Right... after a massive delay... the blog is BACK!
And we kick off this year with a competition. Merits available for the first three people to contact me with the correct answer to this question:
--
The word 'Shroff' is unique to Hong Kong and a few other nearby places. What does it mean, and what is the story of its origin?
--
Why do I ask? Well, for two reasons. #1 - every time I tell a class to do some 'research', for some reason this word gets magically transformed in everyone's minds and the class seem to think I said do some 'googling'. Guess what - Google won't help you on this one!!!! Mwa-ha-ha-ha! #2 - it's a fascinating example of why we should never just assume that there is one 'correct' form of the English language.
Good luck!
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Top Reads for Swine Flu Season
My poor, poor students. Due to the unexpected arrival of a pandemic, they are robbed of their final week of term, tests and teachers - what joy they are missing - and consigned instead to taking their summer holidays a week early. I do sympathise, I really do. :)
Anyway, if you're looking for something to read to pass the time in the absence of your super-exciting lessons, try Ian McEwan's 'The Cement Garden'. Now, I should point out that this book comes with an age warning - I'd say 16 upwards at least - because it contains some very adult themes. This recommendation is for the VI Form, therefore.
What's it about?
Group of kids stuck at home in their house (hence the link with swine flu) - under slightly strange circumstances - no parents around. I won't tell you how that's happened as it would spoil the story, but suffice it to say that the situation is far from 'normal'.
Who would enjoy it?
People who like dark, macabre storytelling and psychologically-driven narrative. You need to be able to deal with the darker side of human nature and what drives us as beings to access this text fully.
Who is the author?
Ian McEwan, from the UK, is probably one of the most widely-read and respected western novellists writing at the moment. A few of his novels have been turned into films - 'Enduring Love' and 'Atonement' are two examples. He tends to write about human nature and how we have aspects of our lives that drive us to do things we ourselves often don't understand. There is also something quite 'interdisciplinary' about his prose, as it were - in an average McEwan book you'll see an above-average number of references to quantum physics, maths, medicine, etc.
Let me know what you think! And if anyone has recommendations for the summer they'd like to share, hit the 'comment' button.
Best wishes for a great vacation! Mr Smith
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Le Pont Mirabeau
So I'm learning French. Or trying to. Actually I'm completely failing to learn French. BUT - I am giving it a go, and I've found a really cool podcast called 'Easy French Poetry' on iTunes (just search the iTunes store for 'french'). Highly recommended for IB French students, not least because it will back up what you're doing in Eng A1 - the speaker reads and dissects the poem and its vocabulary (my major issue) and then presents a line by line analysis. (The letters 'IOC' are forming in my imagination...)
Anyway, check it out - especially the episodes on Le Pont Mirabeau by Apollinaire. I'm now a fan of French lit.
Speaking of which, any other podcast recommendations? Feel free to post them as a comment.
Anyway, check it out - especially the episodes on Le Pont Mirabeau by Apollinaire. I'm now a fan of French lit.
Speaking of which, any other podcast recommendations? Feel free to post them as a comment.
Saturday, March 21, 2009
[MERITS AVAILABLE] Frequent grammar error - Mr S scratches his head wondering how this issue came about...
Okay, so one of the errors I see quite often from students when they're producing written work is the addition of 'had' where you don't actually need it, e.g.
He had left the cinema.
instead of
He left the cinema.
So this is the start of my investigation into why this is such a frequent error among students! There will be MERITS awarded to the first three Middle School Students who email me with a correct explanation of why "He left the cinema" is different from "He had left the cinema". If you can, you should also try to send me your explanation of why students at our school sometimes get the two confused.
Good luck! :)
He had left the cinema.
instead of
He left the cinema.
So this is the start of my investigation into why this is such a frequent error among students! There will be MERITS awarded to the first three Middle School Students who email me with a correct explanation of why "He left the cinema" is different from "He had left the cinema". If you can, you should also try to send me your explanation of why students at our school sometimes get the two confused.
Good luck! :)
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Funniest dentist-related video I've ever seen... my favourite part is, "Is this gonna be for ever???"
