Monday, January 25, 2010

Let's learn about Elephants

Today, I taught all the seventh graders about elephants in Thailand. I could not share about my experience fluently and fully but it was really exciting for me to tell my students about Thailand.

I showed them pictures of the babies, feeding time and bath time. They were surprised by what they ate. They really liked the photo of Kham Paan with corn stuck to her lip.

They had a mini true and false quiz on our dialogue. “Did Heidi Sensei ride an elephant?” “Did Heidi Sensei sleep with elephants?” and so forth. Then I talked to them about why elephants are endangered in Thailand. I told them they could help if they used MyHashi instead of the restaurant disposable chopsticks. Wild elephants don’t have much natural habitat left and Japan is the number one country of importing wood.

I also told them about the forced breeding programs in Thailand. This was very difficult to explain in simple English but Hato Sensei translated what I said. Yesterday, Hato Sensei was affected when I told her that elephants that were raped often killed the baby after birth. She chose a simple children’s song about the loving bond between the mother and the child for the students to translate.

Here is the song in Japanese. I will let my students translate this song for you. However, It was very hard for the seventh grade to translate. Most of them were able to do the first verse about elephants’ long trunks, but left the part on love without translation.

ぞうさん、 ぞうさん
お鼻が長いのね
そうよ
母さんも長いのよ

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ぞうさん、 ぞうさん
誰が好きなの
あのね
母さんが好きなのよ

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