Gazebo

My class of 6th and 7th graders is held on the top floor of a "container", or temp building, made of metal with a flat roof and a lot of windows that don't open. It's suffocating. The kids have been clamoring to have class outside. The other day I relented, so we all descended the hazardous ladder-like stairs and headed for the playground. "Some of you go to the picnic table, everybody else to the gazebo," I told them.

Some of the kids thought this was hilarious. "Gazebo! What means gazebo? That is funny!" "That little building, with a roof and no walls--that's the gazebo," I explained.

Yesterday they came into class saying "Ms. Panneton! we like that word! Gazebo! yes! it is so funny!" So I amended the assignment that was already written on the board: "Write original sentences using eight new vocabulary words" "and the word gazebo" I added.

It was a joke, but Emily in grade 6 rose to the challenge, and wrote sentences incorporating all of the new vocabulary along with "gazebo", i.e. "When I feel tension I go in my gazebo and all is better." "It is entertaining to drink tea in gazebo." "My brother irritate me and I close him up in gazebo."

I laughed and laughed. Emily is one of my favorite students. She's from Poland and arrived this year without a word of English. She's just jumped into the language--but she has an advantage in that there are very few Polish speakers at the school.

In my grade 8-9 combo class, six out of nine kids speak Russian as a first language. In grade 5, seven out of eleven do. But in the grade 6-7 class, there are twelve kids, with German, French, Turkish, Polish, and Russian spoken by two kids each, and Danish and Dutch each spoken by one.

So English has to be the common language, and it is--these kids have learned much more English than students in the other classes. ESL classes require conversation. In the other classes, I tell the students that they can talk, but they have to speak English! In grade 6-7, I have to tell them to quit speaking English, and listen to me! Preferable.