Sunday, November 4, 2012

But Antartica's not a continent!

I recently taught my students about Antarctica for 2 days.  Our book said things like, "Antarctica is technically a desert, since it only snows 2 inches a year."

On the second day, I  noticed in one of my students homework books that they had written, "There are 6 continents on Earth." I made sure to remember that, so that when we got to the sentence in the book, "It's the 7th continent," I asked, "Do they teach in Korea that there are only 6 continents?" They said, "Yes, there are only 6 continents!" I had to explain, that for the purpose of the lesson, that in America they teach that there are 7 continents and Antarctica is a continent. They were a bit confused about why Antarctica was a continent, but the Arctic was not a continent. Luckily, the book explained that it's because the Arctic is just floating ice, but Antarctica is land.

They do teach that Pluto is not a planet.

Sometimes, the book doesn't quite explain and I don't have enough background knowledge in science to explain something, such was the case with the lesson I taught on wormholes. A student asked, "How would you come back through the wormhole?" I blundered through saying I wasn't sure if you could, but really had no idea if I was right.

Also, I just realized I've been spelling Antarctica wrong for years. Oops.

In the same class I taught about Antarctica, I taught a class on vomiting, where we learned words like "vomit," "nauseous" "vomit up quite a mess," and "chunky."

At the end of class, one of my students announced, "Ugh I feel queasy!" And I felt like I'd done my job properly. We all felt like we were going to vomit by the end.

Also, this happened in class, which was pretty funny.

Me: What does 'transparent' mean?
Student: A transformer's parent!

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