Rubrics...and...um..whatnot.

Yes, as you can probably tell from my oh-so-interesting Title, there hasn't been a whole lot of exciting goings ons around here.
I just finished typing my 35th theme rubric comment (for those of you who need a definition of "rubric" (and I did when I read my JacksonFive contract for the first time but now I like saying it - it sounds all official teacher-ish. Anyway, you can check out this groovy website: http://www.teach-nology.com/tutorials/teaching/rubrics/, which uses a lot of big words. Basically a rubric is an assessment of the skills the students learned in class. Like a test, only a lot fancier and harder on the teacher).
Mostly, I meet with the students one-on-one while all the other students watch a movie, and I ask the student questions based on the theme we learned that month. If they answer without any prompting from me, I check the "No Teacher Help" box. If they need a little prompting from me, I check the "Little Teacher Help" box. There's also a "Moderate Teacher Help" and "Must Have Teacher Help" boxes. Then after I figure out where to put all the little checks, I have to type a 4-5 sentence long comment about how the student did in the theme. It takes a lot of my time, especially since I have two afternoon classes now.
That's just the theme rubrics, which we do once a month. Once a semester, we also do general rubrics, which is an overall assessment of their speaking, listening, reading, and writing skills. It takes a lot of time to assess where each check should go for each student there's like a million little boxes to check. Blah. But at least I don't have to grade homework.
Anyway, I'm caught up for a month at least. Next month the theme rubrics and general rubrics are all due in the same week so I will have over 70 rubric papers and comments to write. That's...a LOT.
But I still like teaching, regardless of the millions of little dancing check marks that are currently floating before my eyes as a result of me staring at them for the past couple of hours.
I picked out my Christmas songs for the JacksonFive christmas program and I start teaching them tomorrow (oh happy! Christmas is starting!). The Dolphin class, year 1, will be singing "I'm the Happiest christmas Tree" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqnjGEg0PVo&feature=fvsr and "C-H-R-I-S-T-M-A-S": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0f7SE3zOtXE&p=FF5D74CE72FF8092&playnext=1&index=48
And Bumblebees will be singing: "One King" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OODyWYnkTl8 and "Beautiful Saviour" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCleEjxB-jI

In case you're interested in a sneak peek. And I will be teaching the Bumblebees sign language to both One King and Beautiful Saviour, which will be a lot of work, but both songs are BEAUTIFUL and will be absolutely amazing with the sign language. My co-worker Karen knows sign language so she's an invaluable resource when it comes to things like this. Actually sign language is quite fascination when you learn it. I'm intrigued.
anyhoo, as far as anything else goes, there's not been much else going, really. I'd like to report some adventures, but there haven't really been any. Samson is doing some mischief I hear in the corner so I'm going to go check it out. Hopefully my next post will be more adventurous and interesting. :)

Moon Festival, clean rooms, and (a) typhoon.

Yay! I finally figured out that if I load photos to Blogger in a backwards order than how I want them on my page, then I don't have to scoot them all around after they upload. I'm so brilliant, it's scary sometimes.
I have to give credit where credit is due, however, for these Kenting photos. As I previously mentioned in another post, I forgot my camera in Kenting, so I didn't get hardly any photos of my own. These are borrowed from my roomate Amy. You rock, Amy!
This is one I asked her to take specially for you, my blogging fans. Although my hair is askew and my legs are red as red can be, you can see I really, truly was in Kenting. HAHAHA, you know, in case there were any doubters out there.
The coastline was fantastic. It was a gorgeous scooter drive. And I don't usually say gorgeous. But it was.



Here's one of the beach from a cliffy sort of pullout on the road we were scootering on. Of course, as is usually the case, the real thing was much better than this photo portrays.












Here I am again, this time with a proper peace sign. Because, you know, I am in Taiwan. I can't forget to do a peace sign in my photos.
















Here's one of everybody, and we're all really tiny, but it was the one where everybody's hair looked the best. The wind was vicious (spelling?) up there.












As I mentioned before, one of the scooters broke down. We waited maybe 45 minutes to an hour to get it fixed in a scooter shop in a small nearby town. This is Autumn (my coworker at J5) and I waiting patiently. We are most patient. Mostly all I remember of this episode was the pain I was in already from my sunburnt legs.

I put him also on Facebook, but again here is my oddball kitten, Samson.

This was taken at a recent field trip to the Science Museum with the Bumblebees. The Science museum, as you may have noticed by now if you follow this blog, is a favorite place for field trips, not only for Jackson5, but most other schools and cram schools as well.

It's actually a great museum with very nice, well laid out and interested exhibits, with everything in both chinese and English. This one was about animal communication, which happens to be our theme for this month.

We are hanging out with this super cool peacock, who is, as one girl explained to me, "trying to call his girlfriend with his tail".

This is also how I explained the bullfrogs farther back in this exhibit, who were croaking loudly for mates. I told my kid Mason (there in the middle with the cheesy grin), that the bullfrog was trying to get a girlfriend by croaking. Mason said if he tried to get a girlfriend like that he would get slapped. (he acually didn't say it that way, but he acted it out and it was the same).

Well, you've probably heard news of the typhoon, ol' Mr. Fanapi (or just Fanapi..), who scooted through this weekend. He didn't hit Taichung too hard, actually much less than we expected, as he turned more south than we thought and mostly missed us. We got some wind and rain on Sunday morning, but nothing horrible. The south got a lot of rainfall and some flooding, but nothing like Morakot last year. So, yay!

We were sort of expecting a typhoon day on Monday, though, and didn't get one so all the J5 crew was a little bummed, but we'd rather have a safe typhoon than a terrible destructive one even if it means no typhoon days off of work.

Tomorrow's Moon Festival, and Jimmy explained the story behind moon Festival to me once...and I remember...something about a rabbit...sacrificing himself for a mouse..and an eagle..and then..going to the moon to live forever as a reward..or...something..like that. There's another story too but I forgot it. Anyway... what it DOES mean is a lot of food at work. The student's parents have been bringing SO MUCH stuff for the teachers, and it's a little overwhelming. Moon cakes and sun cakes (which are much better than moon cakes, I think), and cookies, and honey cake, and fruit. oh boy oh boy.

It also means barbecues! and I guess fireworks, unless those were for something else. I heard a lot of fireworks on my way home from work tonight.

We had a barbecue on Sunday, and it was nice but I think I ate something not quite cooked right because on Monday I had a stomach pain all day. Tonight when I went to take out the trash (tonight is..like..Moon festival Eve, I guess..since tomorrow is the holiday), there were about 7 different little barbecue gatherings going on in our courtyard. Families or friends were gathered around food-laden grills in different sections of the yard. I wish I could have taken a picture without looking...like a rude foreigner. Sausages, steak, chicken wings (and feet, and hearts, and..um. other parts), mushrooms, shrimp, corn, bamboo... soooo yummy.

I do miss grilled salmon though.

Um.. well, I suppose there were other things that I could blog about, but my hands are getting sleepy, and Samson is sneaking up on me like he does when he's ready to go in his corner. He tries so hard to sleep right next to me, but he's so loud when he purrs and after about 5 minutes he's so hot and I get annoyed. So I always let him sit there for about 2 minutes, then I pick him up and put him in his "corner" of the bed where he has his special blanket (it's a king sized bed so he practically has his own side). He tries about 5 more times to sneak up and sleep next to me, and I pick him up and plop him back in the corner and then he stays there and sleeps all through the night. He's a good cat.

Ok, well good night! Sorry I'm such a slacker at my blog. :( I'll try....