Welcome to America

I may have overdone it on this one. I'm big on spelling the word 'definitely' correctly, so much so that I had it not only framed on our classroom bookcase, I also set 'definitely' as part of every password that students need to access online class content. 

And it goes further from here.  Each September I ask students to draw out the word in big letters in their journals with FINITE as the root in one color and the prefix DE and the suffix LY in another color. I put it on spelling quizzes and in puzzles.  I randomly stop kids walking in the room and ask them to spell it. I just have a thing for spelling the word right.

Somebody definitely had enough of it all. Just like with the whirligig that appeared one day on the air vent, there appeared today, just as suddenly, new writing in the frame to replace the word 'definitely.'  It wasn't much of a whodunit as the writing is in Mandarin. 

"What does it say?" I asked my Mandarin-speaking ELL student.

"It says,'Welcome to America'." He added, "I already know how to spell 'definitely'."