Creative Ways to Thank Your Teacher (SC2009-09-28)
Part I (00:39 – 11:52)
[00:39] Welcome, everyone, to Studio Classroom Worldwide! My name is Steve. Well, Teacher’s
Day comes around once a year, and it actually falls on a different day depending where you are in the world. Here in Taiwan, Teacher’s Day is today, so before I go any further, I want to pause and say to all you teachers, “Thank you! Thank you for your efforts and contributions to your students and to society. We appreciate you.” Now in this portion of the lesson, we will see two Key Words. The first innumerable(adj), “Elvis Presley had innumerable hit songs in the ’50s and ’60s. Even
today, his CDs still sell many copies worldwide.”; the second word is bind(v), “Before he handed
in his thesis, Jim had it bound at the university print shop.” OK. Let’s talk about showing
appreciation to the teachers in your life. The reading starts on page 52.
[01:44] Text
[02:45] Hi, friends! I’m Esther. And I’m Rachel. And it’s Teacher’s Day. Have you done anything
for your teacher today? Now, maybe you are not in school, but maybe you have a child who is in school. And this is the day when children and students all over can show appreciation to the teachers in their life. Although, Esther, you don’t have to wait for a special day, do you? You can
show appreciation to your teacher anytime of the year. Right, any day of the year. And today we’ll be talking about some creative ways you can say “thank you” to your teacher. So something that
might be a little different from what you usually do. But hopefully you’ll gain some tips, and maybe next year you can show your teacher your appreciation in one of these creative ways. Very good. Well, let’s talk a little bit about teachers right now. We know that teachers spend
innumerable hours planning lessons, grading papers, and encouraging and challenging students. They spend innumerable hours, countless hours, it’s, in other words, it’s almost too many to count.
If you see that word, you, ah, numerable in there, it just refers to the word “number”. So
innumerable means a very, very big number. So many you can’t even count. So don’t let your
teacher’s work go unnoticed. Notice what your teacher’s doing, and say “thank you”. Well, this is
a great sentence. Let’s go to see what Liz has to say about this on Grammar on the Go.
[04:19] Grammar on the Go
Hi there, friends! Welcome to Grammar on the go! My name is Liz and I'm here at a local Studio Classroom bookstore. This place not only has a good selection of books, but it also has a lot of other great gift items like CDs, DVDs and stationary items, to name a few. Well, before I get in the way of other shoppers, let's take a look at today's Grammar Tip sentence. Don't let your teacher's
work go unnoticed.
Notice the phrase at the end of the sentence: “go unnoticed”, it's a simple way of saying to
continue on with no one paying any attention.
In other word, today's Grammar Tip sentence just means:
Don't let your teachers' work continue on with nobody showing any appreciation for it. Use this phrase “to go unnoticed” when you want to talk about how something is or was ignored.
For example, let's say you’ve noticed a serious problem in your community, but realized that no one is doing anything about it, you could say:
This is a serious problem; how could anyone let it go unnoticed?
Or, Vincent Van Gogh's paintings are now highly admired, and yet it's amazing to think that the artist had only sold one painting during his lifetime, so we can say:
It's hard to imagine that Vincent Van Gogh's paintings went almost unnoticed during his lifetime.
Well friends, that's all the time we have for today. I see that the…there’re some shoppers want to
come and look at things over here, so I’d better move out of their way. So this is Liz with
Grammar on the Go, signing off. Bye-bye!
[06:00] Thanks, Liz! So we’re going to teach you how to say “thank you” to your teachers in a creative way. We have three tips for you. And the first one is to create a book. Now these are a little bit more creative than just making, for example a homemade card. So again, we’re going to
give you some ideas you might need to spend some time on these ideas for your teacher, but I guarantee your teacher will appreciate your effort. And if you create a book, then you might need to work with your other classmates, because it would be very fun and everyone could have some input in this special book. So our text says, “Present your teacher with a one-of-a-kind book made
especially for him or her.” This is very different, very special and only you and your classmates
can give your teacher this book. It’s one-of-a-kind. And I like how everybody is working on this
together, in other words, each student in the class can create a page showing his or her thanks, and on that page they can draw a picture or write a poem or express gratitude through a letter. So it gives the students freedom to do what they want to do. Some students are great artists, they can draw beautiful pictures and other students might be great with words and they can write beautiful poems. And if you are a student, maybe you can be the one telling your classmates about this idea and it won’t cost you very much money, because you just have to draw something or take a picture or write a letter and it will get everyone involved. Exactly! This is a wonderful idea. So the point here is that you can express your gratitude or your thanks to your teacher through this book. And at the end, you can bind the pages at a copy shop. The word here is you can have the pages bound, and that just means that they are secured with the cover or you just put them all together and you have they’re all like in, in book form. That’s what it means to bind a book. Right, “bind” is the
present tense and “bound” is the past tense. So you can have all the pages bound inexpensively at
a copy shop. So it’s very inexpensive, it won’t cost you very much money, and you can go to a
copy shop, and this is where you can make photo copies and have books bound. Exactly, it’s very
easy to bind a book and to make your own book. So this is a great idea. I highly recommend it, even if you are a high school student, elementary school student, it doesn’t matter. You can make a
beautiful book for your teacher that shows your appreciation. Well, we have more ideas for you, but right now we are going to visit the Chat Room and take a break, so don’t go away.
