I just released my LAST ESL class of the semester. Do I sound excited? Because I AM! Students come to school for a half-day tomorrow, and then we’re OUTTA HERE. Woah. That was a lot of capital letters.

Anyway, my third-grade English learners sang “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” which required a bit of vocabulary building: reindeer, shiny, glow, “call someone a name,” foggy, Christmas Eve, sleigh, glee, “go down in history.” Thanks god for YouTube because my iPod chose this exact moment to die, but I quickly found the song online.

We sang it several times before flipping over the lyrics page to do one of the silliest activities of the year: The Rudolph Mad Lib. I had retyped the song, leaving cleverly placed blanks. Previously, before they knew why they were doing it, they had chosen words in different categories and made a list. Today, they copied the words from their list into the song. Hilarity ensued and chaos reigned for awhile. Everyone had the opportunity to sing their song to the class.

My favorite was “Rudolph the red-nosed hippopotamus.” That had them rolling on the floor.

Another enlightening moment from this class was the discovery that most kids know the song in their home language. The Korean kids stood up and sang it exuberantly in Korean.

Best of all, I learned how to say “Rudolph” in Korean: Lutorpa. Isn’t that fantastic?