Coconuts are my friend.
The range of ability in my classroom is pretty wide. Some kids cannot only do the activity that I have planned but can go beyond the activity and have basic conversations with me about the weather or sports or whatever English words pop into their head. ( Sometimes they will call me over and just list all of the English words they have ever learned (also if I don't give them a hearty "wow, so great" or some other sort of response to each word, they will repeat that same word until I do)). Other kids are exactly where the school wants them to be based on their expectations and the years of experience they have had (because my kids are grade 2, they have only had one year of English....but because this is a private school that focuses on English, that one year was a pretty intense amount of English). A few kids have more trouble than the rest. They all can do it, but some of them have less confidence than others and tend to freeze up when I call on them or when I work with them at their desk (but when we play games and I tell them it's a race, everything changes. Those kids have a desire to win like I have never seen before.)
One boy, in particular, decided that "this is a book" was the phrase he would use to answer anything that I asked or said to him. Every time I asked a question, he would raise his hand, wait for me to call on him and then, no matter what the question was, he would say "teacher, this is a book." (For example, the other day, I asked him what his favorite fruit was and he said "teacher, this is a book" and then he gave me a huge thumbs up and sat down (because they have to stand when they speak in class).) So, a few days ago when he raised his hand to aswer a question, I was hesitant to call on him (also, the students never just raise their hands. They raise their hands so intensely that their arms look like they are going to pop off, they are half standing, half sitting and they let out this low whine saying "teeeeeeeacccchhhherrrrrrr, woooooooooooooooo" (wo means I in Chinese....which they are not even supposed to be speaking in my class)). The unit that we were in was fruit. The kids had learned all sorts of fruit names and were supposed to use those fruits to fill in the sentence "I like ____________ but _________ are my favorite". (This unit had been difficult for them because once they learn a word, every time they see another word that starts with the same letter as the word they already learned they just assume it is that first word. For the longest time I could not get them to read grapefruit because the week before we had learned giraffe and they just assumed that since it started with a g it must be giraffe. Thankfully, they now know the difference between giraffe and grapefruit.) I was even more hesitant to call on him because I knew if he just said "this is a book", the other kids would start laughing and he would get embarrassed and wouldn't want to even try to say the right sentence. But I called on him. And when he stood up, without me even having to start the sentence for him, he said "I like apples but coconuts are my friend" then he gave me a thumbs up and sat down. I couldn't believe it, I was so proud of him. I gave him two thumbs up and yelled "Hooooooray! You are so awesome!! GOOOOOOD JOBBBB!" Unfortunately, right after I did that, another student was kind enough to yell "teacher, he said 'friend' that not ok"( and technicially, no, it wasn't ok) but it was ok because he had tried!!! (Also I really appreciated the sentiment. He likes coconuts sooooo much that he considers them his friends!) I did have to correct him though, so, I looked at him and said "favorite, favvvvvvvvvorite, favorite" and he looked at me and said "teacher, book."
(I wasn't even mad about it.)
