My first class yesterday was four first graders. The reason why there are only four children in the class is because their English is so far above and beyond the abilities of the other first graders the other students can't keep up. We were looking at a conversation page in the book. At the bottom of the page are three mice. One is jumping rope. One is doing a handstand. The last rodent is dancing a jig. Even though their command of English is really advanced, I still like to keep reviewing the basics. We had already used the word "mice" to describe the group, but I wanted to make sure they remembered the singular form, since it's an irregular noun. Knowingly using bad grammar I asked, "what do you call one mice?"
The immediate response from all four students was, "jump rope!" After about five minutes of me giggling and trying different ways to approach the question without using the word mouse I eventually broke down and drew a chart on the board containing the singular and plural forms of different animals. The children then immediately knew what I was looking for and collectively exclaimed, "mouse!" They also realized why I was giggling and we all went on a laughing jag for another ten minutes repeating, "what do you call one mice...jump rope!".
The second wonderful thing happened while I was checking diaries. A student nicknamed Jenny is also in the advanced class for her grade (third grade). Jenny, wrote about a new classmate, {민석}. The classmate's name written in the new romanization is Minseok. However, in the old romanization, which is still heavily used in names, her new friend is Min-Suk and was spelled as Min-Suck by Jenny. As I leaned back in my chair doing the first reading of the entry the voice in my head said, "men suck", and I, of course, scared my co-workers with a sudden burst of laughter. I started to correct the entry, but stopped after I added the 's' to 'speak' in order to take a quick photo.
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