English Class

11/24/09
In my English class on Monday, I showed the children a magazine picture and presented a made-up story that I had written about the girl in the picture. Then, I divided the class into groups and gave each group a different magazine picture. They were instructed to create a story of their own. They wrote these stories down, handed them in, and I corrected them that evening. This was a pretty good activity. It took quite a while for them to complete it, and it really allowed me to see their writing ability. The focus was again on clothing, since that was what we'd been talking about. So they had to describe the people's outfits in the picture, and then imagine what is happening in the scene. One group did a very nice job of creatively elaborating on the picture. Theirs was just a simple image of two teenage girls talking on the phone. Well, they had this drama going on about one of the girls is talking to her friend, but her friend loves the other one. The one wants to know which is her true friend, but she doesn't know that she actually loves the other one. The sentence structure was quite confusing for me – I got the gist of what they wanted to say, but I spent a long time correcting this one and trying to make comprehensible sentences. The other groups did a pretty good job of describing the people's outfits and naming them and giving them ages. But no other group really had such a good story to go along with their description :) Nearly all the groups had problems with including "a" before they describe a singular noun. For example, I found a lot of  "She is wearing red sweater."

After class, Jean d'Amour comes up to me and says that he wants me to give him a gift. There was a bit more explanation to this, but that's basically what he said. I told him that I don't have anything to give him, but he says he wants me to get him a book or something.  Here we go again…expecting that I'm made of money…we debate back and forth as I walk him to the gate, and all the while he keeps telling me that you give someone a gift to show your affection for them. I tell him that I would if I could, but I really don't have anything to give. He says to me "if your heart obliges you to give something, you give it. You hate me then?" I just start cracking up and explain that refusal to give something to someone does not signify hatred. He's laughing too at this point. I tell him "Jean d'Amour, I am giving you my friendship. Isn't that enough for you? Why do you want someTHING?" And at this point we meet up with Sr. Charlotte, who asks what's going on. Jean d'Amour explains his request and she gives him this look of "you are ridiculous, go home." She sides with me and says that its enough that I am giving my time and friendship, now get outta here. It was quite comical.