Why am I posting this? Well, one of my Yr 13s mentioned it this morning. We were discussing 'Long Day's Journey Into Night', a VERY good but VERY depressing play by an American guy called Eugene O'Neill. One of the characters (Mary) is addicted to a drug called morphine and spends most of the play being completely spaced out... and apparently this reminded my student of young David here.
Why is she spaced out? (Not the obvious answer - because she's on drugs - but more pertinently, why does O'Neill do this?) She is escaping from her reality. Her family love her but their love is not sufficient. She lives in a world she cannot control and she, and the rest of her family, seem to have no choice but to drown themselves in their own misery.
And if, after reading all that, you're completely depressed, then here is a joke to cheer you up.
Q: How many RS teachers does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: One... and yet three.
Comment if you know why that's (allegedly) funny.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Debate: To Quarantine or not to quarantine?
My Yr 9s had a cool debate in class today - we are studying 'I Am Legend' as a film study and during the film the whole of Manhattan (part of New York City) gets quarantined to stop a deadly virus spreading across the world. The whole thing reminded me of HK's SARS outbreak - so we debated whether it is right to force people into quarantine.
Is it a necessary step to protect the needs of the many? Or is it against human rights ever to imprison people that haven't done anything wrong?
Are you for or against the forced quarantine of virus sufferers in the event of an epidemic?
I'll post two 'witness statements' as a comment (they are fictional but the information contained in them is accurate) from people on both sides of the debate, and then feel free to add your thoughts to this discussion!
p.s. in class, the 'against quarantine' side definitely won... :)
Is it a necessary step to protect the needs of the many? Or is it against human rights ever to imprison people that haven't done anything wrong?
Are you for or against the forced quarantine of virus sufferers in the event of an epidemic?
I'll post two 'witness statements' as a comment (they are fictional but the information contained in them is accurate) from people on both sides of the debate, and then feel free to add your thoughts to this discussion!
p.s. in class, the 'against quarantine' side definitely won... :)
The Charge Of The Light Brigade
Okay, so the whole 'animated Tennyson' thing is a bit freaky... but the soundtrack is Tennyson actually reading his own poem, which is v. cool. Is that how you would have read this poem?
This is an ultra-famous poem about a battle in the Crimean War where, due to some generals making some awful decisions, a load of British soldiers rode into the wrong part of the battlefield and were blown to smithereens. (They were on horses and the enemy had cannon. That's like turning up in Iraq with a water pistol...)
I always ask myself:
- Why doesn't Tennyson spend longer criticising the generals' decision-making? Why does he just concentrate on the bravery of the soldiers?
- If the same type of event happened in a modern war, would the press and the media react in a similar, or different, way to Tennyson?
By the way... extra points for anyone who can guess the link between Alfred Lord Tennyson and Mr S's credit card...
This is an ultra-famous poem about a battle in the Crimean War where, due to some generals making some awful decisions, a load of British soldiers rode into the wrong part of the battlefield and were blown to smithereens. (They were on horses and the enemy had cannon. That's like turning up in Iraq with a water pistol...)
I always ask myself:
- Why doesn't Tennyson spend longer criticising the generals' decision-making? Why does he just concentrate on the bravery of the soldiers?
- If the same type of event happened in a modern war, would the press and the media react in a similar, or different, way to Tennyson?
By the way... extra points for anyone who can guess the link between Alfred Lord Tennyson and Mr S's credit card...
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Sutton Who?
One of my Yr 8 students is reading a modern version of a very old poem called Beowulf. It was written around 1600 years ago and is about this heroic guy called Beowulf who fights monsters and saves people. He's kind of like Batman, but with fewer gadgets. And he's Swedish. Anyway...
There's an archeological site called Sutton Hoo in the UK which is the burial site of an Anglo-Saxon lord. It's of particular relevance to Beowulf because... well, I won't spoil the ending. But suffice it to say that someone gets buried, and in a very similar way to the burial at Sutton Hoo.
