the Neptune smarties

I took these pictures of one of my kindy classes a few months ago and keep forgetting to post them. They're all 7 years old (6 western age), and only started speaking English in March, when I got them. They're by far the smartest students I have (save the fluent 15-year-old who learned English because his parents tricked him into going abroad with his uncle for a one-month vacation and didn't let him come home for 2 years). They speak in full sentences, are old enough to decipher and understand language subtleties, and some even experiment with the past tense, although we don't teach it to them directly.

You'll notice a name theme: Mary is in my other kindy class and my partner teacher (Monica -- just to complete the theme, you know) asked me not to name anybody Madeline or Matthew, because the students couldn't pronounce those names. So there's no Matt, but Joey works for Jo Bean.


Martha (left) and Meghan. Martha might be my favorite student of all 100 or so that I teach. I realized about a month ago that she writes with both hands, although her left is much messier than her right. When I asked her about it she seemed to say she switches whenever she feels like it. What kind of 6-year-old decides they want to be ambidextrous? What a cool kid. Meghan's really quiet and always surprises me when she answers everything perfectly.

Bonnie (top), Joey, and Susan. Bonnie's sort of out to lunch sometimes and while trying to be class clown misses out on really important lessons, like "Where is the ball?" The ball is under the chair. We're working on it. Joey reads like he's a native speaker (and he's so cute!). Susan is just really smart. Dude they're all just really smart.

Olive -- what a cutie, huh? It's too bad she's not actually smiling, because she's got the most adorable, shy smile I've ever seen. She used to be in my younger kindy class but they moved her up. A good idea, since she and Joey answer all questions so quickly and perfectly that I sometimes feel like the rest of the class doesn't actually know the answers, they just repeat what Joey and Olive say. She, like Joey, reads like a native speaker.

William. Again, what a cutie! He competes for first in my heart with Martha. My partner teacher, Monica, always tries to tell me he doesn't pay attention well, but so often when the rest of the class answers something wrong, he interjects with the right answer. I'm continually trying to convince her that he actually is very smart. Because he is.

Sally (right) and Heidi. Sally is the total anomaly of the class: she never pays attention, regularly falls half a page behind in our workbook despite the fact that we do each exercise as a class, and has trouble answering questions without a lot of help.

Heidi, on the other hand, is another story. She stutters a lot at the beginning of her sentences, but they're always perfect when she finally gets them out. The first time she really stood out was when I held up a picture of a purple diamond and asked "What color is it?" The class answered "It's a purple," so I stopped and reminded them that we just say "It's purple" without the "a". Heidi raised her hand and said "Teacher, I said 'It's purple'." I almost laughed I was so pleased. See? Speaking in the past tense and we don't even teach it.