Focus on Haiti

During the last couple of weeks, we have all seen the pictures and heard the cries for help from Haiti. People have donated money and there seems to be a genuine wish to help the victims of the earthquake. But what will happen to the people of Haiti when the pictures from Port-au-Prince will not reach the front page of our newspapers and the headlines on TV? It is a fact that life goes on and that we tend to forget the things we are not exposed to day in and day out. There is still time, however, to put focus on this disaster in our classrooms, and on the New York Times Learning Network, you can find five ways to teach about Haiti right now. Have a look at these ideas and see if you can find 30 minutes to put focus on Haiti in the week to come!


Photo from nytimes.com

Bridget Jones's Diary

In 1996 Helen Fielding published her first novel about the "thirty-something career woman" Bridget Jones, and the book quickly became a bestseller among women. I remember that we all loved this novel, and that some of my friends even started writing e-mails in the style of Miss Jones. Quotes from the book were frequently used, and I guess we deep inside were all happy we were still "twenty-something" and not going to end up like Bridget Jones... Later on, the two films based on Fielding's novels have also come into my DVD collection, and I have seen them both numerous times. This morning while I was searching for a proper picture for my first blog post this year, I came across a reading guide for the novel from Penguin, and although I have never even considered using Bridget Jones's Diary in any of my classes, I must say I got some ideas from this reading guide. Perhaps it would be an idea to compare the novel to Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, or study the two Mr Darcy's? Perhaps my students would not like it, but I am sure I would...



Picture from workingtitlesfilms.com

5th of December

In primary school we had this picture book that we always brought out for Christmas. The book had all the typical Christmas words in it and also some short stories and legends, and I remember that we were quite eager to learn about Christmas and Christmas traditions in the UK. One of the stories I remember from this book is the legend about how the robin got its red breast, and up until this day I have thought that this story was originally from England. I was therefore quite surprised this morning when I realised the the story was written by the Swedish writer Selma Lagerlöf. Nevertheless, there are various versions of the story on the internet, and I still find the story to be very beautiful!

Picture from LucyLearns.com

2nd of December

Today's gift is Wham's classic "Last Christmas". Ever since I first heard this song it has been on my top ten list of Christmas songs. I have also brought this song and video to the classroom today and asked my students to translate the lyrics from English into Newnorwegian. In this way, I hope to make the students repeat Newnorwegian grammar and have a good laugh. When they have all finished I will ask the students to present their results and the class then has to decide on the best translation.

"English - the Language of Rock"

This week our students in the field of health and social services have started working on the topic "English - the Language of Rock". It is a fact, like it or not, that most Norwegian artists sing their songs in English rather than Norwegian, and one of the things I wanted the students to think about why this is so. It is quite obvious that artists in the whole of Scandinavia have to sing in English in order to reach out to a wider audience than just the other Scandinavians, but why do most Norwegian teenagers prefer listening to English texts rather than Norwegian?

When working on this topic, we want all of the students to prepare a presentation of a Scandinavian artist or group singing in English, and they are also going to present a song by the same artists. To prepare them for this mini-project, we have used the text "English - the Language of Rock" in the textbook "Tracks", and also some pre-reading activities dealing with English and music. You can read my entire lesson plan on this page. As you will see, I also included some grammar in the lesson plan, trying to make the students aware of the use of the definite and indefinite article.


Photo: "Guitar hero"

The extended name tag

It is time to get down to the nitty-gritty stuff and start thinking about teaching again. The students come back to school tomorrow, and the first classes are just around the corner. As an EFL teacher I strongly believe that one of the most important things we can do with the students, is to make them start speaking English as soon as possible. I know for sure that way too many students believe that their English is not good enough, and that speaking a foreign language in front of 29 other students is a nightmare. I was one of those students myself when I went to school. My English is still far from perfect, but I have realised that the only way in which I can improve it is by using the language as much as possible.

I would like to share an activity that I have used in my classes the last couple of years, an activity which usually makes all of the students say at least a few words during the first English class of upper secondary school. It is called (I think...) the "extended name tag" and is something I learned at a course in cooperative learning in Canada three years ago. It goes like this:

• Give all the students a sheet of paper and tell them to write their names.


