What's this?

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