Terrific Times in Taiwan: Fire Chickens!

Since Thanksgiving is coming up, we devoted part of our class time this week to special Thanksgiving activities. Also, since Fulbright wanted photos of us co-teaching, I happen to have photo documentation of these activities for your enjoyment (photos by Jeffrey, the YMPS academic dean)!

First there was some 'splainin to do, being as Taiwanese children don't know much about Thanksgiving:

Me: "And what do Americans like to eat on Thanksgiving?" (hint hint, look at the giant picture behind me)
Students: "Chicken!"
Me: "No, but close..."
Students: "Huoji!"
Me: "Yes! How do you say that in English?"
The funny thing about turkey in Chinese is that the Chinese word for turkey, huoji, literally means "fire-chicken." There was always some smart kid in my class who knew the word "turkey," but I kind of prefer the literal translation myself.

Then we made hand turkeys! I showed them a paper one that I had made first, and then I demonstrated my hand turkey technique up on the board. Despite the fact that I had JUST shown them an actual completed hand turkey that I made, they were totally amazed when the hand-thing I was making on the board turned out to be a turkey. One class even applauded!

Then it was time for the kids to make their own hand turkeys. I was quite surprised by how meticulous they were about it! I mean, it took me about 5 seconds to trace my hand satisfactorily, but the students were very careful, and would erase and redo it if they thought their hand didn't look good enough.

Peter and Melody beginning their hand turkeys:

Side note: the boy on the left, Peter, has always been kind of a space cadet during class, and never seemed to understand what was going on. Then two weeks ago, he started coming to class wearing glasses. I asked him about it yesterday, and it turned out he is kind of blind without them. What was he doing before, I'd like to know! Perhaps these things are related in some way?

A lot of the kids were taking their time so much that they didn't quite finish their turkeys in class, which is a shame, because then I could have shown you the alien turkey or the turkey with mushrooms for wings. One girl came to visit our classroom after school, and examining my example turkey more carefully, asked Patty if in fact she hadn't been supposed to make all of the fingers into heads!

Although some kids made really crazy things, a lot of them modeled their turkeys pretty closely after my example turkey. Each student had to write "I am thankful for ____" above their hand turkey, and some of them just copied mine verbatim, which was silly because mine said "I am thankful for my students." One girl was just confused about what "students" meant, and after talking to her a little bit I helped her change it to say "I am thankful for my classmates." My other student Goofy (yes, that's his name, although he spells it "Gofy") was just being silly, and when I pointed out that he didn't have students, he changed it to this:

Thanks, Goofy.

A lot of the turkeys turned out pretty special, for various reasons:

Sometimes you just forget some of those middle letters.

It's a little hard to see, but if you look at the middle of the turkey, you will notice that this particular turkey is actually celebrating "Manksgiving," a lesser-known, more testosterone-fueled November holiday.