Oh, the drama! Shakespeare in 4 West

The boys in 4 West performed a bit of drama today as they read aloud and "reenacted" a scene from Shakespeare's play, Julius Caesar. After a bit of grumbling, the boys really got into it as they acted out the scene in which Caesar falls. Before acting they acted the scene, the boys read the scene aloud and we talked through the challenging language that Shakespeare used. We also discussed the elements of a play and compared them to the elements of a story. We focused on summarizing the play and using context to decipher words that were challenging. Once the boys understood what was happening, we selected roles and students "acted" out the reading. By the second take, they looked like professional actors.

I couldn't get them to break formation...

Getting into it a little more...or just plain tired of reading this scene for the third time.

Life Lessons

Sometimes what students need most cannot be found in a textbook or in a lesson plan. Today, my students didn't need a lesson in English, they wouldn't have been able to concentrate on analyzing a poem. Instead, what they needed most was just time to talk and to process the recent loss of one of their friends. I was surprised to hear about the recent death of a Form 4 student. I was terrified that if I brought it up in class my students wouldn't want to talk about it, or that I wouldn't know what to say to them, or that they would break down and I really wouldn't know what to do. When I asked the other teachers what they were saying to their students, they said that they weren't going to say anything, they were just going to go on with their lessons. Ignoring my student's loss and trying to teach an English lesson just didn't make any sense to me. So today, we spent time talking about how they were feeling as well as some healthy ways that they can process and deal with what has happened. I think that sometimes we separate school from real life, but there are times when the two meet and it then becomes more important to focus on life lessons rather than on textbook lessons.

Basketball Review!

In Form 1 West we spent the class reviewing for their test next week. I began with a review of all that we had covered in grammar. We went through their notes and their textbook and we talked about the different topics that students should study for the test. Since Form 1 students are still making that transition from a primary school to a secondary school. I spent more time reviewing with these students then I did with my older students. I went over different study strategies that they could try including recopying their notes that only cover the topics that will be on the test, creating a study guide, studying 15-20 minutes each night, studying with a friend, creating flash cards. We talked creating good study habits now, before they are in Form 4 and have to take the final test, the KCSE (Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education), the one that makes or breaks their chances of going on to university.

After lecturing them on study skills and reviewing topics that would appear on the test, students played a basketball review game. Students could take "free throw shots" worth one, two, or three points. I divided the class into two teams. Each team took turns having one student from each team select a sticky note and reading the questions to the team. If the team answered the question correctly they received the points, if not, the other team has the opportunity to answer the question and get the points. Teams take turns "shooting" and earning points all while reviewing things they need to know for their test.

The questions were on the back of the sticky notes. 

The more challenging the question, the more points the question was worth.

Grammar Jeopardy!

Today students were contestants in our class game of Jeopardy! After taking notes on the progressive and perfective aspect in the past, present, and future they put their knowledge to the test. I divided the class in to two teams. Teams took turns, as I called a student to come up to the our jeopardy board and select a post it note under our six different categories and read it to the class. Each sticky note had the point value on the front and on the back was a question about the type of aspect. Questions ranged from define progressive aspect in the future? How do you form the past perfective aspect? And rewrite the following sentence in the present progressive aspect.

The questions were on the back of the sticky notes

John selecting a question from the progressive present category.

The team would then decide the answer and it wouldn't count until the student who read the note answered the question (this was so that the team could openly discuss the question without fear of saying the wrong answer). If the team was right then they got the points that the question was worth. If the team was wrong, the other team got the chance to answer the question for the points.

Reading the question aloud to his team

Listening to the teams response before answering

Our grammar jeopardy game ended in a tie!

After the game, we did a review for next weeks test! With only this week and next left in the term I want to see how my students are doing, so I have decided to give all six of my classes a test. I have written up six different tests specific to the material covered in that class, printed them at a computer cafe, and made nearly 250 copies total! I think I'm more nervous than my students. The tests are more of a reflection of my teaching. I am dying to know how effective this new teaching style was for students. I must say that I am not a fan of tests. I prefer projects over tests any day, however with the amount of poverty and lack of supplies in the school, this seems like the only fair way to gather information on how much my students have learned from my teaching! I hope they all do well! Regardless, I will be posting class averages at the end of next week!

Forever Young...

Today in Form 4 West the senior boys put their skills to practice as they compared and contrasted the lyrics to the songs, "Forever Young" by Youth Group and "Forever Young" by Bob Dylan. Word travels quickly in a small school and Form 4 boys were asking for music during English. So, I wanted to also give them the chance to complete a Venn-diagram on their own, without any guidance since they had been introduced to this tool last week.

To begin the lesson, I copied the lyrics of both songs on the board and the students copied them into their exercise books. We went over the lyrics together and then students got to listen to both songs before separating into four groups and discussing similarities and differences. To help direct some discussion, I asked students to look at the message in both songs, the tone/mood of both, who was speaking and who was being addressed, and the impression that they got of the age of the singers.

