This week, we took a slightly unexpected turn and ended up talking about simple sentences, compound sentences, conjunctions and comma splices.
For Up and Running on Monday, we are booked into Q19 again.
Before we start, spend five minutes looking at the articles from last week. These are good examples for your work this week.
First of all, the following people didn’t put their articles on the website last week.
Jake B
Josh B
Jade B
Mitch B
Ash J
Daniel L
Jayson L
Nikita R
Amy S
Copy your old article onto the site, before you start on your new article.
Next, we will divide up the topic on the whiteboard like we did last week.
Finally, follow the process to produce and publish your article.
On Tuesday, we will be reading A school’s closure pushes Braille to the margins and answering the following questions.
1. What technology mentioned in this article can turn printed text into speech?
2. Give two ways that you can think of that Braille is better than the alternatives?
3. Do you think parents should have the option of sending blind children to a special school? Give two reasons for your answer.
4. What does lingua franca mean?
Following these questions, we will be learning the structure of a formal debate. With any luck, we will conduct a lightning debate – with each speaker speaking for only one minute – on the following topics.
That technology means that Braille is no longer needed.
That blind children should be in mainstream classrooms.
That blind people can lead “a normal life”.
That reading doesn’t matter for anyone in 2010.
This week, we will finally start reading the play Romeo and Juliet.
We’ll be taking turns reading and looking for quotations about love, fate, blame and paradox.
My expectation is that we will get thought Act One this week.
If you don’t make it to particular classes, you can read the text online and collect quotations yourself. If you find that you take this option, you need to reading slowly and carefully.
Read this article.
Answer these questions.
1. Thinking about technology and language, how would this situation have been different fifty years ago?
2. What does bilingual mean? [You will need to think about this. There is not a single sentence in this article that will just tell you]
3. How could technology have been used better to avoid this mix-up?
4. What solution does Mr Iorwerth suggest?
5. Why do you think sign are produced in both languages? Give two reasons.
Go and have a look at Red Space Favourites, our new magazine for our Up and Running class.
Sadly, not everyone submitted their article, but I’ll collect those next week and we’ll publish them then.
Here is the link for when you are ready to publish your article.
Our magazine is at http://redspacerocket.com/mag/
Your piece will be between 200 and 300 words long.
Write in Standard English.
Write your work in a Microsoft Word document.
Spell-check and proofread your work.
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As an introduction to our study of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, we will be watching Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 film Romeo + Juliet. It is worth keeping in mind that, although this film gets its dialogue from the text of the play, it is not the entire play. Sections have been skipped over for reasons of time and to further shape this story.
We will, of course, we reading the play itself.
On Monday morning, the last of you will present your oral presentations about family. Once that is finished we will watch the 1998 film Shakespeare in Love. This light-weight film will introduce us to the basic ideas the play Romeo and Juliet.
We will start studying the play Romeo and Juliet once the new semester starts after the long weekend.
We have only one class left in this subject and that is our double session between recess and lunch on Tuesday.
Our final activity is a problem-solving exercise at the International Phonemic Alphabet.
And then we are done. When you get back from the long weekend, you will start your Semester Two English units.
During Monday’s class, you will have 100 minutes under test conditions to complete the final assessment for this subject.
On Tuesday during our single session, we will learn a little about the structure of formal debating.
On Wednesday during our final double session, we will conduct some lightning debates. There will be three people on each team and each speaker will have only 60 seconds to present their case. So in just six minutes we will have result.
And then we are done. When you get back from the long weekend, you will start your Semester Two English units.
