In the evenings, the students have class after their prayer & Bible reading. I feel bad teaching from nine to twelve in the morning, one to three in the afternoon, and six to nine at night. It just seems like a little too much time of me talking to students in their third language while they probe multiple dictionaries.
It is quite a sight, really, as each student has their curriculum, notebook, and a few dictionaries sprawled out in front of them.
For the evening activity one night, I created a village-version of Scattergories. I gave them five categories: an animal, a fruit or vegetable, a country name, a toy, and a famous person. The categories didn’t change, but each group of three or four students drew a letter for each round, and they had to come up with answers according to the letter they drew. I intentionally chose the “easier” letters in my drawing basket–S, L, N, etc. and avoided Z, J, and K.
It was still hilarious, especially when I offered candy to the winning team and they were suddenly yelping with motivation.
I had two favorite answers. First, under toy for the letter “R”, I read “rat doll.” The gesture-filled conversation went like this:
“Rat doll? I don’t know this, but okay. What is a rat doll?”
“You know, rat?” with indications of a creature scurrying across the ground.
“Yes, I know rat. Do you…” with motions of picking up the rat and petting it.
“No!” Now, there are resounding gestures of a hand winding up a rat, which then scurried away.
“Oh! You mean a wind-up mouse!”
Later, I read “tobacco” under fruit or vegetable. I laughed, as this was a loose definition of vegetable. The student seemed a little offended and replied, “Yes, teacher, Karen eat tobacco.”
I replied, “Yes, I know they do. So do Americans. It’s still not a vegetable!”
I also had a mirage of questions: how to spell Leonardo from Titanic; how to spell Caesar & Pharaoh, from the students obviously faithfully reading their Bibles! I was asked to spell “gee-raif–ee” a few times before I determined they were asking about giraffe.