So, we've been teaching American Sports for 4 days now, and it has been an interesting experience. We have 24 1st-3rd graders with varying levels of English, ranging from absolutely none to pretty good for an ESL third grader. Tom has basically no experience with children this age, and while I am technically trained to teach them, it has been about 10 years since I taught elementary school children, so it has been an adjustment. Some of the activities have gone really well, and others not so much, but the children seem to be having a pretty good time.
There have been a couple moments of hilarity. When we were playing a game involving baseball and the alphabet, we asked the children how many letters are in the English alphabet. Some didn't know, and several said 26, but one child insisted there were 24. We tried to explain to him that there are 26 and even started to show him, when he said, "No, it 24. ET went home." At first, I thought he was crazy, but after a moment we realized what he was doing and laughed our heads off. It's pretty impressive to be able to tell a joke in your second language!
Another time, we were playing Simon says. We had just started and were trying to get the rules straight. So, I said a few easy ones: "Simon says touch your head. Simon says swing a bat (pretend). Wiggle." When none of them wiggled, I said, "Wow you are all really good at this game! Not one of you wiggled!" To which one of the children said, "No, we don't know 'wiggle." Whoops! That would explain why they all just stood there staring at me!
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