Way to go 5th Grade!

I'm really proud of my 5th grade classes. On Wednesday I asked them to prepare a blurb about their favorite animal (they're learning about animals). They were a little confused by my assigning them homework and only some of them came to class with something written down. I told them that this didn't matter because I was more interested in hearing them speak.

First I had 5A (the better behaved class). I picked a student's name from the alphabetical list and made her go first. One-by-one each student presented their "favorite" animal to the class. Some picked an animal from the chapter, while others were more inventive. Most hadn't really prepared anything and David and I questioned them about an animal. They all got up in the front of the room and said something, which was my goal of the class. They had to tell us the kind of animal and then describe it (It is big, It is brown, etc.). Even the kid who never does anything and still hasn't bought the book was able to do this. He even did a decent job.

David and I knew this wouldn't work in 5B because the kids are much more disruptive. Instead of having them present in front of the classroom, each student had to come into the hallway and talk to me one-on-one. Almost none of these students had prepared anything and most of them picked "dog" as their favorite animal. Some of them complained about not knowing how to speak English or not knowing what to say about their animal. In the end, everyone was able to tell me something about the animal. They all did a great job practicing the vocabulary and sentence structures they're learning. I'm anxious to try this again soon.

In addition to going to the 5th grade classes, I stayed with Lourdes while she watched 5A during recess (it was raining today). The kids were really wild - they were throwing themselves on the floor. Lourdes made them sit in their seats and we all played hangman in English. I got to go first and my word was "trumpet," one of their vocab words from October. They were pretty responsive to the game and played along well even though their strategy was terrible. They guessed letters in alphabetical order. I think I might have to use this in a future class....