• Give them instructions about what to draw in the four corners, like "your favorite city", "a place you would like to go if you could choose anywhere in the world", "your number one hobby", "a place you visited this summer", etc.


• When I have done this activity in class before, I have usually put the students pairs of two and asked them to present their name tags to their partner. The partner then has to remember what he/she is told, so that he/she can retell it either to a small group of students or to the rest of the class.

My experience is that most students like this activity. They can talk about things that are familiar to them, and, abracadabra, they have spoken English and learned something about at least one of their classmates at the same time.

Mississippi Burning

There is not much time for blogging these days; the much longed for summer vacation is just 21/2 weeks away, and there is so much to do before the end of term. It is almost time to start looking back at this school year and begin planning the next; I am really looking forward to making the reading lists for my courses next year, but I guess I have to wait at least one more week before I have the time to do so.

In this blog entry, however, I just want to write a couple of lines about one of my favorite films (I guess all the films I have mentioned here so far have been on my list of favorites...), Mississippi Burning from 1988. The first time I saw this movie I really did not want to believe that it is based on a true story. How can something like this happen in a country like the USA? Is it really possible that you cannot even trust the police?
I guess I have always been particularly interested in the US in the 1950's and 60's and in the Civil Rights Movement, and this is also a topic many of the students have some knowledge of, too. But reading about Rosa Parks, the March on Washington and Martin Luther King jr. hardly gives us enough information on what segregated USA was like. Perhaps this film does not give the true picture either, but in my opinion it is definitely worth watching when working on this period in American history. I have therefore listed some resources on the story under and hope they can be of some help when preparing how to use this film in the classroom.

• Mississippi murders revisited


• Mississippi burning trial account


• The "Mississippi Burning" Case


• On this day (from the BBC)
  

When different cultures meet

Last weekend, while I was preparing this week's teaching, I searched the internet for texts that could tell us something about the present day situation for young immigrants in the UK. I believe things must have changed since the early 70's when East is East is set, and I have realised that I simply do not know enough about the situation today. I cannot remember having heard about racial problems in the UK in the news lately, and I do not know too much about Britain's policy either. So, if someone has any good ideas, please enlighten me!

What I found, however, are many texts which illustrate the conflict between first and second generation immigrants, and I include a list of these under. What I fear when dealing with texts like these, is that they only focus on the negative aspects of growing up as part of two different cultures. Surely, there must be good examples of people, in Britain and elsewhere, who find that this is actually a positive thing too?

Texts:

• Brick Lane


• A Home from Home


• A Pair of Jeans


• My Son the Fanatic


• How I was taught to be a proper English schoolboy


• An immigrant story


• Generation conflicts in Asian families in Great Britain


• Born abraod

Photo: 'I have rised up by my university+books...'

Term papers, grammar, multiculturalism and a dog

Right now I feel panic and frustration lurking in every corner and corridor; there are so many things I should have done, and there simply is not enough time for it all. Tomorrow I will meet one of my groups for the last time before their term tests next week, and the main focus will be on the upcoming tests. This term test will be the last chance for the students to really show their skills when it comes to writing English papers, and I will therefore start this week's lesson by giving them time to browse through all the comments I have given them on their papers this year, and also time to dig into various grammar topics. I made this collection of task and activities on grammar last week, hoping that everyone would find some exercises that could help them improving their grammar. We started working on these exercises last week, and I hope that some saw that this could actually help them; many asked if I could explain a bit more, and some said that they finally understood why I corrected them when they wrote "everybody are doing their best." Most of the exercises in this lesson plan are taken either from the Tracks/Passage pages or from Exploring English. I find it useful that these pages explain the grammatical topics in Norwegian, and that the English terminology is listed at the same pages.

This week I have also planned to continue working on multicultural Britain. The film last week was a success, and this week it is time to look at some facts and figures concerning immigration to the UK and how multiculturalism affects the British society. As I have said before, I have had some problems finding up to date-information on the topic, but hopefully we will manage by the resources available. My idea is that the students are to work in groups of four preparing a presentation on multiculturalism, hoping that a group activity will keep most of them busy and forcing them to read some of the texts I have picked out for them.

