Week 11

This week we had about the short story “Lullaby” by Leslie Marmon Silko and the novel “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian” written by Sherman Alexie. I feel like these texts are a bit to difficult to use for pupils in seventh grade. Maybe you have a few pupils who is a strong reader and has a good understanding of English that could find Alexie’s novel a great read. It is a fun book with a easy language. I think that pupils in some ways can relate to the some of the situations that the main character find himself in. Even though it is mainly about how to survive the teens and the life as “a part time Indian”.

Benedikte had her lesson this week. She had about words that are different in American English and British English but means the same. This was a well thought out and fun lesson. She had different activities where the pupils get to explore and play with the words. I got inspired to use many of her activities myself.

Malene’s “Voices in the park”, week 8

It was Malene’s turn to have a lesson. She used “Voices in the park” by Anthony Browne.

It strated with talking about what the pupils thought the book was about just by looking at its cover. After that it was a read-aloud from youtube. After the read-aloud she asked the pupils (us) if our assumptions was correct and if we understood what happened in the book. The last thing we did was to write a new part of the book. In the new part you had to pick a new character whom the story was told by. Someone was a cloud, others a dog, I was a statue. All of the new stories was to made into a new book for the classroom!

I would really want to use this task as an opener for creative writing. Here the pupils have a finished story, they only have to rewrite the narrative and what that follows. I think I would have used it in fourth grade.

– Lisa

Week 6

Todays lesson started with Inger-Lise and Vilde having their lessons for assignment 2.

Inger-Lise had about English-speaking countries. It was a good, diverese lesson with both video and pupils working together. Their task was to make an presentation about an English-speaking country of their choice. I think this was a great lesson and would use it myself, but help them along the way with giving them more concrete criterias for the presentation. Maybe made some questions for them to answer. How long should the presentation be? Use of pictures etc. I would also talk about what a good source of information is. What sources are reliable and not and giving them some examples on good internet sources.

Vilde’s lesson was about a picturebook ideas. It was a great book that opened up for philosophically discussions with the pupils. The book hade beautiful pictures and a story that was easy to follow. But i thought maybe that she should have taken some time to stop the story to explain words or talk about the pictures. She had great questions on her powerpoint to get the pupils to talk about the books meaning. But i thought there where to many of them. I really want this book and use it. Vilde made this lesson for 4th grade, but i would use this book on later grades to make them reflect on how that their ideas are worth listening to.

After the girls lessons we talked about Roald Dahl and how to use his litterature in class. I really enjoy his stories but I agree with what Lotta said that his language could be difficult for the pupils sometimes. This because i makes up words. He plays with the language and twist and mix the words to new words. In this case his litterature is great to use when talking about words and how you can be creative with it. But that is a lesson for maybe 7th grade or even higher when the pupils have a greater repertoire of English words.

The last thing we did was an exercise with Dahl’s “The Twits” where we worked in groups with different chapters where we read them out loud.