make a story

The kids here are very smart, but sometimes you really have to push them to go past the bare minimum in English class. I think this is because they pretty much memorize the (very boring) English book and don't get a chance to use the vocabulary they learn in novel ways. So, I did a warm-up activity today where I gave the kids 4 words and told them to write a story:

1. monkey
2. dance
3. violin
4. Zhong Xin Primary School (their school)

The first time around, almost every single kid gave me: "There was a monkey at Zhong Xin Primary School and he liked dancing and playing violin." I told them that one sentence was not a very good story, and they're like huh?! In all my classes though, there was always one kid on the first try that BAM whipped out a very creative little story, and then the other students saw what I was looking for.

By the end of it, I had some students coming up with like 3 or 4 stories with those 4 words, and some of them were just telling me them orally rather than writing them down. They were like dying to tell their story. I was very proud of them! My favorite was this one:

"A long, long time ago, Zhong Xin Primary School was a people school. Then, one day, some monkeys came to the school. There was a fight, monkeys vs. people. The people were very scared, so they ran away. Now the Zhong Xin Primary School is a monkey school. The monkeys dance and play violin all day. They are very happy."

Fantastic!