The artwork uncovered at Sutton Hoo is amazing, and the whole place tells us a lot about how the Anglo-Saxons regarded death. Their society was based around ideas of honour and the importance of kingship and religion, and all of that comes to life at Sutton Hoo. Worth exploring if you're ever in the area...
There's an archeological site called Sutton Hoo in the UK which is the burial site of an Anglo-Saxon lord. It's of particular relevance to Beowulf because... well, I won't spoil the ending. But suffice it to say that someone gets buried, and in a very similar way to the burial at Sutton Hoo.
The artwork uncovered at Sutton Hoo is amazing, and the whole place tells us a lot about how the Anglo-Saxons regarded death. Their society was based around ideas of honour and the importance of kingship and religion, and all of that comes to life at Sutton Hoo. Worth exploring if you're ever in the area...
Monday, February 23, 2009
Meg Rosoff's 'How I Live Now'
Just read this book - really enjoyable. I found it hard to get into to start with, for two reasons:
1. The narrator speaks in enormous, unwieldy sentences that seem to go on forever - I found this tough to get used to.
2. The narrative voice is that of a teenager, with all the informality, slang and non-standard English that goes with it - so this reminded me too much of my marking.
I also thought for a second that the book was going to turn out to be a typical teenage love story or something, which is BORING. How wrong I was...
If you haven't read it already, I would definitely recommend it.
1. The narrator speaks in enormous, unwieldy sentences that seem to go on forever - I found this tough to get used to.
2. The narrative voice is that of a teenager, with all the informality, slang and non-standard English that goes with it - so this reminded me too much of my marking.
I also thought for a second that the book was going to turn out to be a typical teenage love story or something, which is BORING. How wrong I was...
If you haven't read it already, I would definitely recommend it.
Gender in Literature
My Yr 12s are studying three texts, all of which are obvious candidates for an essay on gender.
Firstly, what is gender? The OED defines it as:
"In mod. (esp. feminist) use, a euphemism for the sex of a human being, often intended to emphasize the social and cultural, as opposed to the biological, distinctions between the sexes."
In other words, sex is about whether you are biologically male or female, whereas gender is about all the social implications that arise from that distinction - and from the blurring of it where this occurs.
Two great books connected with this subject are Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson and The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer.
Firstly, what is gender? The OED defines it as:
"In mod. (esp. feminist) use, a euphemism for the sex of a human being, often intended to emphasize the social and cultural, as opposed to the biological, distinctions between the sexes."
In other words, sex is about whether you are biologically male or female, whereas gender is about all the social implications that arise from that distinction - and from the blurring of it where this occurs.
Two great books connected with this subject are Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson and The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer.
Poetry = Hard?
I have the following conversation on at least a fortnightly basis:
Mr S: So next lesson we're going to be studying a really great poem called-
Student: Oh no! Not poetry!
Mr S: You don't like poetry?
Student: No, I hate it.
Mr S: Why???
Student: Because it's so hard!
Why is it hard? I can think of a few good reasons:
1. Poets seem to like using long, obscure words that very few people outside of an Oxford college know without needing to use a dictionary, like 'perfidious'. And especially in short poems, there aren't many words to read so if you miss the meaning of one or two key ones, you're completely lost.
2. They also seem to like talking about ancient Greece - why not talk about somewhere else, like Poland, or Grimsby? I read this as a teenager and my instant reaction was, "What the heck is this about?". Actually, that's still my reaction.
3. They often put words in strange orders - I do appreciate the irony in the fact that if you guys put your verb at the end of the sentence you usually get red pen on your work, whereas if Shakespeare does it then that somehow makes it okay.
4. It's written by people who usually know lots of stuff about lots of things, but the rest of us mere mortals might well not know what they're going on about.
HOWEVER...
Not all poetry is hard.
---
This Is Just To Say
by William Carlos Williams*
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
---
I always imagine this poem as a note on a fridge door held up by a magnet (as a side point, check out what you can do with fridge magnets).
