I'm still going strong with my genius idea of printing out incomplete lyrics and having the kids listen to the song and fill in the gaps.
A couple weeks ago, I asked one of my classes if they wanted to do a Taylor Swift song. Reality check: Not everyone in Sweden has heard of TayTay. Weird. But they have heard of Michael Jackson, and asked if we could do something like "Thriller." I rejected this on the basis that it's probably the worst song in the world to have 7-year-old ESL students translate. The only words I remember in it are "nnnnnn THRILLER nnnnnn."
Being the flexible teacher that I am, I tried to think of another MJ song that had decipherable lyrics. I came up with Billy Jean. I had a mental image of something like this:
Billy Jean is not my _________
She's just a _____ who thinks that I am the ____ .
The ___ is not my _____.
This idea was quickly nixed; I wasn't enthused at the prospect of explaining "lover." Actually, I wasn't enthused at explaining anything about that song to my 7-year-olds, or their parents.
So: Taylor it was. We did Love Story, and I lucked out – the boys were absent. Olivia asked me if it was I who was singing the song, and I told her it wasn't. My classroom isn't always a den of lies.
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Amadeus has recently convinced me to join her in watching an extremely dramatic television show. I initially refused on the basis of not wanting to turn my mind into flubber (I'm a firm believer of guarding your mind – "Eat fat, greasy food, become a fat, greasy dude" – etc.), but I soon caved because television is our bonding time (sad?) and I'm weak (more sad?).
No, this isn't interesting blog fodder, except that I've become so wrapped in the drama that Amadeus and I discuss the characters like they're real people. And I've started dreaming about them. I'm mostly wondering what information in my brain was deleted to make room for the dramatic secrets, lies, plots, and character analysis that are now residing in my head. Oh well, I don't really drink, so maybe that cancels it out?
Could we please invent a way to organize mind information? I'm pretty sure the phsyics formulas I memorized in high school are ready to come out. They're only useful with the metric system anyways.
Speaking of; the U.S. has been trying and failing to convert to the metric system since '75. This cracks me up. They call the process "metrication." This also cracks me up. It reminds me of matriculation. Funny words with dull meanings.
