Super Mime Strikes Again at 10:29 PM

I was once friends with this awesome, but slightly crazy (in a healthy way) Chinese kid named Eric Chao in high school. Great guy, really smart, really nice. At some point for a Spanish project he filmed a video (in Spanish) of him in his evil lair plotting to take over the world. At that point he took on the nick name - "ChaoDoom." Every villain needs to fight a hero right? At some point later (keep in mind most of my friends had nick names) my friend Mark (who we called Ace) coined the name "Super Mime." It was fun at the time, and the name actually kind of stuck through the rest of high school. I even had a license plate that said, 'SPRMIME'. Little did I know it would be prophetic.

I seriously pantamime everything for these kids. There's no way to exaggerate this. They all know just enough english that between my charades and my english, teaching vocab is not only easy, it's really fun. This week I taught my kids most the words they would need to talk about being sick and how they feel. Here's a few words we covered-
Sneeze - I taught them to say "Bless you"
Cough
Cold
Flu
Fever
head ache and migraine (This one was fun because I would make the same motions as a head ache 'rub temples' and then for migraine, I'd just yell a lot so they knew it hurt worse)
Throw up - that one was way fun
Pass out
Sprain
Amnesia
Broken Bone
One of the ways we'd review is I'd say, "Show me...." and then one of the words and they would all act it out. It's pretty fun to watch an entire class pass out.

A lot of my teaching is just trying to expand their vocabulary and help them to know how to use the words.
So most of my lessons will go like this.

Introduction - Today I told my class that if they were good we'd watch a music video on my laptop and I'd hook it up to the speakers and we voted on which music video to watch

Core - We dig into the daily vocab hard and fast. I write words on the board and if they understand them we move one, if not, I explain them

Practice - I make all the kids write a few sentences with some of the words I listed and I walk around the class and help with grammar

Fun conclusion - Usually we play some sort of a game where they use the sentences they wrote. Last week we split the class into sides and played tic tac toe. Each team had to have a player read a sentence with good grammar and a vocab word of the day to be able to write on the board. Today, I just let them watch a music video. =)

Spare time - Last but not least, some times we have a few minutes left before the bell rings.
During this time, I try and hit on conversation basics. I usually talk about the difference between things that are polite and slang. Like, "How are you?" vs "What's up", or "me too" vs "ditto."

It's funny, I feel like I'm giving a show, or more like I'm giving them part of myself, but I don't feel like a clown or a performer or anything. I really do feel like a teacher. I have to say, it's awesome. I really like it. Part of that reason may be because I teach the 'smart classes,' but even if I didn't, it's not like the other kids aren't smart, and I think even if they had really bad English, it's amazing what charades can do. I really do feel like 'Super Mime.' and I really do feel like I'm helping these kids.

Until next time, ChaoDoom.