The reason it is so simple is because that's what the poet was trying to do - he was part of a movement called Imagism, where the whole point was to use some ultra simple image or thing as a starting point to explore poetry and the world of ideas.
What does it mean? Well, the question is, what does it mean to you?
It goes to show, though, that when they put their minds to it, poets can write poems that are simple yet effective!
*How cool is this guy's name?
Mr S: So next lesson we're going to be studying a really great poem called-
Student: Oh no! Not poetry!
Mr S: You don't like poetry?
Student: No, I hate it.
Mr S: Why???
Student: Because it's so hard!
Why is it hard? I can think of a few good reasons:
1. Poets seem to like using long, obscure words that very few people outside of an Oxford college know without needing to use a dictionary, like 'perfidious'. And especially in short poems, there aren't many words to read so if you miss the meaning of one or two key ones, you're completely lost.
2. They also seem to like talking about ancient Greece - why not talk about somewhere else, like Poland, or Grimsby? I read this as a teenager and my instant reaction was, "What the heck is this about?". Actually, that's still my reaction.
3. They often put words in strange orders - I do appreciate the irony in the fact that if you guys put your verb at the end of the sentence you usually get red pen on your work, whereas if Shakespeare does it then that somehow makes it okay.
4. It's written by people who usually know lots of stuff about lots of things, but the rest of us mere mortals might well not know what they're going on about.
HOWEVER...
Not all poetry is hard.
---
This Is Just To Say
by William Carlos Williams*
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
---
I always imagine this poem as a note on a fridge door held up by a magnet (as a side point, check out what you can do with fridge magnets).
The reason it is so simple is because that's what the poet was trying to do - he was part of a movement called Imagism, where the whole point was to use some ultra simple image or thing as a starting point to explore poetry and the world of ideas.
What does it mean? Well, the question is, what does it mean to you?
It goes to show, though, that when they put their minds to it, poets can write poems that are simple yet effective!
*How cool is this guy's name?
Welcome to my Blog!
"We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time."
Right, thought I'd start with a quote seeing as that strikes me as a very English Teacher-type thing to do when writing a blog. In fact, this is a very famous quote from a very famous poem by T. S. Eliot who was an American poet and one of my favourites. It also perfectly describes my aptitude for computers - in fact, I usually end up where I started, often because I press the 'back' key too many times.
Anyway - why am I writing a blog? Well, there are two main reasons. Firstly, our school is about to become a laptop school and it strikes me that a blog would be a great way to share things with my students that I don't otherwise get to share through lessons and other online resources - stuff like cool poems and reading recommendations, or just random thoughts on life, the universe and everything. Secondly, it's a chance for me to actually learn how to keep a blog and to use things like hyperlinks. Bear with me while I do so.
So if you're reading this you are presumable either one of my students or a random person who has stumbled on my blog - if so, you can find out more about my school here. The exact contents of this blog will probably evolve as I go along, but essentially:
- it is a professional tool rather than a personal blog
- it will be about teaching and learning in my subject area - English Literature and Language
- it will probably be very random...
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time."
Right, thought I'd start with a quote seeing as that strikes me as a very English Teacher-type thing to do when writing a blog. In fact, this is a very famous quote from a very famous poem by T. S. Eliot who was an American poet and one of my favourites. It also perfectly describes my aptitude for computers - in fact, I usually end up where I started, often because I press the 'back' key too many times.
Anyway - why am I writing a blog? Well, there are two main reasons. Firstly, our school is about to become a laptop school and it strikes me that a blog would be a great way to share things with my students that I don't otherwise get to share through lessons and other online resources - stuff like cool poems and reading recommendations, or just random thoughts on life, the universe and everything. Secondly, it's a chance for me to actually learn how to keep a blog and to use things like hyperlinks. Bear with me while I do so.
So if you're reading this you are presumable either one of my students or a random person who has stumbled on my blog - if so, you can find out more about my school here. The exact contents of this blog will probably evolve as I go along, but essentially:
- it is a professional tool rather than a personal blog
- it will be about teaching and learning in my subject area - English Literature and Language
- it will probably be very random...
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