Tuesday, November 26, 2013
Edublog
Hello, I would like to nominate some blogs for Edublog Awards.
So here they come, you should chceck out all of them. They have written a lot of interesting posts about different topics.
Best student blog : http://martetromborg.wordpress.com/
Best teacher blog : http://annmic.wordpress.com/
Monday, November 4, 2013
Gran Torino
We’ve seen
a movie called Gran Torino at school and here are some questions that our
teacher gave us :
How
would you describe Walt’s relationship with his family? Do you know of anyone
that has a similar family relationship?
In the end of the movie Walt went to the confession
where he shared all of his sins, he also told the priest the worst sin he has struggled
with was his relationship with his sons or ``lack`` of it. He never really knew
how to communicate with them. I guess it may be one of the worst things when
you're a parent ,but of course sometimes it's not easy at all, especially when
they didn't really put a lot of effort in having a good relationship with him
either.
Towards the end of the movie, the gang shoots
up the Lor’s home and attacks Sue. Thao wants immediate revenge but Walsays
they must wait. How would you react if something like this happened to your
family? Have you ever wanted revenge? How did you deal with the feelings?
From my own
experience I think Walt was right. It is not always easy to stay calm and wait
till the stress goes away, but that is the best way. I'm sure that many of us
made many mistakes while they were taking revenge while they were still
influenced by the emotions. Although I
can't even imagine what Tao were going through when he saw his older sister
when he came back. For him, Walt was some kind of role model and I guess he
would expect that Walt would react immediately.
It is really hard to deal with these feeling, I think that everybody
would react exactly like Tao did.
At the
start of the movie, Walt is seen at his wife’s funeral. What impression does he
have of his son’s family from these scenes?
Well, in
the beginning of the movie I thought he
was going through really though time ,and that was the reason he was so angry
at his family ( since none of them showed any kind of respect, they were laughing
at the funeral etc.) But I think that we also have to think about how he
treated them the whole time. I not really sure how I would react at somebody's
funeral if I didn't have no bond with that person (except the ``family bond``)
What
does respect mean to Walt? What does respect mean to you?
I guess
that it really meant a lot to him. He has been through a lot, and I'm not really
sure if I\we are able to judge his behavior (He’s been through a war, and now
he was left alone) We've also seen the scene where Walt sat outdoor and saw
when a lady lost her packages and there were some teenagers that just walked by
and didn't stop to help her. There are many ways of showing respect to other people.
It doesn't have to be a big thing, just small one, to show that you care about
other human beings.
Can you think of real life examples of people
who have sacrificed themselves for others? What drives these people to make this
sort of sacrifice?
There are
so many examples that I know about. Well, I guess I can take one of them. It
might not be a similar example but still it is some kind of sacrifice. Many of
us have ``participated`` or seen an accident. I guess that it would be natural
to help other people right away for everybody. I have also seen an accident;
actually I was a part of it. My friend planned to come over for the holidays
and the day before, when she was about to go back to Poland, we went to the
beach and were jumping from high-dive platform into the water. Well, she got
hurt and I’m not sure if any random person would help her, or even call for an
ambulance…while I jumped into the water and helped her. When it comes to friendship
and family I guess that everybody would do everything to save your
beloved. I'm not sure I would react the
same way if I didn't know the person, but still we have to remember that Walt
and Tao’s family had a big bond between each other. I think that he became a
part of this family afterwards.
Do you
agree?
-Ewa
Welcome back
It's been a
long time since I posted something online. The reason I decided to continue with
this blog is because I'm looking forward to see through all my posts in the end
of the year.
This year I
was supposed to have subjects like: chemistry, physics and biology, but after
some few weeks I realized that these subjects were way to challenging for me
and that I really missed having English as a subject at school. The Norwegian schooling
system is bit weird. In the end of the first year of school, you're able to
finish your ``journey`` with some of the subjects, same with English. Unless
you've chosen English as a subject you are willing to continue with, you're
done with it for good. (At least in high school)
So here I
am, having English, fitness and biology instead of all these ``ambitious``
subjects. What's great to think about is
that you're always able to change something if you really want to. If I decide
to become a doctor in the end of the high school, I can always take a
``gap-year`` and spend it on getting a better grades and make my wish come
true.