Last stop on this week's agenda is The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Most of the students have managed to get hold of a copy of the novel, and it is time to start working on it. Knowing that reading is not the favourite occupation of many of the students, I believe it is necessary to give them time for reading at school, at least in the beginning. I suppose most of the students will find that reading the novel is not all that hard, and therefore I want them to do a close reading of at least parts of the book. My colleague Ann gave me the idea of letting the students pick out central paragraphs in the novel and then to explain their choice. I have therefore planned this rubric for them, and I will introduce it before they start reading so that they know what to put focus on. My colleagues Anne and Kjetil also suggested that we put focus on the characters and Anne has prepared this rubric in which the students have to fill in information and reflections on the various characters we meet in the novel.

My guess is that I have more than enough activities to fill the days this week, too, and that I have probably tried to squeeze too much into one day. My main goal, however, is to present activities that will engage my students in various way, and that they feel that they have actually done a good day's work by the end of class.


Photo: www.flickr.com/photos/62518311@N00/86907303

To blog or not to blog, that is the question!

Lately some people have asked me if I use blogs in my classes, and the answer is yes and no. I teach both Norwegian and English, and I use blogs in my Norwegian classes and my goal is to start using it in my English classes, too. I was first introduced to blogging by my colleague Ingunn Kjøl Wiig in January 2008, and we decided that we wanted to try it out with our students. The project was met with some scepticism, but we nevertheless got all our first year students to create their own blogs and to use them in the Norwegian classes for roughly five months. When analysing the response from the students, we saw that the majority of the students were positive to blogging, and that quite many liked blogging as a means of communication. We therefore decided to continue using blogs with the first year students this year. Most of the time I give my students various assignments on a blog called DigiTalt, and ask them to write their answers on their blogs, but I have also told them to write about things that interest them. Personally, I like this way of working. It gives the students a chance to write more freely than in the traditional papers, and I also believe I get to know them in a different way than through ordinary classroom activities.

Having used blogs in my teaching for about a year, I am now ready to start using it in my English classes, too, but I have put it on hold until the next school year. There is simply too much going on right now, and neither I nor the students have the capacity to start new projects at this time of the year. My colleague Ann S. Michaelsen, however, has had all the students in her English class use blogs this year, and I recommend you all to have a look at their pages (you find links to their blogs on Ann's page). If you consider using blogs with your students, I just want to say: give it a go! It is great fun!

Picture: Blogging Readiness

What is English?

We are surrounded by the English language. Everywhere we go we can see or hear English words, and if you know some English you can make yourself understood in any part of the world. As English teachers we know, however, that English has not always been a world language, and that there are several factors that can help explaining how English gained the position it has nowadays.

One of the competence aims for my students is to be able to "explain the main characteristics of the development of English from an Anglo-Saxon language to an international world language". Earlier this year we put focus on colonisation and how English became a world language. This week, however, our focus has been on how English developed from Old English into the language we know today. When preparing for this class, I came across this timeline on a BBC-page. This is quite informative, even if it takes some time clicking into all the different objects on each page, and I really like that it has some examples of how the various variants of English sounded like. I also used a page from Gyldendal's book, Experience while working on this topic in class (click "Global English" and then you will get to texts and activities). What I like with both of these pages is that they engage the students, and that they present the information in more than one way. I know that many of the students find it a bit uninteresting learning about how the English language has developed, and that some of them therefore do not read the information as carefully as I wish for. In order to make sure they heard it all once more, I gave them a lecture dealing with the same material that they had already read. In this lecture I have tried to make it quite simple and not give too many details, and I have also tried to give examples of central texts from various literary periods. I have published my power point presentation at SlideShare, and I have also posted in below for those who would like to have a look.

View more presentations from lkhogvold. (tags: language english)

At the end of the day I asked my students to do a "Find someone who...", in order to make them rehearse the material. "Find someone who..." is quite simple actually, and it engages the students and gives them some energy. What you do is that you prepare a sheet with questions like"Find someone who can tell you about the Celts", "Find someone who can name the cases in Old English", etc. The students then walk around in the classroom trying to find someone who can actually help out. The person who gives away the information has to sign the sheet, and the owner of the sheet then has to move on to find someone new who can answer the next question. When they have had all the questions signed, I usually spend some time going through the questions in class, and the idea here is that it is the one who has signed the paper who has to answer, not the one who owns the paper.

