I have to formally apologize for my lack of posts in...oh my...three months? I'm sure you can all understand the chaos of the holiday season, and with the start to the new year as well. There's little time for things like blog posts when you just collapse, exhausted, on the couch at the end of a long day.
You should have all received my paper newsletter via post, and if you didn't, please let me know and I'd be happy to send you one! It included lots of fun pictures of my kiddos (due to privacy considerations, I am no longer posting pictures of my students online), information about my plans for next year, and some facts about these gap months on the blog.
Just shoot me an email at acollins@teachbeyond.org if you'd like to receive a newsletter.
It's about this time in the year when my German students' English abilities jump through the roof, and I have SO enjoyed our partner language times. We use an ELL (English language learner) curriculum, but it usually ends up jump starting the most "rabbit trail" of discussions during class. Our most recent unit has been on animals, and it's great fun to spend time talking about animal facts in both languages. Usually, we end up having to translate some random and obscure fact from German into English, especially due to the fact that some of my deepest thinkers cannot yet translate all of their thoughts and questions into English. Then we get to jump into problem solver mode and play the "translate" game. Who can help poor Ms. Collins understand this question? Ahhhhh...he wants to know how many meters long this specific kind of squid can be, or how long a Komodo dragon can live, or did I know that this certain kind of octopus can actually make parts of its body light up? Sheesh. That's not in the book. Thank goodness for Google! :) And then of course that sends us on another rabbit trail. I'm so thankful that I get to teach this class-they're curious, deep thinkers, creative, and genuinely love learning.
I was grading some of their tests today, and was literally laughing out loud at some of their answers. I wanted to share them with you-if you know kids, you'll laugh too. In the long journey of language learning, the spelling tends to come last.
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| Adorable. She really does do that well. It's normal to get several hugs every day. |
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| "In winter, she wears glows (gloves)." |
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"In spring, she wears buts (boots)." |
