This is it! Your last chance to share your ideas with your classmates (and your teacher, of course). As we did earlier in the course, share with us your thoughts on new, interesting and puzzling things you've encountered since we began our study in February. We'll share and discuss your writing at our last class session next Wednesday. Write about 200 words in paragraph form (multiple paragraphs are fine).
Remember that our final tests begin on June 5th and continue on June 10. If you need to write at special times, please email me with your requirements as soon as you know.
14 comments:
This is my response for this course
To English Eleven
By Linda
Like moths longing for the flame
We are fondly charmed by your place
Where it is called room three
Where we are allowed to write in free
Without knowing what is going to be
We are “caught in the teacher’s web”
here we enjoy the joy of SHARE
here we learn the word INSPIRE
from carefree to care about the “possibilities”
we practice our “wisdom” with poetry
from cynical to critical
we view the world in different angle
like blood in our vein
the wisdom thinking irrigates our brain
feeding opinions more than skills
this web extends more threads
but we are still tottering, tottering
for better dance with our writing
gradually we acquire the success
with the bitter taste of sweetness
Students puzzle me, sometimes. Even after many years of teaching, I still experience new behaviours and attitudes among my students. So, like solving a jigsaw, I have to put together new pieces every term until I have built myself a reasonable understanding of them, their strengths, their weaknesses and, most importantly, their willingness to immerse themselves in my sometimes quirky, but most always interesting, classes. For me, if a student’s heart is in it, I have the most success and, if a student is better in some ways after a term, I feel the most satisfaction.
It was interesting to see how I increased my comfort level teaching the new English curriculum this term. Last term was a whirlwind with me trying new ideas nearly every week of the semester. It was exhausting! This term, my students were luckier to have me reusing successful ideas and having to test new ones only every few weeks. Recycling is an important concept for a teacher in more ways than one! It was also interesting to experience your strong reactions to film and be able to give you some basic tools to express your reactions to a visual medium. The advertisements created strong reactions, too, more than I’d imagined. And “Affluenza” spoke to 2009 more strongly than to 1994. That was especially interesting to see.
I’ve already mentioned that I teach a new curriculum, but you may not know that I’m trying to translate the experience to a self paced course. It’s a complex task to design an effective course for students who are unable to attend a regularly scheduled class. Some of the days I missed (your essay writing days, mostly) were taken up with curriculum design work. You were, in some cases, the guinea pigs for some of my ideas. One that I used was our exercise on list poems. Remember them? By using similar exercises, I am able to let my self paced students into the blog world (they have their own, but sometimes are directed to read your work for inspiration).
In all, it’s been a fun semester. I missed a few more classes than is ideal, but you seemed to have survived it all. And, you are the survivors it’s true, because you’ll note that not every student who began is still with us. Congratulations to all of you and good luck (and good writing) on your finals.
English11
English 11 began and ended with poems. All of the poems came from the same poet-Wislawa Szymborska. Although her poems: “Return Baggage,” “A Note,” and “The Courtesy of the Blind” have been branded into my mind, I couldn’t hold Szymborska’s poetic pulse when I wandered in her poetic stanzas. I was perplexed to understand the poet’s thoughts and to ponder the poem’s meanings.
To watch the program-“Affluenza” and the film-“Wall-E” in class, I felt strange. It seemed like an odd way to learn and study literature; yet, I liked to try that way to improve my English skills. Discussing these program and films with my teacher and classmates, I could gain more knowledge and details to think about the film’s meanings and the filmmaker’s techniques.
It is interesting to use open books in the tests. In my memory, I’ve never used a dictionary during tests, so I wanted to apply this useful tool to help me read and spell, but it took too much time and interrupted my thinking when I used it. Of course, I often liked to put a dictionary on my desk for psychological comfort but I rarely used it.
This is my second time to take English 11. Obviously, I was in dread of the course last year, but now that blue mood has petered out. Indeed, substituting confidence for doubt is my best experience this term.
(231 words)
To each class, I have come in with keen anticipation to find out what’s next. It’s like touring around the best restaurants in town with joyful curiosity—“what’s our next menu?” It has been a delightful journey to experience the air of expectancy; from blogging to a movie critique and also, our freedom to voice in the world’s finest poems and visual media. At times I felt a bit challenging to catch up with new genres, but nevertheless, I’ve managed to follow our skillful guide, Brad. Bravo! We all made it!
