Tuesday's Torch Story

People don't care how much you know

until they know how much you care.

~ from compilation by Dr. Mardy Grothe

I am so surprised and happy and proud! When I came up with the idea for my ESL Challenge Course - sending my students out into the local community to interact (in English) at stores, the library, a restaurant, etc. - I was hoping that maybe 4 students would take me up on this challenge. And I was bracing myself to accept it if only 2 students went for it.

But FIVE students have already completed the first mission and 2 more have committed to doing it!

I'm not going to have enough room on my bulletin board to fit all the pictures!

Interestingly, I think that putting pictures up on the bulletin board for each student and for each completed mission is contributing to the number of students who are participating. Of course, I might make a bit of a fanfare about it... ;)

Another good bit - I came up with an activity to help them practice their listening comprehension. I got a set of 11 x 14 images (from a Norman Rockwell series on boy scouts) and displayed a couple of pictures on the white board. Then I would say a sentence that fit only one of the pictures and had them indicate (with "voting cards") which picture I had just described.

It seemed to work well - it took some concentration on their parts, but it was possible.

The funny bit came when I let the students give the sentences. One of my students would walk up to one of the pictures, lean over to study it intently, and then - with her face only 6 inches from that picture! - slowly say her sentence.

It didn't take much English comprehension to guess which picture she was describing! ;)