The picture for yesterday's lesson

I'm still waiting for Gašper to find an appropriate picture for his Indians post. For my post I believe a grammar picture is more appropriate. Hopefully it will help you ...

28 September 2011 / Irena Sonc Šlenc

Today's ninth grade third level class was about the use of Present Perfect Tense. I didn't want to dwell on to the explanations of the tense which we have already learned about last year, so I started the lesson by letting the students talk in pairs with help of the Pattern Practice section in the course book, pages 20 and 21.  I let them talk quite a while as I had to go around the class and listen to their dialogues. After about ten minutes I reminded the students of the Grammar time out section in the coursebook and I tried to emphasize point 4, which explains Present Perfect Continuous. I am not sure that everyone quiet followed at this point, but I will see the next time if there will be any problems with the homework (pages 18-25 in the workbook) or with grading.

After that I wanted to upgrade our topic from yesterday, in the sense that students compare their homework and discuss what they have found about the Native Americans on the Internet. The idea was that throughout this lesson everybody would learn something from a peer in the group and in the end the  groups would report to the rest of the class and teach everybody something interesting about the Native Americans. Some students found something, but my general impression was that most of them didn't make much effort at home. The speaking activity turned out to be no fun at all because pupils didn't have much to say so I interrupted it and I chose to provide a listening exercise instead.

We started listening to a Native American living in Oregon explaining what the relationship between young people and elders in Indian communities is like. Unfortunately the speech Sacred Children only becomes interesting in the second half, which we could not listen to in class because it's too long. If there are souls interested in it, here's the link.

A little reflection on my part: It's interesting how giving the students the freedom to chose what they do for homework (they could look up ANYTHING about the Natives), the freedom to answer their own questions (not mine), the freedom to develop their own curiosity does not motivate them any better than giving them dull drill exercises in the workbook. I guess student autonomy for entire classes is just a dream. A very small group of highly motivated students might be autonomous, i.e. they think about what, how and why they learn, and all such a group needs is a mentor-teacher to guide them through topics. However, a larger group will always have a couple of students who do not consider the time spent at school a privilege and hence do not focus on the learning. But this leads to a completely different story...

I promised a list of links about the Indians:

basic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Americans_in_the_United_States

many audio files: http://www.wisdomoftheelders.org

numerous stories: http://www.firstpeople.us

I have to run now. I'll add a picture later. 

See you soon.

27 September 2011 / Gašper Bokan

Today our english lesson was quite interesting. We were learning about old Americans. We were making our mind map on which we were writing questions about Old Indians.

I put these questions down:

1. Who were the Indians?

2. Where do they live?

3. What do they eat?

4. What do they smoke?

5. How do they live?

6. What do they belive in?

7. Why they were interupted?

I hope we will have a lot of this type of exercises, because we've larned a lot of really intresting things.

27 September 2011 / Rok Mohorič

Hi! I'm Rok Mohorič and I'll tell you what we did today in English lesson.
Today we were talking about the Indians. English teacher was showing us the images of Native Americans. Then she told us that she was taking these pictures herself.  And then we had to write five questions about the Native Americans. When we wrote the five questions, the teacher divided us into groups of four students. Then, each group had to choose one question and tell the teacher this question. The teacher was writing these questions on the blackboard. But then Blaž or Jaka or Rok was pulling from the wall the louver (zaščito proti
soncu). Then the teacher said that we must answer two questions from the blackboard for homework. And then Katja chose me to write what we did in English lesson today for blog. But I was very unhappy.

26 September 2011 / Jaka Seliškar

Today at the English class, we got back our school tests we were completing at Thursday last week. One student got a 5 and one got 1. After we got our tests back, we started to write a correction. At the end of the class Katja pulled one of the caps from the bag and picked a cap with my name written on it. Then the teacher asked me if I can write something about Indian people, because we're going to study about them tomorrow. So, here I am and writing about Indians.

Indians are basically people from India. But I think the teacher referred to Native Americans misnamed "Indians" by Cristopher Columbus when he arrived in the Caribbeans (he thought he arrived to India). When Columbus arrived to the New World, there were about 10 million Native Americans who moved from Siberia about 40.000 years ago. I hope we'll learn some more stuff about them tomorrow in the class.

I hope you're having a nice day and see you tomorrow!

26 September 2011 / Tia Hafner

Hello! Today we had a very relaxing and fun hour. We got the test results back. In the third level the results were good, because the worst score was three. Then we corrected our tests. We found that we have made the most errors in the fourth and seventh task. The fourth task asked that we create questions in form of a sentence about the accident. The seventh task needed that we fill out proper time in the sentences. I see that it is smart to do a correction of the tests because then I can see where I made my mistakes and I can learn from them so I cannot make them again. Those who were fast enough started work in the notebook at pages 45 and 46. Others were waiting for homework. At the end Ana pulled out the stopper and on it was my name. I wish you a nice afternoon! ;)

22 September 2011 / Katja Mrak

Today we were writing the test.
In the test was last year's substance. We wrote irregular verbs, all grammar substance, all tenses (past simple, present perfect,...), essay, reflexive pronouns (herself, itself,...) and the time expressions (already, yet, just, since,...) For essay we had to describe our dream holiday and compare it to the real holiday - the one you've just had. In the test we had to complete the text using a, an, some, any, one, ones, how many, how much, much and many - but we didn't have to use them all. We must be cerful about the use of tenses. The test wasn't too hard.

          
Have a nice evening!