Sunday, March 02, 2008

Only Students in Utah!

Being in Utah I know a lot of my students are LDS. So its really funny to see how it comes up in class. Here are a few examples

I gave my students a homeork assignement to find a newspaper, magazine, or book and read about a paragraph to find prepositions. Then they were to list out as many prepositional phrases as they could and to underline the preposition. (For ex. through the house, under the bed, into the garbage, around the tree, etc.) I had one girl come up to me the next day and tell me "Umm I couldn't find anything in my house to find prepositions so I used the scriptures." I kinda laughed and said that was ok. Then later as I was grading the homework I couldn't help but laugh out loud when I read her paper. Here is some of what she found:
1. Always abounding
2. In good works
3. May seal you
4. May have everlasting salvation
5. through Christ the Lord
I never would have thought I would see that in a classroom homework assignement!

The day after parent-teacher conference night I was telling the class how glad I was to see so many parents there and one boy raised his hand and said, "Sorry my parents couldn't come last night, they had to go to the temple!" I assured him that it was ok and we could reschedule.

Once every week I hand out an envelope of cut out letters to every student. Then I ask, "What 3 letter words can we make with these letters?" Then I list out the words they come up with. Then I ask for 4 letter words, 5 letter words and so on. When students can't find any other words I tell them to try and find the big word using all letters. Some of them are easy but others are hard. One time we were on 6 letter words and a boy raises his hand and said "We can spell 'mormon!'" I checked the letters and sure enough it worked so I added the word to our list.

Without fail, every party we have in our class the differnet moms who volenteer to help will say "Hi, I am Sister So-and-so, I mean Mrs. So-and-so!" I'm not kidding, without fail.

Also once a week, I give the class a topic such as tools, scientific words, outside jobs, etc and let the students have one minute to write down all the things that come to mind. Then we go around the room as list them. But if one students has something that another students has written down they have to cross it off. We are looking for words that are original and creative and students get rewarded if they come up with something that no one else has. So one week the category was jewelry. I told them to be as specific as possible. We got to one girl who said "CTR ring." It was definitly original and she was able to use it!

Just some of the funny LDS lingo that comes into the classroom!