Wednesday (November 14, 2007)

Yesterday, a few very interesting things happened. When I was on my way into school in the morning, I was stopped by the secretary. She told me that one of the teachers I know was on her way to school but was going to be late. She asked if I would mind going to her class until she got there. I said that was fine and headed over. I have been in this class before and I know many of the students. But they have math first thing in the morning, which means students from another 3rd class come over and some of the students in this class go to the class I usually teach first thing in the morning. Either way, it all worked out very well. I asked the students a few questions about where they left off the day before and we started. I got through the homework corrections, the table recitations, and got a fair way into the lesson before the teacher showed up. When she saw how well it was going she actually let me finish. I think it worked out very well and I was happy to help.

I helped the new Romanian student one-on-one afterwards. I am working on basic English vocabulary and the like with her. After that, I head to the 3rd class English support class. I was going to teach for about half the class and I had a lesson planned. However, during the first part of the class, the teacher was having trouble with the students and matching questions and their answers. For instance, when given an answer such as "The girls is from Limerick," the students cannot come up with the appropriate question that would warrent that answer. Therefore, I asked if I could do an activity with them. I had a completely different lesson planned, but I decided to play the 5 W's game that I used to play in school and at parties when I was in elementary school.

Essentially, you list Who, What, Where, When and Why down the left hand side of a piece of paper with plenty of space in between. Everyone keeps their paper hidden from prying eyes and writes down a Who. This can be anyone or an animal or a group of people. Then they fold over the paper so that you cannot see what they wrote and pass all of the papers to the right. The next person writes down a What. This is a verb... any kind of action or event such as playing baseball. You can get very detailed as well such as "playing baseball in the rain while wearing white shirts." The paper is folded and passed again and again until every question has an answer (Where is a place, When is quite obviously some kind of time frame and Why is a silly reasoning...ie, because he/she/they were tired from doing headstands). Once the paper is completed you read it aloud. You can use them to write stories as those 5 W's are the key components to any story.

The students loved this activity so we played it twice. Other classes have begged for it too. One girls told me she is going to play it at their birthday party. I am glad they enjoyed it, but moreover, I am glad they can keep the 5 W's straight.