SMART!

verb: to feel or cause to feel a sensation of heat or discomfort

noun: a sensation of physical discomfort occurring as the result of the disease or injury.

adjective:
1. mentally quick or original
2. being or in accordance with the current fashion
3. amusing or pleasing because of wit or originality
4. rude and disrespectful

also goes with
smart aleck: Noun: one who is obnoxiously self-assertive and arrogant.

smarten: verb: to improve in appearance, esp by refurbishing.

smarts: slang: the faculty of thinking, reasoning, and acquiring and applying knowledge.

Mr. Kirk was smart. He needed to make a good impression and thought he should smarten himself. He went to the store and bought a smart pair of pants. When he put them on, he fell down and bumped his head. It smarted. He told the sales clerk that his head smarted and that the pants were the cause of it. The sales clerk thought Mr. Kirk was being smart and threw him out of the store.

LEAVE

Verb: to go away, leave a room, depart
Noun: part of a plant, leaf to a table.
 

 I leave my home early for school and as I walk I see leaves on the trees covered in raindrops. I dream the rain will leave soon and the sun will shine.

I'm open to any corrections for simplification. 

Good Terri, and I'll use your example when I print up my flyers to handout to the teachers coming into my shop this summer.  Thanks for your help. 

I think teachers here in the U.S. could use the Interactive Learning Center as a class project come next fall. However, everyone on Isara can help, beginning right now!!   

Bow

1) We bow to the King. (Sounds like cow.)
2) We show our respect for the King.

1) We sat on the bow of the boat. (Sounds like cow.)
2) We sat on the very front of the boat.

1) We tie our shoes with a bow. (Sounds like no.)

Wow, ZeroG!  Those are all really great ideas, too!  I've only really been the primary teacher at the ILC for the last two classes.  The other times, I have been present in the class, assisted PK with words and sentences, allowed the students to get used to my presence and going around the room checking their papers as they were working on the day's assignments.  I'd really like to start next week's class on Monday with a theme for the week.  (I know I have not mentioned that before, but I just thought of it today...this is a work in progress, ya'll    )

If we build one lesson so that it connects in some way to the previous day's lesson, and we do that on a weekly basis, I think the lessons will stick better with them. 

For instance, next week, I was thinking we do a week on DIRECTIONS.  On Monday, we could go over directions on a map and how to get from one place to another.  On Wednesday, we could go over how recipes and products have directions.  And on Friday, they could choose one of those uses for the word direction and write up some of their own.  Directions for getting to the park, or to KFC, or their favorite place --OR-- they can give us directions for how to make their favorite dish, or even how to play a game they like.  I hope this will build on vocabulary they already know, and incorporate new concepts and words or phrases into it all. 

I can definitely use your word "bare" in the map directions. 

In today's lesson, I used KitKat's suggestion of "leave".  After I tried to come up with all the simple ways to conjugate the verb form of leave for past, present, and future I found there was not enough time to go over the other meaning, as in "leaves on a tree" to put it into practice.  But I am tucking it away for when we have a theme on nature.   

What I can take from today's lesson for Monday is the past tense form of "left".  It can also mean the direction left.

And a fun sentence to start off with might be:  The train left right on time.      Left, right, and on are all used for directions as well.  Yep, that should confuse them all.   

I think it was a good class tonight.  We had four or five new students.  Ploy, Aim, Dao, Poy (maybe there were only four).

So does any of this make sense to you all?  Does having a weekly theme work better as far as being able to come up with cohesive suggestions for a week's worth of classes (three classes)?  I'm not a teacher and I don't play one on tv, but I just get the feeling that if I show up and present completely new topics every single class without some way of interlocking with the last class, their retention will be very low.

Thoughts?

I think the theme weeks is a great idea! I'm excited you are dipping into the teaching waters!

Sean must be a truly gifted person to be able to teach the little ones... some days I felt like pulling what little hair i have left out of my head when teaching the kids... The adults are such an awesome class they soak up every word. 

 Try words like Present:
-We will present the present at the present time
or
-Presently the presenter presented the present to the president... (that one might throw them for a loop)
-Light: light color, light weight, a shining light, he had a light heart
those are some ideas for homonyms, the students found this difficult when I taught homonyms.

Also try practicing adjectives and adverbs
ie:
She wore a ______ dress. (pretty, blue, wrinkly)
It was a ___________ ride to the city. (bumpy, slow, long)

He ran ________. (quickly, slowly, differently)
They spoke _________ to the audience. (fluently, nervously, shakily)
to add a difficulty level to this have them describe the adjective they use or define it.

Try writing out a paragraph with no punctuation in it and have them put in the proper punctuation in it... also capitalization:

tommy was a little boy he always wanted a puppy tommys mother would not allow him to have a pet tommy felt very sad the pet store had kittens puppies bunnies and fish for sale tommy saw a black puppy in the store the puppy the puppy said bow wow tommy picked up the puppy the puppy peed on his shoe tommy did not want a puppy any more

so add the commas capitals periods and the quotation marks for the speech and what not... you can make up several stories or whatever.

I hope this helps Thartley.