One thing that hasn’t changed since the beginning of this term is my writing; whenever a topic has been given, I have become a blank (at least initial response) for not knowing what to write or how to fill up the writing with few hundred words in a reasonable way. It puzzles me how I handed in all the required papers. It’s a miracle! I’m sure that I will overcome this uneasy feeling through lots of practices.
Few days ago, I looked at the comments that our class mates have posted for the last few months and noticed their improvements.
And thus, Brad, you definitely had another successful semester; we all enjoyed this course and made improvements in some ways. (213words)
The summer is coming, the autumn isn’t so far.
The flower is blossoming: some are colorful, and some are colorless.
No matter what, the harvest season is around the corner.
Like the flower, we are living in the garden- room three.
We are growing: some are getting strongly, and some are still in the behind as me.
No matter how, we are all getting progress.
From knowing how to write a essay to knowing how to write a good essay,
By one step to another step,
We are skill all getting better and better.
From learning the essay to the poetry,
From surfing the “Blog” to the “TED”,
We are all acquiring a lot of knowledge.
From learning in the class to our “web”,
From sharing our “error” or “achievement”,
We are all in joy the interesting monument.
Thanks all of you: Brad and our classmates,
I have the wonderful challenging time in this semester.
I am also proud myself that I could persist in to the end.
168 words
Time flies, it is hard to believe this is our last composition, and already have a pile of handout in the file.
To review my work, I enjoyed many new materials, such as the video “Affluenza” and the movie “Wall-E,” in this term. I like they vividly show their points in different ways, and let you think about.
I also like we have group discuss with different classmates. Listening to different opinions from people from different backgrounds is interesting. It reminds me that we should respect different cultures and be open-minded.
Most of the time I feel comfortable with the topics, but the poems are difficult. I had hard time to figure them out. I think that it because poets are trying to express in shorter sentences and using many writing skills. To keep reading English articles and have more understanding about the vocabulary would help me with poets; after all, poets are part of English culture.
I enjoy the lessons because Brad always gives fresh materials to us, although I took twice English 11 lessons in a roll, I didn’t feel I was repeating.
-185 words
“English—11 is a challenging course with a serious teacher,” that was what I heard from students who did already this course. I came to this class with a little bit of dread and lots of enthusiasm. I didn’t find the teacher, Brad, very strict; we always had fun in this class. I found it really challenging working and attending this class at the same time, since we had lots of homework each week.
We all gain a plenty of knowledge from this course, we did a lot of writing after which there is no fear to write something. Blogging gave us the chance to know others ideas and points, and it was very useful and helped to know each other better.
In a slight period of time we did lots of work: poems, essays, videos, short stories, etc. We had listened and had a chance to speak with our small groups, also talk to our teacher who was always happy to listen. The talking part gave us the confidence to express our thoughts.
I missed the last classes because I got a full time job, but I am happy that I can do my tests at evening time. I want to thank Brad for his hard work and great help for the time he spent with us, also to thank our classmates for their warm relationship. I want to wish best of the luck for all with their final testes!
242 words
English 11 has a diversity of fresh material . It has provided me with a new way of learning English. In this course , It has been the first time that I wrote some of my homework dependent on a movie (Wall-E), and some programs (Practical Wisdom and Affluenza ); it is an enthusiastic way of learning that improved my skills in listening and writing . These shows and the movie are the most effective fresh material on my thoughts and my feelings that I admired them .The way of studying short stories and poems is very delighted because it is required from students to analyse the character's behaviour and the author 's thoughts .Also , I am very admired by the free writing which is based on the explanation of our own opinions .
Indeed, the most important thing that I should gratefull Brad on it is the opportunity on using computer . After I have been using computer for more than 3 months I can admit that it is not an absurd idle screen (my thought before english 11) but it is an interesting useful screen . I have been admired in every piece of writing that I achieved during this course .
(195words)
English 11 introduced me to the wonderful world of writing. Although I always thought that writing a good story was easy to do, I found it was complicate, but not impossible. This course gave me the tools to write about movies, poems, programs and the most important of all: to share my thoughts with my classmates and teacher, and to learn from them. Getting into groups to exchange opinions about what we were reading or watching, opened a door to many possibilities about the meaning of every piece we were analyzing. In some way, I changed the way I perceived the world. Coming from a Mexican culture where “we borne to be happy” and what we think is “right”, this class took me by surprise. There were many different opinions. Sometimes, I understood another thing. Could I be wrong? I learned to listen and understand that people have different vision about life; there were no “right” or “wrong” answers, only different points of view. How interesting! I learned that Chinese people have profound thoughts and Canadian culture is open mind. I think this class gave more than I expected, further than improve my English, it helped me to grow as a better person. Writing is an art, and art is about emotions and senses. Now, I started to interpret beyond the words, through feelings, what the writer really wanted to say and transmit. On the other hand, reading others people work, it has helped me to organize and structure my own writing; even though, I continue with my grammar errors, I think I made some improvement. Thank you Brad for lead me to this wonderful world of writing throughout different exercises and experiences. Now, I feel confident that one day I am going to write a good story. I am conscious that writing is complicated, but the most important of this course is that I learn that is not impossible.
