Oot and Aboot: A Canadian Wanderer

This week I've been doing station activities with my students where they rotate through 4 different stations during thier class. There is a listening exercise, a speaking exercise, a vocabulary development exercise and finally a writing exercise which is supposed to bring all the skills together. In the last station, I instructed the students to put their finished writing in an envelope so that it could be corrected and I could write some feedabck on it. This seemed like a brilliant idea to me, until I looked at the stack of papers on my desk and rememebered I have approximately 780 students. Right.

My hopes of creating personlized comments on their papers quickly progressed into a marking scheme of smiley face, ambivalent face, sad face (I wish I knew how to insert emoticons for a full demonstration).

Out of all 780 papers, only one stood out from the group. His wriitng is so messy, I can't make out his name, but this is what he wrote (the unit we are covering is on recognizing acquaintances from the past):

A: Excuse me, but aren't you Tae-Hyun?
B: Yes, I am. Do I know you?
A: I'm Ted. We went to the same college.
B: Now I rememeber! Hi, Ted. You haven't changed at all. How have you been?
A: Well, I'm unemployed. How about you?
B: I'm doing okay, I'm a slave of the mafia.
A: Are you okay? I think that it's very dangerous!
B: I'm okay. I just get broken bones and then go to the hospital.
A: Oh. I'm sorry to hear that.

This kid got a smiley face.

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