Student's thoughts...

This week the curriculum I'm teaching has a unit on America.  (This is largely due to the fact that it is an American curriculum.) 

I spent my first day back in the classroom showing a slideshow of some of the things I did while back There over the summer.  The kids really loved it.  Then, they did a writing assignment on "Where did Mrs. H go this summer?"  I was so surprised by their enthusiasm.

The next day, for my oral warm-up, I asked the kids a suggested question from the text:  "Why do you think many people move to America?"  They are mostly 3-6th graders in my class, but I expected we'd have a brief warm up as I thought they would not have much context for the question.

I divided them up into pairs and then had each pair give me two answers.  I was amazed that out of 14 students, only two gave me the same answer.  I took a picture of their answers from the board as I thought you might find it interesting to see what my Elementary students think about why America would be a desirable place to live.  From the Middle Kingdom...to your eyes...

This took the whole class period as they continued to come up with more and more reasons not listed here.  It was so fun and I was delighted at how far their oral English has come...but you just have to ask the right questions...