I'm truly thankful for these moments. Yesterday it came to me … I can no longer ignore zombies.
I teach a couple intervention groups of English Language Learners; thinking I had more knowledge about English and thus could stay on top of the content of my assignment. Really. After all, I've been teaching ELLs for 3 decades. My entire teaching career.
The students in my groups are lower than the average ELLs at my school, in which 90+% of our student population are eligible for "English as a Second Language" (ESL) services. I have some pretty good tools for sheltering instruction so they can access the curriculum when I send them back to their regular classroom.
For example, when I was dismantling my vegetable garden a few weeks ago, I discovered a caterpillar on the broccoli plant leaves. My first thought was I can take this fellow to school so my students can really experience the life cycle first hand! Thus it has been a fun time of getting reluctant speakers of English engaged in lively conversations and writing tasks.Yesterday we read a book, entitled (something like…) "What do Plants and Animals Need?" Great photographs that show the meaning of the text; not too wordy, but informative information. After the read aloud, we chatted about each page focusing on what animals and plants were on each page and what we could learn about their habitat from the photos. Then brought the discussion back to the title's question. So … what do plants need? Water, sun, and dirt. Then I thought I could enlighten the students with the fact that there are some plants that grow in water.
One of the students, I'll call him Einstein, declared that Water Lilies grow in water. Then he proceeded to spout off lots of other plant facts. "Wow. You know a lot about plants, 'Einstein'! Where did you learn all this?"
"From plants versus zombies."
"What? What did you say?"
Plants vs. Zombies
After Einstein and the others returned to their regular classroom, I sought out the Science Lady (aka STEM coordinator) in the building. She's young. Really on top of all things technological, as well as science, math, and engineering. She must know what Einstein was talking about.
I found her in the teacher's lounge.
"Have you ever heard of 'Plants vs. Zombies'?"
She chuckled and replied, "Hmm. I didn't take you for someone into that." Ha, ha. Me into Zombies. Yes, kind of surprising, isn't it?! I'm just trying to keep up with my students, I explained.
She thought it might be an app or a game.
Sure enough. This morning I searched the App store on my iPhone, and there it was. For free. Not that I installed it, but I'm thinking I will. Maybe later, after I go shopping at Sprouts for a small turkey. Then when the family comes over for Thanksgiving dinner, I can offer turkey and entertainment! Although, chances are that my nephew's 5 year old son, who will be coming for dinner is already acquainted with Plants vs Zombies. Maybe, just maybe his not-quite-two-month old sister hasn't seen it yet, though!!
