I Just Can't Resist

I Just Can’t Resist

All of my students are learning and speaking English as their second language. They have had English since kindergarten and they’re in 6th grade. Mostly they do a good job, but subtleties and slang are always the hardest things to learn.

I have assigned my students to do research on people from the 1920s. They have everyone from Georgia O’Keeffe, to F. Scott Fitzgerald, to Jelly Roll Morton. They are to create a poster of their person and a multimedia project. The great thing is my students can and will do this assignment very well. Here is the assignment:

The poster:
• The person’s name
• A one sentence slogan that says why s/he is important (I have given them example of slogans)
• Images of the person and their work

Multimedia:
This part depends on why your person is important. These are suggestions, but you are free to add to them.
If s/he is a musician –have a piece of his/her music.
If s/he is an athlete - a video or him/her playing sports
If s/he is an artist – images of his/her work
If s/he is an actor – video of his/her work
If s/he is a writer – include important names of his/her book, a quotation, or perhaps their literature has been turned into a movie – you can show us how his/her work has been adapted into a screenplay by showing a video clips of their movie.

You will present them in a Mulitmedia Museum/Hall of Fame.

So, I have told students they can e-mail me with questions. Today I received two e-mails that I could not resist sharing.

E-mail #1: Miss e, if I am luis armstrong,¿which is my category?is that is not so easy to say that going to the moon is a sport!

My response: Dear student, I think you need to read about who Louis Armstrong is. Hint, he's not an astronaut.

:) Ms E

E-mail #2: hi miss b, this will look like a poster ?

I tried to attach the link, it didn't work. It is a black and white picture of Babe Ruth after having just swung his bat. Obviously, the student just downloaded a poster that seemingly had a good slogan. Here's what it said superimposed over the photo:

"Booze, Hot Dogs, and Whores...Who needs STEROIDS?"

My response:

Dear student,

Ummmmm, no. I will tell you tomorrow in class what those words mean and you will see that it's not really what you want to say in school or about an athlete you are researching. Those are slang words for things you don't want to talk about in school. The picture is good though.

Ms. B

I just couldn’t keep that to myself.