Lyrics to Bob Dylan's "Forever Young"

Youth Group's version of "Forever Young"

For this activity, students were using their reading comprehension skills to analyze the songs before they could compare and contrast them. They were also getting independent practice a newly taught strategy/tool, the venn-diagram. Most importantly, students were using critical thinking skills as they discussed what they thought the tone/mood, message, etc. of the songs were. This was a challenge for most students because they are used to answering basic recall questions. I asked students to support all of their statements with direct evidence in lyrics from the songs.

One group hard at work analyzing both songs...

Intense discussion going on in the back...

Great ideas being discussed in the corner...

In the end, students agreed that the song by the band, Youth Group gave them the impression that it was sung by young people because it says "Let us stay forever young" meanwhile Bob Dylan is addressing the young saying "May you stay forever young." Students also agreed that the the first song seemed to have a more desperate tone of wanting to stay young and a fear of getting old, compared to Dylan's song which is simply saying I hope you can remain forever young. Students did a great job using Venn-diagrams in this lesson as well as supporting their statements of similarities and differences!

Egyptian Mummies in English!

In order for students to understand what they are reading, they must understand how different types of materials are organized. If students can identify these basic patterns in writing then they will better understand how they must read it in order to comprehend it. This concept is a concept that I have really been focusing on with Form 3 West. We have explored how stories are written by looking at the various story elements and we have looked at how a newspaper is organized, and today we looked at how an informative text, specifically an article, is organized. We discussed that topic that the article is written about is usually mentioned in the title of the article. Then there are main ideas about that topic, followed by supporting details. We organized all this discussion into a visual that looks like this…

Topic of Article

I.               Main Idea

a.     Supporting detail

b.     Supporting detail

c.      Supporting detail

II.             Main Idea

a.     Supporting detail

b.     Supporting detail

c.      Supporting detail

I must say that as a teacher with a concentration in social studies, it has been a long two months teaching English without mention of history. So I cannot describe my excitement when I discovered a tattered (and I mean tattered) national geographic magazine on one of the bookshelves at the home. The magazine was from October 1999, it was missing it’s cover along with many other pages, and there were some pictures and articles cut out. However, I was elated to find that the article on mummies was fully intact! Of all the topics in history and all the ancient civilizations, my absolute favorite topic is ancient Egypt and mummification. So you can only imagine how excited I was to present this to my students!!!  

There was the small problem of only a single copy of the article and to make copies for even half the class would have be quite costly. However, when I read very slowly, pronouncing everything very clearly, and stopping to check for understanding after two paragraphs, my students are able to understand what I say. This is not the most efficient or effective way of teaching, but it allows me to introduce them to reading materials that they otherwise would not see. When I asked students if they had ever heard about National Geographic Magazine before there wasn’t even one student who was familiar with the magazine.

For this lesson, I read the article aloud and asked students to take notes on what they recognized as the main ideas and the supporting materials. Then as a class, we organized the article into the main points and the supporting details! 

The start of our notes...

Although my students did not quite share the same level of excitement about mummies as me, I soon learned that that was because they had never studied mummies and they didn't even know what a mummy was! This I found shocking! However, today students learned what mummies were, how they were created, and that the 150 mummies unearthed in the Valley of the Mummies showed influence of the Greeks and Romans. According to the article the influence of the Greeks and Romans diluted the strict traditional practices of the Egyptians! Fascinating stuff going on in English!

Grammar games!

In Form 1 West today, students learned about possessive and reflexive pronouns! Students took notes on possessive pronouns being pronouns that show ownership of something to someone. Then we talked about reflexive pronouns being pronouns that refer back to the pronoun in the sentence. Students looked at a variety of sentences where they identified the possessive and reflexive pronouns, students selected the correct possessive and reflexive pronoun to complete the sentences, and students created sentences of their own. After all that practice, it was time to put their skills to the test with a game...

I wish that I could say that this lesson was my own idea, but I have to admit that I was inspired from a lesson online. I enjoy coming up with all my own lessons. Although this lesson was inspired from a lesson online, it was partially my own, because I was so excited about finding this idea online that I forgot to write the directions to the game down. When I was planning my lesson last night, I realized that I had no idea how to play the game, I only had a game board with a bunch of pictures of various items on it...

So, I invented my own game based on the game board I had sketched out. I divided the class in half and had each side select a student who would be the team speaker. The team would think of a sentence that included the item on the board and the pronoun that I gave to them to use. I would alternate between having students create a sentence using a possessive pronoun and a reflexive pronoun. The team speaker would get the sentence from the team and the first speaker to come up to the board and tell me their correct sentence would get a check mark on the square in their team color. At the end of the game we would add up the number of check marks per team.

The game board has e squares on it have that have the names of various things including hat, cat, dog, etc. 

I tell students to create a sentence using the object and a reflexive or possessive pronoun.  For example, create a sentence with a reflexive pronoun and dog. Students could respond, "He walked the dog all by himself". The first team speaker to tell me their sentence gets to check off the square with their team color's piece of chalk. Then we move on to the next square.

  

Although we didn't finish our game before the end of class, the green team was ahead by two points. I think both teams had fun learning about reflexive and progressive pronouns today!