We started the second installment (“session”) of our Winter Camps English classes yesterday. Now, instead of first and second graders, we have third and fourth graders. Sometimes these kids really surprise me with how smart they are.
I don’t know the fourth graders very well, but they have a reputation, as a group, of being the smartest cohort at Hongnong – especially the high-achievers who come to afterschool and vacation-time English classes. Anyway, the eight or so fourth graders and I were drawing pictures of “My Perfect School.” The kids were including a lot of humorous additions in their “perfect schools”: not only stores, restaurants and movie theaters (all to be expected), but also delightfully peculiar things, including graveyards, prisons, churches, saunas (meaning the ubiquitous Korean public bath-house type places, quite unlike anything in Western culture, being family gathering places), secret passages, subways, and more.
One boy had created something for his school called a “3D Room.” 3D movies are big here, these days, just as in the US. But I was surprised to see that next to his 3D Room, he’d also added a “4D Room.” I wondered if he understood what “3D” referred to, conceptually. I thought I’d give it a try.
I didn’t really try to teach the word “dimension” as a vocubulary item. I just explained, “front-back, 1; left-right, 2; up-down, 3.” I mimed the motions. “That’s 3D – one, two, three.” Then I mimed out, “left-right, 1; up-down, 2. That’s 2D. Like a television. Or a piece of paper.” I picked up a piece of paper. “Flat. Right?”
Then I asked, “So what’s 1D?” He quickly nodded, and mimed a left-right, motion, stretching out an invisible piece of string on his fingers. He definitely understood. “That’s right, a line. 1D.” I pounced: “So what’s 4D? front-back, 1; left-right, 2; up-down, 3; what’s next?”
The boy’s face was blank. Gotcha, I thought. But then another boy, sitting next to him, blew me away. “Time, of course,” he said. It was one of those moments when you realize the language barrier obscures some very, very sharp intelligences.
Awesome.
The picture: des dumptrucks at dawn, du jour.
