Don't Fret, They'll Figure It Out

Sometime last year I stopped trying to get the 5/6th grade boys and girls to integrate during class. I realized, finally, that this a phase and there's no need for me to try to overcome it. In a few years, they'll like each other. It'll happen.

Same for elementary grammar and spelling. The kids are all happily exclaiming to me this weekend that they are cole (cold, they mean, because it's about 57F). I don't bother interrupting their willingness to speak English by correcting them. They've got the concept, they'll figure out the details later.

Here's something else I noticed in the window panes of the 3rd grade classroom:

[it's the year of the ox/cow]

Since there is little spacing in Japanese text (a nightmare for somebody trying to learn how to read it), the kids naturally leave out the spacing when writing with roman characters. Also, words can continue from one line to the next without a hyphen in Japanese. So why not English, too?