Monster Mania!

For my fourth visit with Enci I decided that I wanted to focus more on specific vocabulary skills. I wanted to focus on adjectives. With Enci I have been noticing that he does not know certain words, so when he is trying to tell me something, answer a question, or describe something, he usually skips words. This makes his sentences very difficult to understand. Additionally, if he finds it too hard to come up with words to describe something, he just stops and does not try. I know that Enci is a very smart boy, and he has a lot of knowledge about things; however, he needs to skills and the tools just like Lisa Delpit points out in her book. He needs words to help fill in the silences.

Well, this got me thinking. I asked for opinions from some of my friends and colleagues and then it came to me. There was a game we would play on mission's trips with the orphanage kids. It helped with their specific English skills. The game is focused on parts of the face. It is set up with a ring that looks much like a racetrack, with individual spaces. Then, as I made the game, I cut out parts of the face to put in each space. I cut out eight different things: noses, ears, large round brown eyeballs, hair that sort of looked like wigs (two female and one male), individual teeth, pairs of eyebrows, lips, and blue slanted eyes. Here is a couple pictures of the game completely made and set up.

I made sure to have a variety between the facial features on the board so that Enci could understand the variations between people and the importance of those differences. Next, I went around in order to every body part on the board with Enci and we said together what that part was. If he had a little bit of trouble at first, I would hold up the part to either my face or his to give him a better understanding and connection to real life. He seemed to struggle a bit more with the words eyebrows, tooth, and nose. After we went around a couple times and had all the vocabulary down, I went through and explained the process of the game to Enci. I modeled it so that he would have a visual understanding and not solely be relying on my words, but here I am just going to explain it since you cannot see me.

For the game we started off with one dice. The first player would roll the dice and move that many spaces. Whatever space they landed on, they took the part that is in the space. Then, you roll two more times and continue this process. After collecting three body parts, the player takes any play dough in the middle of the board and forms a monster out of the three body parts and dough. Then, when the second player is done making their monster as well, the two players must describe their monsters. What is the monster's name? Why did you put the parts where you did? Is the monster a good or bad guy? What are the monster's special powers? Then, when we are both done describing our monsters, we BATTLE! Whose monster wins the fight wins the point. Then, the next round we did the same thing but added an extra dice. This helped with addition. We continued to add one dice every round we had time to play. Here is a picture of one of Enci's monsters, its name was a Chinese heroes name that I do not even want to attempt to spell.

The body parts Enci used to make his monster were the eyebrows, lips, Large round brown eye, and nose (he rolled four times on the first turn). His monster was amazing and obviously killed my almost instantly. Then ate it.

Another reason I decided to do this with Enci is because I realized he stays completely focused when working with his hands. He almost gets so quiet that he is silent. When Enci was making his first monster I asked him all sorts of questions about himself, his family, school, and other things and he would nod or say one word. I was getting a little frustrated with him and almost became authoritative like I thought I should in order to be respected, yet I found that it was not a matter of disrespect. Enci simply was focused on his task and giving it all of his mental energy. He politely asked me to not ask questions while he worked. He gave me a signal with motioning from his head to his hands and said I can't and then pointed to his mouth. It just showed me that in his world and culture, you cannot expect it to be similar to the way I work. So often in school we have children doing multiple things at once to make effective use of the time we have in the classroom; however, I wonder what it would be like if we took the time to pursue excellence in one area before moving on to the next. What would it be like to focus so completely on something that everything else around us fades? That's what Enci's world is like, and that's what I am finding to be true of his heritage as well.

Additionally, he told me he loves superheroes. He wears that same orange sweatshirt almost every time I have met with him. It has a picture of his favorite superhero on the front and he tells me all about the metal man in great detail. Enci also loves to battle and he enjoys competitions, typical boy. Yet there is more to it than that. I think that superheroes for Enci are his way of relating to people. When I first met him, he almost instantly gave me a strange nickname, Mrs. T. At first he would not tell me why, but then on this trip to see him, Enci told me it was my superhero name and that I was in a secret identity as teacher. He told me Enci was his secret identity (not necessarily in those words or with that vocabulary), and that his superhero name was something else too...in Chinese again. I think that superheroes are an escape for Enci and a way that he can not focus too much on what is going on around him. He is fantastic story-teller and has learned to adapt in the United States with his language barriers by acting out his stories. I am learning more and more about his culture everyday and ways in which I can relate to him and foster growth. It is such a blessing!

The cowboy hat is a way that I found to help with behavior management with Enci. I brought in the hat this time for him to wear if he focused and was respectful of me. It made sure he was on task and not climbing things anymore. It worked like a charm because when he was good, he got to play the role of a character. Next week, I told him I would try to bring in cars and maybe a pair of sunglasses. He seemed intrigued.