Bird flu

Today I worked on body parts with a CM2 class. After a sort of 'Simon says' game I told them that once we got through body parts we'd learn illnesses. The kids got really excited. "How do you say grippe aviaire in English?" one kid wanted to know.

"Bird flu," I told them, and wrote it on the blank chalkboard. They enthusiastically copied the phrase into their notebooks.

At this moment their teacher (who speaks English) and the other half of the class walked in. The first thing she saw was "bird flu" printed in big block letters alone on the chalkboard. "Bird flu!" she said, and just started to laugh.

I felt compelled to explain why I had written "bird flu" on the chalkboard, and to justify that it actually had to do with the day's lesson.

This of course got the second half of the class excited about learning diseases soon and -- after they had copied down "bird flu" in their notebooks -- they began asking me to translate all sorts of obscure illnesses into English.