I spent an hour this morning helping in the grade 4 classroom, working with two Korean kids that speak no english. Ah I'm learning not to make assumptions every day. When they asked me to spend some time helping them each day, I figured that basically we'd be able to communicate even if they didn't understand everything. Instead, it was like starting from scratch. It was a huge challenge, because I found that they were so used to people rabbiting english at them (none of which they can process) that they very quickly tuned out if I just talked at them, no matter how many ways I tried to explain something to them. But that's ok, it was challenging in a good way. They were meant to be writing an outline of something they did in the holidays so as to later write a story about it. But I had no capabilities to explain 'holiday' to them, to ask them what they did, or anything. Still, we managed to work things out in the end enough for them to get basic sentences down, although I have a feeling they didn't really understand what they were writing. So after a while I switched methods completely, as I felt that it really wasn't important whether or not they did the worksheet but instead we needed to get some communication happening.

Funny how you revert back to the things you're most comfortable with,

(Tbc as befitting almost every post I've started so far... sorry! I'm trying ok)