From now on, I will update this blog much more
often since I have a lot to catch up (Other students in my group have posted so
many posts, so I'm really looking forward to get some respond on my posts in
the future.

- Ewa
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children
Hello, I totally forgot to share my opinion about this book, and which pages in the book were important to understand the theme, plot etc, so are they:
Page 302 and 303
Character
development
"So i squeezed
my eyes shut, because I didn't want its gaping jaws to be the last thing I'd
ever see, and gripped the shears in fron of me with both hands. Time seemed to
strech out, like they say it does in car
crashes and train accidents and free-falls from airplanes. and the next thing I
felt was a bone-jar-ring collision as I slammed into the hollow.." (...)
" I killed it, I thought, I really killed it. All the time I'd spent being
afraid, I never dreamed that I could actually kill one."
This describes how
Jacobs thoughts changes fast, in the first part he is really scared and he
really thinks that he is going to die. The last part shows that he has made
something happen. This is his thoughts after an important event in the book.
This part is important for the book because you get an inside look to Jacobs
thoughts. It gives you a deeper inside of who he is as a person.
Page 243. Plot: "He could see the monsters. The moment she said it, all the horrors I
thought I'd put behind me came flooding back. Thew were real. They ere real and
they'd killed my grandfather. "I can see them too", I told her,
whispering it like a secret shame. Her eyes welled and she embraced me.
"I knew there
was something peculiar about you"
she said. "And I mean that as the highest compliment.""
This draft really
describes the plot very well. The most important point is that all the stories
Grandpa Portman ever told were real. The peculiar children were real, the
monsters and the loop. Everything turned out to be true. It also describes the
feelings that appear between Jacob and Emma.
Page 79.
Setting: My
grandfather had described it a hundred times, but in his stories the house was
always a bright and happy place-big and rambling, yes, but full of light and
laughter. What stood before me now was no refuge from monster but a monster itself,
staring down from its perch on the hill with vacant hunger.
This paragraph
describes the setting of where most of Grandpa Portmans stories took place. The
setting is a old house situated on a small island in Whales. This is also the
place where most of the setting in the book takes place and the house plays an
important role in the book. This is the house were Grandpa Portman grew up and
Jacob is now returning to the same house many years later to find out the truth
about all the stories he has been told.
Page: 45. Theme :"
Beneath those photos were five more that Grandpa Portman had never shown me. I
wondered why, until I looked closer. Three were so obviously manipulated that
even a kid would see through them: one was a laughable double exposure of a
girl "trapped" in a bottle; another showed a "levitating"
child, suspend by something hidden in the doorway behind her; the third was a
dog with a boy's face pasted crudely onto it. As if these weren't bizarre
enough, the last two were like something out of David Lynch's nightmares: one
was an unhappy young contortionist doing a frightening backbend; in the other a
pair of freakish twins were dressed in the weirdest costumes I'd ever seen.
Even my grandfather, who'd filled my head with stories of tentacle-tongued
monsters, had realized images like these would give any kid bad dreams"
This part of the book shows you the theme in
the book and it also describes how the grandfather used to tell the stories to
the main character. The last sentence about monsters gives you a hint that the
book will not only be about grandfather telling some stories.
- If you have read this book, do you agree that these pages were important in the book? If not, which would you rather use?
Ewa
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
Social inequality - Blind side&Titanic
The blind side shows us how difficult it is to be a poor, young, African American boy in the city of Tennessee, and how difficult it is to get help in the community that is characterized by white and rich people. Compared to the movie Titanic, there were only ``white`` people but in the 20`s there was a big difference between various social groups. Those kind of films make people aware that the social inequality still exists even though we live in 21st century. We think that there are both positive and negative sides of it. What would it be like if a rich group of people was hanging out with poor people in the rich people district? It would be embarrassing for both parts. The poor people wouldn't be able to feel confident around people who are more wealthy than them, and vice verse.
Titanic is a movie about a poor guy who fell in love with a women who is about to marry a rich man. She has to marry him to ensure the future of her family. Even though there was a big difference between their economic situation, when love strikes, nothing is impossible. Unfortunately they where not able to share their life's together, because of the gigantic accident.
