WHAT'S IN A NAME?
Recently, I was working on sorting/classifying living and non-living things with my kids. I was using some illustrations/drawings that I would hold up, then name what was depicted on the card and have the students say the name after me. Then I'd ask them to tell me if it was living or non-living. At one point, I held up a card, looked at it and said "bear". I thought my students were looking at me kind of funny, like they didn't know what a bear was, so for added effect and clarification I made ELABORATE growling sounds and motions (if you know me, you can probably picture it) before waiting for my students to repeat.

It was at this point that one of my students (an ESL student at that) half-raised her hand and said, a bit confused and pointing at the picture, "Teacher, that's a cat". My helper and I looked at the card, then at each other and we all burst out laughing for a good minute or so (because apparently it was a cat) before I made some comment about how we can learn so much in school even if you're the teacher and moved on, this time correctly calling the cat by it's name!

So I figure, I need to be really careful that I don't mess up my ESL students by labelling things incorrectly! Sometimes I call things by the wrong name or use the incorrect word inadvertently in English but this time I really did think that was a bear. In my defense though, I must say that the cat looked a bit "bear-ish" ........ And before you go thinking I'm a nut, just take a look at this picture of Hello Kitty and tell me that she and her "bear" don't look alike.........I mean alike as in the same species.