I will probably not spend a whole lot more time on the development of the English language this year, but I just want to include a couple of web pages which might be useful the next time I work on the topic. The first one is from EnglishClub.com and it gives the short-short version of the development. The second article is written by Philip Durkin, Principal etymologist at the Oxford English Dictionary, and here he has chosen five events that all participated in shaping the English Language.

I do not expect all of my students to give a detailed account of how English has developed from being an Anglo-Saxon language into being the language number one in the world today. My hope is, however, that the texts that they have worked with this week can give them a better understanding of what English really is.

Photo: Wikipedia

Discussion groups, "The Bottle Queen" and "Panache"

Some days ago I wrote about how I had worked with the topic Native Americans in my groups. The glogsters turned out to be quite a success, even if not all of the students had managed to save theirs properly, and most of them also liked Kinsella's story "The Bottle Queen". We read this story together in class and I also gave the students some study questions for homework. This week we have been talking about the story in groups of four. Since Christmas I have started using group discussions rather than going through a whole bunch of questions in class, and this works quite well. Most times I have given each of the groups some time for preparation, so that they can compare notes and start speaking English before the discussion. The feedback from the students is that they like these dicsussion groups, and for me it is a way of seeing, and indeed listening to everybody, not just those who generally have a lot to say. I have told the students that these discussions will influence their grade at the end of the semester, and I use a rubric like this when assessing them.

Having finished this week's discussions, we turned to another short story by William P. Kinsella's, "Panache". I had planned for the students to work on this story in groups and a roleplay was one of the activities. You find my plan for how to work on "Panache" here. Summing up the two short stories at the end of the day, many of the students suggested themes, topics and possible interpretations, and it seemed to me that they had also learned quite a few things about the social conditions of the Native Americans.

Photo: "Drops of spring"

Exploring English!

A while ago, I came across a book called Exploring English written by Magne Dypedahl and Hilde Hasselgård. Remembering Hilde Hasselgård as one of the greatest teachers I met at the university, I started reading the book, and I soon figured out that this was just what I had been looking for. This is a book in which the students can learn more about language and communication skills. I have also become an eager user of the Exploring English web page, where you can find exercises and tips on how to improve your skills. My students have liked working with these activities, and I believe some find it useful that there are short texts in Norwegian explaining the grammar. To me, this page has also come in handy when commenting on my students' papers; whenever I spot a particular problem at hand, I can give them the link to this page and they can read up on the topic. The idea is that this will save me a lot of discussions in the classroom. Am I the only one who has had questions like: "Why is this wrong? It sound natural and correct to me? What you have suggested is just odd, I think..."

You can read more about Exploring English here.

They all have Facebook accounts, but are they able to talk about it in English?

Just a short comment this time. I was just surfing the Internet and on my search for interesting ideas to bring back to the classroom next week, I came across a lesson plan on BBC World Service which is called "Facebook". "This is just what I need!"I thought, and it is. This is not an article which discourages people from joining social networking websites, quite the opposite actually, but here you find a short text to listen to and various vocabulary exercises and questions for discussion. I must admit that I have not taken the time to read through it all, but I do believe this is the kind of activity that can come in handy whenever you have 20-30 minutes to fill.

Native Americans, Glogsters and "The Bottle Queen"

New week, new topic. This week: Native Americans. I really needed some activities this week which would make the students work without me hanging over their shoulders. I had promised them discussions in smaller groups this week (more discussion on Obama's inaugural address), and I could therefore not be in the classroom with the others all day. My solution was to provide various sources on Native Americans and to ask each student to make a glogster on a topic related to Native Americans. Returning to the classroom after approximately one hour, I found all the students busy creating their own digital posters; they were eager to share ideas about how to make interesting posters with pictures, text and videos, and asked for more time because it was funny. Running out of time and wanting to spend some time on factual texts and literature, too, I have therefore asked them to finish their glogsters at home and to publish them on their blogs. If you want to have a look at some of the results, you can visit Henrik and Caroline's blogs.

