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I just had to share this short video of Jack's discovery of Christmas Town in A Nightmare Before Christmas. Considering other films by Tim Burton, such as Batman and Corpse Bride, I guess he prefers the dark and gloomy aesthetics of Halloween, but I would take shiny happy Christmas town over Halloween any day.

Teaching the Nobel Peace Prize

This week we spent our English lessons working on the Nobel Peace Prize. First we spent some time working on Obama's Nobel Lecture from last Thursday. You can watch the lecture here and read it here. The lecture is of course very complicated and the vocabulary is advanced to say the least. Despite this, however, my students appeared to watch and listen with concentration to the 25 minutes that my colleague had picked for this assignment. In addition, they answered questions about the lecture and I think they did quite well. Having learned about this years' Peace Prize the students worked in groups and prepared short presentations about previous Laureates. Here is a link to the lesson plan: Lesson Plan: The Nobel Peace Prize. The questions about Obama's lecture are made by one of my excellent colleagues at Sandvika upper secondary school. The picture is from flickr: Nobel

Christmas is all around

My colleague Liv Kristin and I have made it a Christmas tradition to watch Love Actually with our English classes before Christmas. This year, it appears as though we are running out of English lessons, but I still have hope that there will be time to share this two hour dose of Christmas spirit with our students. In previous years, they've seemed to enjoy it as much as we do. If you are in the mood for more Christmas clips, visit Liv Kristin's blog.

Not teaching, but drowning...

...in paper work. The pile of papers that need to be corrected and marked is now so enourmous that I feel there is no time for anything else. Still, sometimes you just have to take a (blogging) break. I haven't had much time to prepare lessons recently, but fortunately I have great colleagues that I cooperate with. One of them suggested we use the story "Two Kinds" by Amy Tan while working on the USA and immigration. The story is about a Chinese-American girl who is pressured by a mother who desperately wants her daughter to become a prodigy. It is an interesting story and my impression was that it also engaged our students. You can read and listen to the story here: Two Kinds by Amy Tan (there are also study questions on this page). For resources about culture and society (including the topic immigration) in the USA, see this page: NDLA - Culture and society in the USA The picture is taken from flickr: grownups

African Literature Week in Oslo

A couple of weeks ago I received an e-mail from our fabulous school librarian Ingrid. She told me about the upcoming African Literature Week here in Oslo. I was so excited to hear that Nigerian authoress Chimamanda N. Adichie would be visiting and I am really looking forward to hearing her talk tomorrow evening. Right now I am reading her latest book, The Thing Around Your Neck. It is a collection of stories, some from Nigeria and others about life for Nigerian immigrants in the USA. I am really enjoying the read and I have already found two or three stories that I think would be suitable for my English class. In fact, I hope to have a lesson with my class about Adichie and her country in the near future. I occasionally catch myself thinking and talking about Africa as if it was one country and this is a bad habit that I am trying to lose. Before I discovered this great authoress I did not even know that Nigeria is the most populated country in Africa (embarrassing). Now I am eager to learn more about this complex country and I hope Adichie's stories will have the same effect on at least some of my students. The image is of an Igbo (one of many peoples in Nigeria) mask and taken from flickr: "Mask"

An invitation for President Obama

Shortly after Obama announced that he himself would come to Oslo to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, some of the teachers at Sandvika upper secondary decided to invite Obama to our school. It may be a shot in the dark, but we have too keep dreaming. Here you can read the invitation from our principal and the encouraging answer from the American Embassy in Oslo: Invitation to visit Sandvika High School in Norway Attached to the invitation was an etherpad document where our students have posted suggestions about how the President can spend the prize money. Photo from flickr: A vision for America

Politics in the USA

One of the competence aims in our curriculum plan is that our students in the first year of upper secondary are supposed to learn how to "discuss social conditions and values in various cultures in English-speaking countries". When we study the USA and American values we try to include at least the basics of American politics. This topic is in itself fairly complicated, obviously, but I think the text "Thirteen questions about American politics" (from the website www.tracks1hs.cappelendamm.no) presents the key facts and principles in a very student-friendly way (question 10 is outdated and left out in a later version, but apart from that the text is good). On this page you can listen to the text, do exercises and read a shorter version: Twelve questions about politics. Photo from flickr: www.flickr.com/photos/46274125@N00/172657516