As some of you may know (and I'm sure some do not), I have been enrolled for a while in the ESL Teaching Certificate program through Duke University. As part of the requirements for that program I have been doing practice teaching for the last few weeks at Durham Technical Community College (Durham Tech for you locals), working with a friend who is a paid teacher there. I have trouble thinking of many things which are more fun than classroom teaching.

Tonight in class we played the "alibi" game. Three students were the "criminals" and had to leave the room for a few minutes to get their stories straight. The basic outline of their story was already provided for them but they had to improvise the details. Then they came back into the class one at a time for interrogation. If the "policemen" (the rest of the class) could find 5 inconsistencies in their stories, then they would be found guilty. This was, by far, the most hilarious activity I've seen in a language classroom. It also fit well as a practice activity for making past tense verbs, which was what we had been woking on for a few weeks.