woke up

last fri, JHii played pretend-sleeping the whole study time. drove Resh mad. i almost lost my cool even.

he'd drop his head, snore, blow his lips, relax his hands, but with his eyes wide open. no matter if we hold his hand to write, he'd not move a single hand muscle.

then on tues, we changed his study spot to a secluded corner. new place, new attitude. was following through the tasks nicely though with some mischievous behaviour in between which were still manageable.

until he started snoring again. refused to write 2 (we think he dislikes the activity immensely) even after i changed place with him, pretended that i don't know how to write 2 when he asked me to do it and i asked him in return to help me.

i was cornered. frustrated. on the verge of giving up.

then a bulb lit in my head. i pretended to sleep. the exact same thing he did last fri.

for a minute or so, he kept saying "woke up, woke up". you see, last week, there were a handful of times that he woke up from his "sleep" when we pretended that it was morning. and he said "woke up".

i kept on "sleeping", hoping that he would take the hint and write 2 to "wake me up". and when he didn't, i mumbled in my "sleep", saying "JHii write 2. JHii write 2 teacher woke up."

and he did.

i declared "woke up", put a stamp right next to the 2 he wrote, exclaiming excitedly that he did a nice job (which by the way he did).

and then i went back to "sleep" again.

and he wrote another 2.

and we repeat the whole thing again. complete with his self-correction on the ones with wrong strokes after i pointed it out to him once.

it was really tiring, though the whole thing probably lasted only 5 minutes. but it was also really fun and funny and enjoyable. very satisfying too.

one of the best teaching moments. and it's damn creative too, if i may say so myself. *wink