Poem of the month

I think the first half of January is the hardest part of the schoolyear for most upper secondary school teachers in Norway. Within a week term grades for all students in all subjects must be ready and a lot of us still have quite a few papers to mark before we cross the finish line. Still, I had to take some time for one of my new year's blog resolutions. My plan is to share one poem every month here on my blog in 2010. January's poem is a very traditional choice, but there are good reasons why this particular poem is read again and again by English students all over the world. I think it is especially suitable right now since at the moment Norway is covered in beautiful snow. Please enjoy Robert Frost's "Stopping by woods on a snowy evening":

Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

For information about the poem as well as a video of Frost reciting it, see here: Poetry everywhere

The photo is taken from flickr: when snow arrives out of the blue

"The danger of the single story"

I am quite simply in awe of Nigerian authoress Chimamanda Adichie after listening to her TED talk about "The danger of the single story". When I studied postcolonial literature I read (for example in Diana Brydon and Helen Tiffin's West Indian Literature and the Australian Comparison) about schoolchildren in British colonies whose only alternative was Anglo-centred and Anglo-dominated curricula. Adichie gives a personal account of this when she speaks about the consequences of the fact that the only literature available to her when growing up in Nigeria was American and British children's books. She goes on to remind us of our stereotypes and how they are reinforced by the constant repetition of the single story. This is really worth watching:

The greatest love story of all time

This week in our English lessons we have worked on the balcony scene from "Romeo and Juliet" and we have also seen Baz Luhrman's film from 1996. Despite the fact that I love the play and know that it is the tragedy in it that makes it so beautiful, I always want the ending to surprise me so that Romeo and Juliet can live happily ever after. Perhaps a similar wish for a happy ending is what made Taylor Swift write the song "Love story". The song is full of a teenager's optimism (or is it?) and my pupils (the girls at least) seem to like it. In a shameless attempt at crowdpleasing I put together these questions about the classic balcony scene and Swift's popular song (some of the Shakespeare questions are stolen from the textbook Targets): Romeo and Juliet/ Love Story The picture is from flickr and shows the "Balcone de Giulietta" (Juliet's balcony) in Verona.

Poetry lessons

In tomorrow's English lessons (five lessons in a row) I will be talking to groups of pupils about The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. While some pupils are talking to me about the novel, the others will have to work independently in the classroom, and my colleague LK and I have made this lesson plan for them to work on: Poetry lesson plan The plan includes study questions on poems by Emily Dickinson, Margaret Atwood, Robert Frost and Leslie Marmon Silko as well as a task where the pupils are to follow a recipe in order to write their own poem. I have tried to find good readings of the poems (see lesson plan) on youtube, but I didn't really find anything I was very enthusiastic about. Instead, I'd like to share this reading of "A dream deferred" by Langston Hughes:

The curious incident of the dog in the night-time

I have just finished reading The Curious incident of the dog in the night-time by Mark Haddon and I absolutely loved it. My colleague Liv Kristin suggested we read this novel in our English classes (Norwegian upper secondary year 1, age 16) this year and I am really glad she did. The novel is fairly short (quite a few pages, but the pages are not dense with text) and the language is very simple. At the same time, the issues raised in the text are interesting and the novel can certainly teach us something about how we treat fellow human beings who are not exactly the way we are. In this respect, I hope the novel can be a challenge to our pupils. The advantage is that they are not discouraged by complicated sentences and difficult vocabulary. Instead, they can concentrate on the content. This gives us the opportunity to read the novel thoroughly and focus on the details. One interesting aspect of the book is the way everything and everyone is seen through the eyes of Christopher, who has Asberger's Syndrome. "He knows a very great deal about maths and very little about human beings", as it says on the cover of the novel. Therefore, the reader has to constantly interpret Christopher's accounts of everything that happens in light of his unusual perspective on things. I have made this google document for pupils to fill in when they analyse the characters in the novel: CHARACTERS Curious incident... For the publisher's information on the novel go to: The curious incident of the dog in the night-time I also found these study questions online. Cover photo from the Randomhouse/Vintage website

Cooperative learning and short stories

As a teacher at Sandvika upper secondary school I have been given the opportunity to take part in a couple of very interesting (and fun!) seminars about cooperative learning. Research shows that we learn a lot more when we are active than when we are passive listeners (see the pyramid), and personally I just think teaching is more fun when I get to vary the methods as much as possible. In my English class we recently worked on the short story "Panache" by William Patrick Kinsella and my colleague Liv Kristin made an after-reading activity partly based on cooperative learning methods. In one part of the activity, students do a role play where they each are assigned the identity of one of the characters from the short story. Instead of just discussing the story the traditional way, they are to make up questions to ask the other characters/ group members. With this activity, the students were forced to reflect on the actions and choices made by the characters in the story. This activity gave really good results in my class and most of the students seemed to enjoy it. All students were active and they appeared to really reflect on the content of the story. Furthermore, everyone spoke English during this class. I still think making everyone speak English is one of the main challenges as well as one of the most important goals of an ESL lesson. I will certainly try this method again with other short stories. For a complete instruction to the activity, see here: Working on "Panache" by William Patrick Kinsella. See my colleagues blog here: The road not taken. The role play activity is of course just one of many cooperative learning activities and I promise to share more in the future. Read more about cooperative learning here: The Cooperative Learning Center at the University of Minnesota. Illustration: Learning pyramid and Working Together Teamwork Puzzle Concept.

Bridget Jones of Camelot

Ages ago (in 2001) I took a course in Narratology studies at Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam. The course was taught by the excellent Professor Christien Franken. Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones was at the height of her popularity, and when given the assignment of turning Tennyson's "The Lady of Shalott" into a story, I decided to unite the two literary heroins. Perhaps similar assignments could trigger the imagination of students and make them consider old verse from new angles? Read my chick lit version of Tennyson's poem here: Diary of a solitary weaver.

Illustrations from flickr: Che pasticcio, Bridget Jones! and Lady of Shalott