Ready to sing?

1..2..1, 2, 3, 4

"Dashing through Wuxi,

In a white Mercedes van,

With Christmas just around the corner, the task was left to five Jesie teachers to inform and entertain the fortunate students in three schools in Wuxi about Christmas. The lucky schools selected for this, Friday December 18th, 2015, JESIE Open day were: Wangzhuang Experimental Primary School, Xin'an Experimental Primary School, and No. 1 Girl's Middle School.  Since Jesie's teachers are nothing but consummate professionals, this day went off without a hitch and the result was a lot more well educated and grateful students. Jesie's teachers left these schools with nothing but smiles, high spirits, knowledge, and Christmas spirit in their wake. 

The first stop of the day was Wangzhuang Experiemental Primary School.  Amber and Graham brought their A game to two 5th grade classes.  Graham, dressed as Santa, entered his class with a sack of unknown objects in one hand and a guitar in the other.  The students were thrilled to be greeted by this sight, and were captivated immediately by his enthusiasm and Christmas cheer.  Without skipping a beat he introduced himself to the class, said "Merry Christmas!", and handed out paper.  He then drew a Christmas card on the board and began to sing "Jingle Bells" while writing the lyrics in the card.  Every time he got to the part of the song that goes, "Oh what fun it is to ride in a one horse open sleigh, HEY!" he kicked one leg out and brought the students' level of focus even higher.  Once all the lyrics were written to "Jingle Bells" and "Last Christmas", Graham revealed the secret contents of his Christmas sack.  Inside were enough balloons filled with rice for each student to have his/her own.  The rice within the balloons made them perfect percussion instruments to add a beat to his songs.  He then began to strum away at the guitar already slung over his shoulder, and belt out both songs in succession to the delight of his watchful students.  The students joined in the festive atmosphere by shaking the rice filled balloons and creating wonderful harmony.  The students then completed their cards and drew healthy looking Christmas trees to add a little extra Christmas cheer.

One floor beneath Graham's lesson, Amber was conducting her own lesson with another excited 5th grade class.  She began her lesson by introducing herself and then presenting some vital Christmas vocabulary to the students, including: Christmas tree, reindeer, sleigh, present, North Pole, and Santa.  Next, Amber filled their eyes and ears with the legend of Rudolph's rise from reindeer outcast to the linchpin of Santa's toy delivering operation.  In order to get the students up and out of their seats, she brought the Rudolph cut out, that had been lurking behind her on the board, to the center of attention and played "Pin the Nose on Rudolph".  She brought up a few students, asked them questions about Christmas and then blind folded them, handed them a magnetized red nose, and had them attempt to place it on Rudolph's snout. The results were very funny, as most students couldn't get the red nose to its proper place.  After a lot of laughs, Amber handed out paper and the students created beautiful Christmas cards for the person of their choice.  Both Wangzhuang Primary School students and teachers were impressed with the performance of Jesie's English teachers.

After lunch, Jesie's Christmas caravan made its way to Xin'an Experimental Primary School to the delight of two grade 6 classes. Both classes were over the moon to see foreign teachers enter their classes for the first time in their lives', as this school has never had a foreign teacher grace its halls. Tasked with giving these two classes their first taste of what it means to be taught by a foreign teacher, as well as, excite them about Christmas, were two natural teachers in William and Ethan. William began his class by asking the students "How are you?", telling them that he was feeling very happy, and then asking them if they knew the reason for his joy. The reason was, of course, because Christmas is coming and some Christmas vocabulary was then taught to the class. Words introduced included: Christmas tree, robin, snowflake, reindeer, holly, star, and angel.  William had some flashcards prepared, as well as, a huge green Christmas tree cutout that covered the board from top to bottom.  In order to make sure the new vocabulary wouldn't be soon forgotten, William employed some high energy flashcard games. William put his flashcards on the board and brought up two students to play a quick draw reaction game. He placed them in front of the flashcards and shouted out a word, whichever student touched the correct word first got to remain in the game. The loser had to go back to their seat and another challenger was brought up. After a few rounds, prizes were given out to the winners from a mystery box. The students were extremely excited by this game and a lot of laughter and cheering could be heard as the obvious sense of excitement was even infecting the observing gaze of their Chinese teacher. Following the flashcard game was an interesting presentation about the history of Christmas. William also touched on the most important lesson about Christmas, which is that of goodwill and kindness and he emphasized that it's the responsibility of each one of us to treat each other especially well around the holidays. To finish up the lesson, William had the students draw and cut out some of the Christmas objects taught in the beginning of class and place them on his huge Christmas tree. The class was left with a beautifully decorated Christmas tree and a ton of Christmas cheer.

In the classroom next door to William, Ethan was using his Texan charm to get his students extremely giddy about Christmas.  After having the students guess some facts about him as a way to introduce himself, Ethan used a PPT to introduce some important Christmas vocabulary.  After each word was introduced, he then drew his own rendition of each vocabulary word on a huge Christmas tree on the board.  He then played a game where the students needed to put their heads down and he removed one of the vocabulary words.  When given the command, "heads up" the students had to recognize which Christmas object was missing.  If the student had the correct response they were awarded with some tasty chocolate.  This game had the students jumping out of their seats in excitement.  Once Ethan was confident his class had absorbed the new vocabulary words, he split the class into teams and handed each team an activity sheet.  The students were tasked with categorizing the Christmas vocabulary into either people, food, thing, or tradition.   The team with the most correct words was giving more sweets to munch on.  The class was finished up with one final game.  Using the Christmas tree, and vocabulary words drawn on the board earlier in the class, Ethan had the students take turns launching wet tissue balls (snow balls) at the board.  If the students were able to accurately toss the wet tissue and hit one of the vocabulary words on the board they could challenge a student from the opposing team to correctly pronounce that vocabulary word.  Points were awarded for correct pronunciation. The students of Xin'an Experimental Primary School were certainly left with an extremely positive first impression of what it means to have a foreign teacher's class and were asking when William and Ethan would be returning.   

The last stop of the day was the No. 1 Girls Middle School, and the sole teacher responsible for bringing Christmas to them was Matthew.  In order to get the students to understand a little bit more about where Christmas comes from, as well as, why and who actually celebrates Christmas, Matthew used a PPT.  He warned the class that there would be a game following the PPT in which the previously taught facts would be required to earn points.  He then preceded to explain Christmas using some funny anecdotes and visuals to the frequent laughter of the students.  By sharing some of his memories of Christmas as a child, and what he once believed about Santa Claus, Matthew gave his students a better idea of what it feels like to be an American child on Christmas morning.   After the presentation, a Christmas trivia game pitted one side of the class against the other.  One girl from each team was brought to the front, and a Christmas question of varying difficulty was selected from the board.  Once the question was presented the girls had to signal that they knew the correct answer by picking up a soft toy on the table in front of them.  Whichever girl was quickest to pick up the soft toy was given the opportunity to answer the question.  If she was correct she was awarded points and returned to her seat the victor.  If she was incorrect her team lost points and it was up to her teammates to try their luck.  The game was a nail biter to the end and the class was filled with smiles and laughter when Matthew left the classroom. 

Christmas is a time for kindness and goodwill and that was clearly observable during this JESIE Open day.  Jesie's teachers showed the students of these three schools the kindness and goodwill that can be felt even among strangers, and how sharing knowledge, language, laughter, and sweets can make us all feel closer and more in touch with each other no matter where we are from.  Another successful JESIE Open day in the books, and hundreds of students with more knowledge and Christmas cheer are now living their lives in Wuxi, China.