slow, dopey, and bright

two of the boys in my spelling group were not at school today. fortunately, the two loudest boys in the class (and in my group) were the ones who were absent. i was left with three - dopey, slow, and bright. this was a relatively easy task, seeing as i didn't have the two loudest ones around to worry about restraining. all of their words had accents - and i have no idea how to explain where the accent goes in terms little mexican boys could understand. i looked at the teacher's guide, and this week they are going over palabras agudas. where the stress is on the last sillable. however, the guide makes no distinction between the agudas that have accents, like montón, and those that don't, like señor. consequently, the boys just ended up guessing where to put the accents. on one particular word, slow looked over at his neighbor, dopey's, paper, and realized that he had put the accent over the wrong syllable. damnit! he said. realizing that english isn't his first language and he had no idea what he just said, i kindly explained to him that en inglés esa palabra que recién dijiste es una mala palabra, así que no la digas más! it's kind of funny (and also kind of sad) when they mistakenly use these words; funny because here is a sweet second grader talking like a trucker, and sad because he has most likely picked up these words from tv. i wish they'd learn new words from books.