The 11th-grade students in ETA Nicholas Navin’s English club often ask him to bring in snacks and food to club time. In trying to figure out a way for how snacks could somehow be incorporated into learning English during club, Nicholas found himself buying out all of the marshmallows at the local grocery store on one Wednesday night. The next day, the theme for the club was simply, “tall.” For this meeting, students competed to make towers out of just paper and tape, read a passage to learn about the Space Needle tower in Nicholas’ hometown, drew pictures of what they imagined the Space Needle might look like before seeing a picture of it, and to wrap up, built their own towers out of marshmallows and toothpicks. Everyone was excited at the prospect of being able to eat the marshmallows at the end, and they also got to stretch their construction skills by trying to figure out how to make the sticky and oddly shaped marshmallows stand as tall as possible, all while speaking as much English as they could! It was a fun and easy-going afternoon of creativity, English, and a sweet treat. Hopefully, snacks will make a return for everyone to enjoy and to help with learning English in a future club as well!

Nicholas Navin is currently teaching at MAN 1 Payakumbuh, West Sumatra.