun fun.
The school year isn’t over everywhere yet, though. I’ll be going to my other school tomorrow. Its last day is supposed to be next Thursday (originally next Friday, but they moved it up one day), but maybe that’s changed since I was there last three days ago. Tomorrow morning I’ll know more! Is this confusing? I think so!

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