Happiness Journal 30/7/25

For the first time in my illustrious career, I have been assigned to the Science Department. I don’t even know how to set Science papers, but I guess that’s next year’s problem since all exam papers have been set this year.

I do feel a subtle shift in the way I teach English. Today, during Spelling, I wrote these two sentences on the board and challenged my P5 students to combine them.

Creativity takes a long time to germinate. Plant life takes a long time to germinate.

Notwithstanding the awkwardness in the sentences, they are effective for me to test whether students can come up with “Both creativity and plant life take a long time to germinate.”

Guess what? Half the class used “takes” instead of “take” in spite of me teaching them this rule yesterday. But it’s okay. Sensei’s mind is brimming with more English and Science examples like the above. 👆