Have you ever seen
Titanic or blind side? What are your thoughts about social inequalities ?
- Ewa& Julia
Tuesday, April 23, 2013
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children
I have just finished a book called Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. I was
really enjoying while I was reading this book. In the start I thought the story
was about something else, more about a boy that wants to find out what's going
on with his grandfather and more likely about his life. It turned out that all
of the stories that he has been told about monsters and Peculiar Children from
his Grandfather were true.
I think the book
was exciting, and it's really nice to spend some time on reading books,
especially in English since you're also improving your vocabulary. I'm not sure
if this is my type of books since I'm more into stories that might happen in
real life. But I think that as long as you're reading something in English it
is still better than not reading at all.
Here are some
pictures taken from the book that in my opinion were really creepy.
I liked that
that book pits truth vs. fiction, but I must admit that it wasn't my type of
book at all. I think I will choose other type next time, maybe crime novel. Do
you have any books that you've read and that were really good?
-Ewa
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
"Teachers should make it fun to learn."
Long time no see. We are still working on our book, so we are just writing many texts and sharing our opinions. Today I have written a text about how teachers should make it fun to learn. Take a look and share your opinion as well! :)
It is really important how much effort teachers put into motivating their pupils. I think teachers are in some way responsible of what their students are doing during the class. There are many ways to control them. We have internet access all the time, but the teacher is able to confine the access. A great way of having fun at school is using internet properly. I think it's impossible to deny students using Facebook at school. As a teacher you can try out having one class where the students are responsible for their own assignments and they have deadline, if they are not done they get a lot of homework. I think it is really important to get used to ``freedom`` then you are prepared for the university. Teachers can make it fun at school, it is not that difficult. If there is only one thing a students needs it is varied classes. Not only reading books and answering some questions. There are so many profitable webpages a teacher can use in class. You can have a blog for your students, like we have or other things that make time go by at school where you are actually paying attention and do what you were asked about. You can also make your pupils decide what they want to do as long as they are using English. Once we had a competition where we were obligated to speak ONLY English for a whole day ( at school) After some minutes you got used to it and it was ok to speak without all the stress.. Sometimes it is really nice to make these kind of competitions at school. Everybody wants to win even though it is not that challenging. I think that's what is fun at school. When a teacher loves his job, and when he likes to work with children\teenagers. Not everybody is able to do that. That's why it is relevant who is becoming a teacher. It can really be boring when a teacher is just giving you some draggy homework while he is sitting in front of his PC and to be honest, is not interested in what we are actually doing. It's normal that we as students get bored and start doing things that we shouldn't .
It is really important how much effort teachers put into motivating their pupils. I think teachers are in some way responsible of what their students are doing during the class. There are many ways to control them. We have internet access all the time, but the teacher is able to confine the access. A great way of having fun at school is using internet properly. I think it's impossible to deny students using Facebook at school. As a teacher you can try out having one class where the students are responsible for their own assignments and they have deadline, if they are not done they get a lot of homework. I think it is really important to get used to ``freedom`` then you are prepared for the university. Teachers can make it fun at school, it is not that difficult. If there is only one thing a students needs it is varied classes. Not only reading books and answering some questions. There are so many profitable webpages a teacher can use in class. You can have a blog for your students, like we have or other things that make time go by at school where you are actually paying attention and do what you were asked about. You can also make your pupils decide what they want to do as long as they are using English. Once we had a competition where we were obligated to speak ONLY English for a whole day ( at school) After some minutes you got used to it and it was ok to speak without all the stress.. Sometimes it is really nice to make these kind of competitions at school. Everybody wants to win even though it is not that challenging. I think that's what is fun at school. When a teacher loves his job, and when he likes to work with children\teenagers. Not everybody is able to do that. That's why it is relevant who is becoming a teacher. It can really be boring when a teacher is just giving you some draggy homework while he is sitting in front of his PC and to be honest, is not interested in what we are actually doing. It's normal that we as students get bored and start doing things that we shouldn't .
If you
are a teacher and finds it difficult to find ways of make English class more
interesting just look at the Competency goals and try to find a way to motivate
students for reaching their goals.
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