Bilingual

It happens at some point every year.  A kid starts speaking pig latin and then another kid joins in, and another, and another, and before long, most of the class has caught on.  I play along and will either join in a conversation or make an announcement to the class such as I did today.

"Lease-pay isten-lay o-tay irections-day," I began.  At least nine of the little darlings turned to me and gave me that 'is she crazy?' look.   Six or seven bilingual ones smiled as they mulled it over in their heads and figured it out.  And the final five or six didn't seem amused in the least.

"Wh-at?" began one boy.  "You're not making any sense!"  He seemed a bit distraught.  And for goodness sakes, I sure didn't want to upset him.  Or anyone else for that matter.

"It's just pig latin - a silly way of talking," I started to explain to him.  

"But it doesn't make sense," he argued back.  I could see tears welling up and I needed to think fast.

"It does when you understand how it's done," I smiled at him.  "Who wants to exp-" and before I could finish three little ones zipped over to his desk and were giving him the rules.  Several others joined in and I allowed them some precious class time to spread the word and soon the entire class was speaking in silly sentence pig latin. 

In computer lab today, I introduced my students to Kidblog.org a cool site where your kids can blog safely with one another and explore the word of blogging.  Since I am such a blogger this year, I thought it would be fun to let the kids give it a try.   They loved it and quickly figured out all the ins and outs of basic blogging.  We just played with it today, but I'll be using it for some more specific class assignments in the final weeks of school.  

Can you guess what one of the little cuties blogged about today?  

Yep.  That's right.  ig-pay, atin-lay.  The media may be different, but, just like when I was in school many, many years ago, some things never change.