Incidentally, you can head over to Literaryhero and Friends to find out how I celebrated.
Class attendance has been a real problem--not mine, the students'. Though it varies by class, attendance rates have declined as the days have passed, until now it's under 50%. For the last two days, my 3rd period--with 23 on the roll--has had two students. One Mr Yoon, who hardly ever speaks but writes quite well, has perfect attendance.
I've been doing a variety of activities, from games to vocabulary building to poetry-writing. Yes, poetry-writing. I used this activity yesterday: http://bogglesworldesl.com/ files/ BewareTheHumans1.jpg and it was surprisingly successful. I first read a few other of Prelutsky's poems (I am familiar with him, as he did a seminar at Heritage one time) then gave them the handout. We broke down the poem until they understood it well, and then moved on to discussing how humans are dangerous to crocodiles, and the environment in general.
I was impressed overall, and particularly with the work of a few students, who actually managed to get rhythm and rhyme. I wrote my own poem, which turned out pretty damn good, if I say so myself. In fact, I thought about typing up the best examples here on the blog, but that started to seem too much like actual work.
Tomorrow we'll play the plane crash game, where they pretend to have survived a crash in the middle of the frozen tundra. I give them a list of items and they have to work with their fellow survivors (in English, of course, he adds hopefully) to decide which eight objects to carry with them. Then they have to explain WHY. We'll see, eh?
Bonus Photograph: A package of rolls from Kirin Bakery.
