Reflection: English Prac
The final assignment for our English unit was a reflection. I wasn’t sure whether to post it on here, but what is a blog for if not to reflect. “The relationship between a learner and a teacher is dependent on their level of shared knowledge but the level of learner engagement depends on the [...]
Shakespeare & Technology
This is another assignment from my final semester English class. There were two parts to this assignment. 1) Select one of the websites about Shakespeare from the e is for English page and discuss how it could be incorporated into an ‘Introduction to Shakespeare’s World’ unit. 2) Take one scene from a given selection and [...]
English: Poetry & Technology
The Task: Compile a Poetry Anthology of 10-12 poems for a year 11 class. at least 4 must be pre-20th century, and NONE can be from any of the poets in the HSC 2009-2012 prescriptions. a maximum of 1 set of lyrics or prose poem is allowed. cannot be the work of only one poet. [...]
War poetry
I have a couple of assignments in the works at the moment. Whilst working on my WW1 History assignment, I came across something that almost made me change my topic for my English Poetry assignment. The BBC UK website has two great animations to help students visualise war poetry – In Flanders Fields by John [...]
Books I love
Just a quickie to post about 2 books I’ve come across that I’ll definitely be dipping into for English classes. They’re both just a bit of fun, but can be used to scaffold some great activities. The first is Twitterature. I may have spoken about it before. I’ve had this one for a while, and [...]
English – Professional Issues
One of our assignments this semester was to look at this article, Analysis hits critical mass, from The Australian in 2007. The idea was to give us the opportunity to consider a professional issue and write a personal response to it. I recommend you read Edmundson’s piece before you read my response. Mark Edmundson’s opinion [...]
Plumpton High Babies
Today with year 11 we watched two episodes from the ABC series Plumpton High Babies as part of their Institution and the Individual unit. I’m not sure if the series can be purchased anywhere, but I wouldn’t be surprised if most Australian schools have a copy in their libraries. Anyway, this was the most engaged [...]
More Midsummer Night Dreams
Today I got to see the results from last lesson’s group work, where year 8 were modernising scenes from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. On the whole, I was really happy with what they came up with. One group in particular stood out, who had converted the text into what I like to call Clueless-speak. There [...]
Midsummer Night’s Dream
I was only planning on taking the year 11 class today, but then my master teacher asked if I wanted to do something with her year 8s. I’ve had a lesson with them before looking at the love tangle in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and in that lesson they’d asked to get the chance to [...]