Friday, December 11, 2009

Student Spotlight "Computer"

I have been thinking for a while about posting one of my students on here to give people back home an idea of who we teach and live around everyday. When considering who to use, this young man did not come to mind at all until the last 2 weeks.
I am teaching Japanese majors this year in my school. Their English is not great and they spend all of their time outside of class learning Japanese. Basically my class is a required class that you have to have but is not that important overall to their degree. Like Economics to a Social Work major. I cannot do many things that you would do with English majors. It takes me longer to get them to understand what I am trying to say. They are not really motivated to learn anymore English so I have to find creative ways to keep them excited. So over the last two weeks I have been doing random plays and short class speeches that are meant to be fun. That is when the heavens opened up and a light came down on Computer.
Computer has been a pretty good student from the start. He has always been good to speak up in class but never really tried to be funny or anything. Well, that is until I started to give him the spotlight. I am going to show two videos of Computer being himself. I hope you enjoy.
The first video came from my Thanksgiving week lesson. I told the story of the first Thanksgiving, then asked them to break into groups and act out the story anyway they would like. I allowed them to add or take away anything from the story. The only thing I required were pilgrims, Indians, and a turkey. Here is the clip of Computer. He is the shorter kid. He will be playing the role of an Indian.


The second video happened a week later. I brought random things to my room and had the kids take one and write a commercial about it. After that they had to go up in front of class and advertise their product. Computer drew out my hat shaper thing you can buy for the bill of your hat. After explaining to him what it was he went to work. The video was taken by one of my other students on his mobile phone so the sound and picture is a little messed up. This is basically what happens. He starts off as a TV salesman who talks about the product. Then after introducing the product, he turns it over to the scientist who discovered and created the hat shaper thing. Some of it may be hard to understand but I hope you catch what he is saying enough to enjoy.

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