[08:51] Chat Room
Ken: Hi, friends! Welcome to the Chat Room. I’m Ken. And Vickie is here today for a chat. Hi,
Vickie! Happy Teacher’s Day!
Vickie: Well, Happy Teacher’s Day to you too, Ken! You know, I noticed in our lesson that it’s
encouraging our readers to show appreciation to the teachers. I think that’s a good idea.
Ken: I think so too. But Vickie, one sentence in our lesson reads, “Don’t let your teacher’s work
go unnoticed.” I don’t get it, where is the teacher’s work going?
Vickie: Well, that’s a different definition of the word “go”. The teacher’s work is not going or
moving anywhere, “go” here means to come to be or continue to be in a certain condition. For
example, “You don’t want your baby boy to go hungry.” Or we might say, “Food may go bad if
you leave it outside too long.”
Ken: So can I say my hair has gone gray since my son was born?
Vickie: Well yes, you can say that. That’s the right usage, and by the way, the gray looks pretty good, Ken?
Ken: Thanks…go(v, come to be/continue to be)…e.g. go hungry… e.g. go bad… e.g. go bald…
e.g. go gray…So what other meaning of “go”? Do we need to be ware of?
Vickie: Well, I know your real name is Kenneth, but you go by Ken most of the time.
Ken: Right, people usually call me Ken.
Vickie: Mm, hmm. So in that sense “go” means to be called or be known as.
Ken: …go(v, be called/be known as)…e.g. He goes by Jimmy…e.g. William often goes by
bill…Anything else?
Vickie: Well, the other day, I ran into an old friend. When I first saw her, I go, “Martha!”, and then
she goes, “Vickie!”
Ken: OK. It sounds like you call each other’s names?
Vickie: Well, “go” in that sense means to say. This is mostly used when you’re speaking and
describing something that has happened.
Ken: I see…go(v, say/describe)…What about “no-go”? What does that mean?
Vickie: Well, that’s more of an informal expression that means no, impossible or certainly not. A
project can be a go or a no-go based on its success or readiness.
Ken: …no-go(n, informal, no/impossible/certainly not)…e.g. The trip is a no-go due to the bad
weather…
Vickie: OK, now let’s go for a break. Studio Classroom will be right back!
Part II (12:06 – 23:29)
[12:06] Welcome back from the break, everyone! Today is Teacher’s Day. Today’s date was
chosen to commemorate the birth of Confucius – the master educator of ancient China. Our
author’s first suggestion for showing appreciation to our teachers is to create a book. Our next creative way to show appreciation is to give your teacher a basket? Well, I don’t think it would be
an empty basket. We’ll find out what the author has in mind after we check in at the Word Bank, where we find the noun exception(n), “The special effects were the one exception to the
disappointing movie – they were great!”; next is the idiom make one’s day(idiom), as in “It made
my day when I learned that I had won a free trip to Hong Kong!” OK. Let’s resume our reading.
We’re now on line five of the left-hand column on page 53.
