Teaching re-cap~ Thanksgiving Edition!

I have been doing this past couple of weeks, tell you what I did with my students this week, so I will continue. My students are doing presentations until the end of the semester, but that only takes up half of the class period. So, this week was Thanksgiving week and I talked about Thanksgiving and what we eat on that day. I explained the different foods we eat. I tried to explain cranberry sauce, but it is difficult to do when they do not understand what a cranberry is. I don't know if they didn't know what it was, or if they knew what it was and if I had known the Chinese word for it, they would have understood. So by the third class of the week, I stopped trying to explain that and just stuck with the meat and vegetables! haha! After every English food item I would ask them what the Chinese word for it was and they would say it for me, really fast. So I would ask them to say it again, slowly and they would oblige. I repeated it and they all clapped and laughed as if I had done a triple back flip on a tight rope in the air! It was funny, and they would do that every time I said a word. I would just get laughter if I said it the wrong way, but it was still funny!

After I explained Thanksgiving dinner, I explained the Thanksgiving Holiday is about being thankful. I told my students I was thankful for all of them being my students and I was thankful for love. I then asked them to tell me what they are thankful for. Most of the students said they were thankful for their parents because "They give me life", and some of them said they were thankful for their friends. I got to one boy and asked him what he was thankful for. He said, " I am thankful for friendship because if you have made a friend, you have touched a heart." I thought that was beautiful and true!

After I went around the room, I asked the students to email me if they were interested in improving their English. I told them we would be doing some activities outside of class in our apartment, and we have been getting some responses. This activity at our apartment will be used as a "study" to help the students in their lives by studying "the book". We will let you know how that goes! Well, that's all for today! I hope you enjoyed the re-cap! I love you all and don't forget to think about me in China!