   I so agree with this...If you had asked me in 2004 if I would ever go to Asia I would go Asia I would have told you..."probably not"
One day in 2005 I was working at a dead end job in a food processing plant wondering what I was going to do with my life and I talked to a friend a few weeks later who had been invited to work for a charity orphanage in India... I thought what better way to gain perspective than to go help those in need who can really use it... needless to say I didnt go to India because of unforseen circumstances, but I made a decision that day that I was just going to go help people... no one in my close family had ever been to asia and the idea kind of unnerved some of my relatives but I decided to stick to my guns... alot of research and a few travel books later I decided on Going to teach english in Thailand as it seemed like the most stable place in Southeast Asia.  I went and couldnt believe how wonderful the people are there... I have been to other "third world" countries where I felt like I had to be on guard and a little defensive but in Thailand I have never felt like anyone wanted to harm me.. my bike broke down in the middle of a poorly lit street late at night in Nongkhai and I cant say I was feeling great about the situation... a few thai people saw I was in trouble and helped me fix my bike and got me on my way, they seemed to only have my best interests at heart. From that point on I learned that most Thais are very gracious and kind. 
   Like Thartley says, Just decide you are going to help or just decide you are going to go volunteer at the ILC, PK is exceedingly bright and can find something for a person from any background to do.  If I hadnt just decided to go to Thailand I never would have met PK and I never would have returned in 2007/2008 to help PK and Isara.  You will have experiences that are beyond your wildest expectations that you will never forget.  You will form friendships and relationships with people over there that will last a lifetime.  I have friends from my time in thailand from many countries who I still communicate with regularly and whose friendship I will cherish for my entire life.
 "A wish changes nothing, a decision changes everything"  "All that is needed for evil to prosper is for good people to do nothing"
Theres my "rant"
So Thartley, I will try to think of some more stuff for you to teach...
Have you looked at the exercises and papers I left behind?  That material is all from a Teaching english as a second language course I took  a few years ago and there are some general outlines with basic lesson plans and ideas for different learning levels, all you have to do is look through it... its probably a mess but i hope it will help.

Here's some shots of thartley teaching one of the lessons recently suggested here in the Interactive Learning Center topic.



Thanks for the idea, KitKat!

The directions themed week was a hit, in my opinion anyway.  I learned how to get to the Bridge which is effectively Nong Khai's beach.  And i got there on my bike using the directions given to me by the students.  I also learned the basic process of starting and riding a motorbike.  And I learned how to make som tom, the regular way and also the way they make it in Laos.  I think the students enjoyed this lesson pretty much.  On Friday, they read their homework assignment of writing down how to operate a motorbike, and for every student who included "Put on your helmet" in the directions, they got a free som tom voucher for the restaurant next door.   

This week is kind of disorganized.  Monday, I taught them the concepts of Problems and Suggestions.  I was hoping to introduce the free thought process of identifying a problem and thinking of ways of their own to address or help fix it.  To get them started, I used an example of the problem: My daughter is homesick. What can I do to help her?  But I also let them come up with their own problems. However, it turns out they all wanted to help with the homesick problem.     Suggestions included looking at photos of family and friends, going to see a movie, going to the zoo, traveling more, and talking to friends on the phone.  All very good suggestions.

Then on Wednesday, we had a lesson on descriptions.  They could choose a person, a food, a pet, anything they wanted, and then describe that thing to me as thoroughly as possible using the five senses.  I told them if they chose to describe a person, it was okay to leave out "tastes like" haha!!!!  And that also went well.  One girl said her friend is soft and smells bad.  Very funny to the class.   

On Friday, I hope to have them identify one problem, maybe what they believe to be the biggest problem of the world and describe it to me.  How it makes them feel, or how this problem affects the world or people in it.  And then give me one suggestion to help fix the problem.  Maybe too much.  Maybe just a problem in Nong Khai, where they live.

Well, what a class there was tonight!  I didnt think we could possibly fit more people in that classroom the LAST time we were full, but I think this was the biggest class I've had.  I counted twenty students while they were working on their assignment.  There were four new students, named Om, Aw, Thaw, and Paa.  Of course my spelling is just atrocious on those names....I'm not completely sure I am even pronouncing them correctly, and I feel bad about that since I do expect them to pronounce things correctly in class.

With SO many students in class, I didnt think there would be time for them to come up with their own problem with description and suggestion for fixing it, so I went over Monday's topics briefly, then reminded them about what we talked about (descriptions) on Wed.  And then I added to the description concept by going over examples of how a person can feel in any given situation. (happy, sad, scared, shy, embarrassed, funny, etc)  And then I gave them a problem:

I am locked out of my house in my pajamas.  I feel ____________ and _____________ . 
I should _______________________________ to get back in my home.

They were initially confused because they didnt know what pajamas were.  I explained with PK's help and a few people laughed, the younger girls did.  PK later told me that it prob wasnt all that funny because Thai people frequently are outside in their sleeping clothes.       So I wondered if they were laughing at imagining ME locked outside in MY pajamas.   

Most of the "How I feel" answers were shy, scared, happy, sad, and funny.
And the suggestions were all over the place...climb through a window, bang the door down, go to the neighbor's house and call a carpenter, a policeman, a soldier, my mom or dad... one girl said I should just go back to sleep. 

doh!  Thanks!  I used that in the directions week and I honestly dont remember how I wrote it on the board.  I can look back in my notes, though.


Tonight, as it happens, we went over words that are spelled differently but pronounced the same.

no - know
see - sea
blue - blew
new - knew
hi - high
here - hear
be - bee

After making sure they understood each word, I wrote sentences on the board leaving a blank space for them to choose the right word to complete it.

Not very imaginative, but they came up with some good sentences.   

Terri, I'm at a loss for words right now.  You guys really have it tough.