Reading Narratives

Found this neat piece of Narrative and spent 3-4 lessons around the text.
Exercises involved : reading and vocabulary, answering comprehension questions that included literal, inferencing and referential skills Plus getting students to think about the plot and planning the story using pictures.

Here's a screen shot:


Text is very rich in vocab.

students also made to think about the 6 main parts that make up this story (Planning)



See SPN21 materials on the side bar for full text and worksheet.

additional reading comprehension questions can be downloaded here.

Reading material sourced from abcteach.com

Updates!

From the English Department, a few announcements;

English Oratory competition is back again this year; mark this date 10th April 2010 open only to Year 7 and 8 students.

Drama Festival hosted by Chung Hwa Middle School July 6/7 2010 open to Year 7 & 8 students; Sign ups start Tuesday 16th February! Look out for the English Drama poster around the school grounds.

Picture pause

Coollzzzz stuff and other Poklen 101

Got this in the mailbox, shared by a student in year 8. It really is funny.

'Poklen' is a term commonly used to describe a group of young stereotypical teens in Brunei who are influenced with a bad taste in fashion, who are seemingly low educated and who speak and write aggravatingly. One of the reasons that describe a "poklen" is their hypocritical behaviour and high-ego. Mostly they try to act "cool" and independent among themselves and try to 'show-off' and imitate others and other sub-cultures from the western style.


This community has caused minor controversies among the teenagers in Brunei. "Poklen"s, who's collective age range from their adolescent years to late teens, are usually centralised in the Gadong area and derived from most areas along the Bandar area and (Kampong Ayer. They usually loiter around central businesses area and shopping centres (i.e The Mall,Yayasan Complex).


Poklens, who are basically males, are also considered as 'stalkers'. They normally hang-out in groups and flirt with attractive girls for their intention to impress them, but are misinterpreted by their immature attitude. They love to stalk girls on instant messenger programs and use the advantage to introduce themselves and propose to them instantly (to form a relationship) but without consideration. Most of the girls encountered would reject.


Distinguishing between Shufflers

Melbourne Shuffle(a dance) is one of the most notable interests among the youths in Brunei that transcends from other styles of dancing. They form shuffle crews and groups to compete each other publicly for self-interest but are not regarded as Poklens. Poklens do not associate to shufflers and are entirely different definition, but one's status can change if their behavior is perceived as a Poklen.

Use of Language

Poklens have established their own way of speaking, which is a combination of words and dialects to form a mixture of broken English and Village-Malay (Ghetto-Malay). They usually have a style of writing words that are found to be extremely annoying to others. That is because they exaggeratedly type in words that constitute a sentence of misspellings, mixed capitilisations and short letters with an expression of an "X" or a "Z" at the end of each word.

Example of Words/Expressions:

1. AhaKz
2. MuAHaX
3. HeKz,HeKz
4. APaKnZ
5. bHaPazx
6. C0oLzZZzz
7. hYEz
8. OitZzZ
9. cHuPPy2z (Capi-capi)
10. MiHeRzZ
11. LeFuckZz (Lepak)

Example of a sentence written by a typical Poklen:

"Uitzzz. U aDa BoyPren Udhz?? mE aLuM pLangZ aDa GF Ni, AhAkz. BuLeh beKenaLanZ?".
- "Oi, do you have a boyfriend? I haven't got a GF. Can we introduce ourselves?" -(English Translation)


Origin of the Term

The Term 'Poklen' came from the word 'Portland' from the early days. Portland is a town or city in UK and are known to have a very bad football team. So in a way they were branded as losers. So as people in Brunei prefer to support Manchester United or Liverpool, people began to insult others in reference to the losing team. The term has consequently evolved to define the teenagers that resides in Kampong Ayer that likes to wear inappropriate and mismatched clothes.

Mind your language

This DVD collection (limited edition) arrived from ebay!

Contains 4 DVDs, 26 episodes each with 2 parts.
Each part runs at about 20 minutes, which serves as a nice class filler :)

Jolly good!

Picture pause

Tell me and I will forget,
Show me and I will learn,
Involve me and I will understand
Teton Lakota (Indian saying)

Try try try

On my way to work a few mornings back, i had my new CD on and heard this:



Thought the lyrics were awesome and decided to check on the full lyrics and see if it was do-able for a 20 minute lesson.

T-R-Y
Oh baby we can fight like dogs we can fight like cats
a dirty laundry needs a laundry man
maybe the king and the queen should lay off the caffeine
baby breathe before you react

sometimes we do forget to behave
and we regret what we say
cause words are weapons
if we don't choose'em carefully
ladies and gentlemen this is instrumental
if life's to be a bed of roses

i know i gave you everything you like
because you still give me butterflies

if we just try try try
just to be ni-ni-nice
then the world would be a better place for you and I
if we just live our lives
putting our differences aside
oh that would be so beautiful to me

Are we just dangling in the middle of a galaxy
Well i'm stoked on gravity

To be stuck with you like flowers on the dew drops
Now let it in my direction
My direction is up when everybody's down
cause i don't mind being anybody's clown
I love a little lift cause i'm an optimistic

In an altruistic way

Cause basically this place is needing instruments of harmony
Spreading my philosophy of love and inspiration
Oh these words I speak I commit to like a crime
with a rhythm i deliver i'm giving them a picture
of the reasons why

well it wouldn't cost a penny but could save so many lonely lives
from teary eyes
if we just try try try
to open up a can of understanding open up your heart
i'm just planting seeds
cause i believe

had this for my form 3 and year 8 kids down at the Language Lab. The older kids appreciated the song and lyrics more i must say.

The students were given worksheets and were asked to guess what blanks in the lyrics might be. They shouted out all sorts of (silly) answers and pretty much enjoyed it.

Then listened to the song in full. Then we got to talk about the song and what it's trying to convey.

SPE English oral exam

The SPE English oral exam was conducted @ the Yayasan Library, conducted by myself and Mr Jackson. Students are first given a short reading passage, then they are shown a picture to study and would then be asked to tell the examiners what they see and think of the picture shown to them.

57 year 8 students completed their English oral exam which started on the 17th-20th August 2009.

Getting them to talk

Wednesday morning up in the English room.

Mr Bean makes a fish sandwich

Part of the SPE English exam paper2 requires students to be able to write coherently using suitable sequence markers which alot of the time I find my students lack in. Together with this, students lack in the appropriate vocabulary when introduced to a topic.

I made an online on lesson on just this using Mr Bean to help. The online exercise were made in Englishexercises.org

then students would attempt at the wordsearch and other questions to help them with the vocabulary.

students spent quite some time on the wordsearch. They seemed to enjoy coming up to the smartboard and looking for the words. This was good to test their memory skills! How many of the 11 items can you find from Mr Bean's Jacket?

click here to view full worksheet.

when it came to the writing part, my year 7 kids needed abit more help with prompting so I made this pre-writing sheet for them to guide them along.

Click here and here to download the full worksheet!

Overall, students enjoyed watching the short clip. Who doesn't like Mr Bean?
:)

Nora