Just a spoonful of sugar!

May 25, 2009

Another Monday!  Time is really flying!  This morning was the 4^th class first.  Luckily we walked in the correct classroom!  The person being interrogated today was the kid that looks like Harry Potter.  From the very first moment he started speaking he had difficulty.  It seemed like he had prepared but it didn’t sound like he had practiced at all.  Some of the things were quite comical and he was poked fun at by the other students.  It was sort of sad.  These kids are all good at writing things and they try to talk as if they were writing a composition.  As a consequence they pronounce almost everything wrong.  The topic was also difficult.  Professor M. was trying to get the student to make a comparison between Pamela of Good virtue and Tom Jones. 

The next class was the 3^rd class.  The teacher let them know their grades that they got on a certain assignment.  They tried to argue one way on a certain questions.  Mostly it was just the overachievers in the class that wanted the perfect score.  There is this one girl in the class who is from Germany.  Her parents moved their family here a long time ago so she speaks both Italian and German.  Her English is also very good because her parents both speak it.  She’s going to be doing a semester in England next year to better her English.  She’s the one that got almost a perfect score and was trying to argue for the 100%.  It was so funny because they stood by the door with their arms folded across their chests until the teacher insisted that they go back to their desks.  It was amusing. 

During the prep hour Professor M. and I reviewed the survey that I made up, we cut out some questions and reworded others.  He said I could do it this coming Friday.  I’m excited!

Our next class we gave them a listening exercise.  I read a whole paragraph to them and then asked them questions that made them remember and connect details together from the paragraph.  Professor M. also showed them their grades from a prior listening quiz and the whole class did so bad that he let each student choose whether they wanted to keep their grade or not.  A couple of them were caught cheating so they were assigned to read a book and write a report about it.  They reported on their report.  The first girl did very well and described her book well.  The next one was not as good.

The last class was the 5^th class.  Professor M. interrogated a student on romantic vs realistic poetry.  It was incredibly boring and I thought the hour would never end.  The student that was being interrogated had horrible pronunciation and it was so hard to understand what he was saying.  After class I stayed and helped another student who has his interrogation tomorrow.  He practiced what he was going to say and had me correct his mistakes. 

I met Hillary after school to do our laundry.  Today Hillary’s internship was canceled so she came home with me and had dinner together.  Afterwards we watched Marry Poppins together.  Hillary has practically the whole film memorized and sang along to the songs.  It was fun.