Working on Native Americans, we have also used a couple of text which we found on the internet. "The end of the Native American way of life" is a text from the BBC pages and tells about how the US government defeated the Indians, whereas in "Native American Voices" you can read about indigenous peoples in all parts of America.

I find it useful to use short stories or extracts from novels when teaching the various topics. This time we plan to use two short stories by William P. Kinsella, "The Bottle Queen" and "Panache". In between parent-teacher meetings, correcting papers and fighting the flu, I have not managed to get around to all the details on how to use these stories yet. It probably will not be all that revolutionary anyway, but hopefully both stories will provide food for thought and discussions with the students. Time will show.

"Let it be told to the future world..."

Today our main focus in class has been on President Obama and his inaugural address. Obama has promised change, and during his two first days of presidency he sure has made it clear to the world that change will come to the US. I decided to show the entire speech to my students, and although they had some problems understanding all that Obama was saying, they still managed to come up with interesting responses to the speech. "It just gives me goosebumps," one of the girls said, and I totally agree. This man is powerful; he is eloquent and well-spoken; he brings vitality and life into American politics, and might be the man to get the US back on track.

When planning this lesson I found some useful resources online. The New York Times had ready-made lesson plans on the inauguration, and I decided to use some of the questions from their material. I also found an article which summed up the inaugural speech and gave some comments on the day. I guess this article can help some of the students understand the speech a little better. Two of my colleagues came up with more questions to Obama's speech and a list of difficult words and phrases. This all resulted in this google document which we gave to the students.

I must admit that I had serious doubts before presenting this lesson plan to my students. Many find politics to be boring and cannot understand why they have to learn about political life in other countries. My impression after class today is, however, that most of them actually found Obama's speech interesting and that they could see the importance of this historical moment.

Reading strategies

I guess we all apply various reading strategies as we read, whether the text is a factual one or just for entertainment. In school we should make the students aware of this and teach them various strategies they can use when reading new material. On Cappelen's web sites there is an 11-step approach that can be used when dealing with unknown factual texts. I have tried this reading strategy with my students a couple of times, and believe it is an all right approach to texts that are a bit complex. Some students do not see the benefit of this way of reading, of course, but sometimes I think they can be encouraged to try something new and different. Check it out; it is worth a try.

Photo: "Love read"

Maori, Aborigines and a hole in the wall

I guess many teachers have experienced that when we talk about cooperation and projects, we think of something completely different than our students do. Time and time again I have seen that in a group of four they quickly split the given assignment into four parts, and that each of the group members work more or less on his/her own finding the information required. Is this cooperation? In my opinion, it is not. Most of the time the students do not have a clue about what the other group members are talking about during their group presentations, and if one member is missing on the day of presentation, the remaining members are not able to fill in for the one absent.

Inspired by Dr. Sugata Mitra's project "Hole in the wall", my colleague Ingunn suggested that we allowed only one computer per group in a project on the Maori and the Aborigines. In this way the students were forced to cooperate, and the result was that what they presented to the others in class was known to all group members. Personally, I found this to be quite a success. Most of the groups worked well together, and there were many discussions in the classroom about which articles they should use, how they needed to structure their work when the access to computers was limited, etc. This project also made me aware of the fact that it is not necessary for all of the students to have their own computer in front of them all the time, and I try to keep this in mind when planning my teaching.

When planning this project we also decided that the time frame would be quite strict. It is my belief that we often tend to give the students too much time for group works and projects, and that the more time they have, the later they start working. We therefore said that they could only have approximately five hours for the preparations, and that they were to present their products at the end of the second day. Again this worked well; most of the groups (all teachers know that getting 100% of the students to work really hard all the time is impossible) started working at once, and the products were ready by deadline. It was actually quite impressing to see how much they had managed to get done in such a short time, and we had some very interesting and humorous presentations.

You can read Ingunn's reflections on this project here, where you also find some responses from the students. If you want to learn more about the project, have a look at this google document.