Maria de la Cruz
320 words
As a student, English 11 with our teacher Brad has been one of my best semesters in PALC. At the beginning of semester I found the assignments different and challenging. But now that I have reached the end of semester, I realize that the course was beneficial in many ways. During English 11, I learned to use new skills and strategies for our assignments such as essays, paragraphs, short stories, poems, documentaries and movie, “Wall-E”. And I also learned my strengths and weaknesses in writing.
In addition, we were assigned many different kinds of writing and by posting our work at the blog we had chance to read each other’s ideas and skills which was very helpful for all of us. The most important thing which I liked the best was when we were share and discuses our ideas in the class and in a group. It was fun!
Overall, I feel everyone is happy as I am and we all gained and improved a lot since the beginning of the semester. Hopefully we'll all pass!
Enfin, je vous remercie pour vos efforts suivie d’un tell program assez intense.
Cela est dit, j’appris de vous plus que la littérature anglaise y compris la communication bilatérale entre un élève et un professeur avec les moyens les plus modernes dite ‘’Internet’’.
Bonne suite.
“English 11 “a class that brings fare out just like the show “Savvier”. This class teaches you to learn how to stand on you’re feet and be an independent person. Brad a teacher, couch, a leader how teaches you how to do your work with provation and strike description still. Sometime I just enjoy leasering to Brad when he tokes about his family. I do not now show much about other teachers family as much that I now of Brad’s family.
After all that, coming to the course back, I have learned sure much things: how to us dash, semi colons and most importantly how to write a good meaningful essay. I also enjoyed the movie watching and the documenter that we show in class. I have watched movies with other teachers but the way Brad teaches the movie was just annually and different. However in the beginning of the semester the classes seemed a little difficult and complicated. Nevertheless now in the end it was all with it; now I don’t fell like living the class and Brad. Even thought I use to be late at class, Brad would explain me what they did or where are they. I would manly love to thank all my classmate of taking my nosiness and understanding my writhing something or what I was trying to say. In addition to that I would really like to thank Zaramina for being my best friend and helping me when I needed her in class. Overall I really enjoyed the semester and were ones company .
Its hard to be motivated to do well in school, if you have a negative view of improving in certain subject “English”.
In this semester I have try to see the big picture. Remembering that a man who plows, ought to plow in hope. Seeing the value of plowing through certain topics was not easy for me. Why? Because not everything in the in the curriculum seem relevant to me. For example learning about movies and watching the video Wall-E was something I find irrelevant. But I have come to understand that an education in a variety of subject will enrich my understanding of the world around me. It will help me to become all things to people of all sorts— giving me the ability to talk to people of various backgrounds. At the very least I will improve my thinking ability— a skill that will surely help me in the long run.
Also in this semester, Brad { our teacher } has made me comfortable, and helped reveal my hidden talents. When I was beset with negative thought about my ability, he replaced them with positive thoughts. For instance, my first in-class writing { paragraph } “Caught in a Teacher Web”, I was so negative about my ability to do better. But his comment was very encouraging. He said, “ You have no need to worry Molly—I see you have good skills in your answer “. That really strengthened me. Thanks Brade !
I’ve learn so much in so little time. It’s indeed a privilege to be part of this class “ English 11 “ Bravo!!
It was regretted for me to miss some classes in this semester. However, it is same luck for me to take those classes I had not missed. In those classes, I not only learned much knowledge, but also firstly experienced the teacher talking to us with sitting on the table, which I only saw on the TV before.
During the whole semester, I can see a responsible teacher who tried to consistently adjust his lessons’ content and teaching techs to satisfy the needs of our second language students. I same see my classmates ladies followed the teacher’s ideas in earnest and hard.
We had various kinds of studying materials, poems, videos, movies, stories and discusses. Within those stuff we contacted and exercised the different language skills and at same time understood much more different cultures.
Coming form different countries and within different experience, we all classmates and Brad met in the room 3, in where, we read our own poem loudly, we expressed our feeling of stories, we shore our works on the blogger. In those ways, we got confidents, and made improvements.
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