[13:06] Text
[14:22] Now before the break we talked about how you can create a book for your teacher, different people can all put their drawings and letters in this book. But now we have two more suggestions you can do, and the first thing you can do is you can surprise your teacher with a personalized gift basket. A personalized basket. That means you personalize it for your teacher or you make it personal for him or her, you put things in it that your teacher would especially enjoy. And everyone enjoys a surprise, right? Especially your teachers, I'm sure. They probably don't get
very many good surprises from their students. So they are no exception. Now Esther, what does this phrase mean if, if we say teachers are no exception to this. Well, if someone or something is an exception, it means they are very different from other people in that group. So all teachers like everyone, teachers all enjoy surprises, so teachers are no exception. So you can surprise them by putting together a basket of his or her favorite things. For example, if your teacher likes to read, then maybe different classmates can each buy a book and put it in this gift basket for your teacher. So the first thing you need to do is find out what your teacher enjoys. What are some of his or her favorite things? And then you can put those things in the gift basket. Again, if you they like to read, buy them some books or magazines, but if it’s sports that catch your teacher's eye, include tickets
to a sporting event in your teacher's basket with other sports-oriented gifts. Now we have a phrase here, if something catches your eye, what does that mean, Esther? I might say, “Wow! That really
caught my eye!” Right, if something catches your eye, it means it gets your attention. Maybe you're at the store and you want to buy something, and this new food item, it catches your eye, it gets your attention and you want to look at it and pay attention to it. That happens to me all the time actually, things catch my eye and I want to try it or to buy it. Well, if it’s sports that catch
your teacher's eye, in other words, if your teacher is really a sports fan, then get them some tickets or some sports-oriented gifts, sports-themed gifts, we might say, and anything that they would enjoy that has to do with sports, or what you can do is fill the basket with necessary classroom supplies like pens and paper clips. That sounds like more of a practical gift, doesn't it? Right. And if your teacher seems he’s very practical, they might enjoy this gift basket very much. So we have pictures of both sports things, gift basket and more practical gift of classroom supplies and also another one of books on page 53 for you to see. Exactly. They’re beautiful gift baskets. I
guarantee your teacher will love them. Another one I can think of is you could make a gift basket and put in some snacks and some, maybe some candy and some, some tea or some coffee and if your teacher really likes to eat or to try new things, that would be another fun gift basket. And Esther, we, I also think that students could do this together, right, not one student having to buy everything, but maybe each student could contribute one thing to the gift basket. Right. Because we were talking about how it might be kind of expensive for one person to purchase everything. So if you have 30 students in your class, then you should buy something small or maybe two or three students could buy a book together instead of having one person buy everything. Yes, that's
a great idea. When you work together you can always come up with more as well. Well, our third idea for you very quickly here is that you can plan an event, you can organize a fun after-school event in honor of your teacher, so an event that would take place after school, not during the school day. And who could you invite to join this event? You can invite other students, parents, and administrators. And administrators are people in the school office who work with administration like the secretary, or the vice principal and they can come together for a time of games and eating refreshments or snacks. Ah, so that sounds like fun. You could plan an event to say “thank you”, but however, you decide to say “thanks”, it will make your teacher's day. So let's
end on this idiom. If you make someone's day, then you give them a great day and you, they feel very appreciated and they're so thankful that you took the time to do something special for them. Let's watch today's Skit.
[19:14] Skit
- Hooray! Teacher's Day is finally here.
- I know. Our teacher spends innumerable hours doing things for us.
- That's right. And her work has not gone unnoticed. - No. Today we will say "thank you" in a creative way. - Yes. We will present her with this one-of-a-kind book. - Mm, hmm. It's especially for her. We'll do pictures and wrote poems in it. - Yes. And we bound the pages together. It will take her a long time to read it. - Mm, hmm. Oh, and look, we put together a basket of all her favorite things. - Books, magazines.
- Money, toys.
- Yeah. It will take her a long time to look at all these things. - I know. Oh, and we also planned a big event.
- Yes. We're having a class party.
- Ha…I'm sure it will make her day.
- We will have games and singing and snacks.
- It's going to be fun. And it's going to take all afternoon. - I know. Today is a busy day, full of surprises.
- Mm, hmm. I guest we won't have time to do our class work. - I know. That's the idea! Ha...
- Ha…Yeah!
[20:56] Language Tips
(1) innumerable(adj); in-; numerable(adj)
e.g. When you're the owner of a business, you'll have to solve innumerable problem.
e.g. Innumerable fans' calls poured in to inquire about the singer's next concert. (2) bind(v); bound(pt, pp)
e.g. In the past, people used leather to bind books.
e.g. I found a beautifully bound journal in the attic.
(3) exception(n); except(prep)
e.g. Most women like fashion, but Hannah is the exception.
no exception
e.g. His books are always best sellers, and this one is no exception.
And time really flies. I’ll see you next time. Bye-bye!
[22:44] Thank you, Michelle! Well everyone, there’s still time to plan something special for your teacher. We hope you found our suggestions creative and helpful as you and maybe your
classmates with you make plans to show your teachers some appreciation. Friends, if you’re
looking for a fun English challenge, check out our Tidbits feature on page 43. There you’ll find
some supplementary information about some of the topics in this month’s magazine. Also send us a picture and a “hello” through our letters@studioclassroom.com address. We’d love to hear from
you. Please come back tomorrow as we Ask the Expert. Until then, have an exceptional day, friends! We’ll see you next time!