Meg: Thanksgiving Lessons

         Yes, I’m a little late in this post, I’ve been thinking about what to write for a while, without actually writing it down!  The two weeks leading up to the holiday itself, I spent time teaching students at both middle schools about what we do on Thanksgiving and the importance of the holiday.  Which, by the way, didn’t help with the home sickness I was feeling at that point, but it was still fun to share some real American culture with the students.  In the classes I started with a general kind-of-boring sheet explaining what Thanksgiving is, what we do on the day, and why it is so important.  After the first class of teaching about Thanksgiving that way, I decided that that was not interesting enough, so I started coming up with little games to play with the kids.  I don’t know if Rose and Rachelle find this to be true, but I find when I’m teaching the same lesson twice, the second time always goes slightly better.  I need to figure out how to get those results on the first time. 

       Anyway, by far, my favorite game to play with the kids was a word scramble.  I split the class into two groups and wrote T H A N K S G I V I N G   T U R K E Y on the board.  Then I told them they had 10 minutes to come up with as many English words out of those letters as they could, and the group with the most amount of words would win.  They had to discuss what words to use and then send up a team member to run to the board to put the word they came up with before the other team could come up with the same word.  It was super fun to watch them all get very into it.  Of course, they tried to cheat of each other, but it was a friendly competition.  I was very impressed by the number of words/which words they were able to come up with!  Words like Turkish and skiving, that I don’t think I even could have come up with.  A couple times they tried to write French words up on the board, but I informed them that I would take a point AWAY if they did that.  This game is the most successful lesson plan I’ve come up with so far- so I see more games in the future.  The only bad part was that they asked me what they had won and they were not very impressed by my answer of, “my respect and the feeling of accomplishment.”  I might have to get some real prizes one of these days.

        Another thing that I did at the beginning of each lesson about Thanksgiving was asking the students what they already knew about the holiday.  Most of the kids weren’t quite sure what to say, but I got some responses, such as “It’s like Christmas!”  Which, when I thought about it, it is fairly similar to the way they celebrate Christmas here, with family and a big meal together, but I had to explain that we also had Christmas.  My favorite reply was actually an ongoing exchange.  One of the kids said, “It was on the Simpsons.”  Everyone laughed, and I agreed, yes, there were episodes of the Simpsons that featured Thanksgiving.  I then went on to ask them to continue to describe it.  Another student, who normally doesn’t talk much said, “They have yellow skin,”  I was quite confused.  “Who has yellow skin?  The turkey?”  I had no idea what was going on.  “No,” the boy laughed, “The Simpsons.”  I burst out laughing.  Maybe you had to be there, but I thought it was funny that my discussion about Thanksgiving rapidly became a discussion about the Simpsons.

      The other thing I’ve found during these lessons is if I let the kids get away with a little bit of French they are more comfortable.  For example, if they don’t understand what I’m saying, they will ask me, in French, if this-and-this is what I meant, and I can confirm or deny.  They actually ask me lots of questions in French and I always just respond in English.  This was happening with a group of 6^th graders that I had the other day, them asking in French and me answering in English, and at the end of the class, they returned to their favorite question, “Do you speak French?”  Which was particularly funny because it’s obvious that I understand French, but it doesn’t cross their minds that even though I know what they’re saying that I can’t actually form words or sentences, this is one of the reasons I love the 6^th graders the most.  They’re more innocent than the others in a way that I find completely adorable.  If I had to teach middle school for the rest of my life, I would choose to teach 6^th graders.