Declaration of Originality and Agreement

I hereby declare that all of this work is my own and that as of 5pm, Friday 8th October, 2010 I agree not to change any of the content on this site.

Farewell Year 12

My Year 12 Advanced English class graduated at the end of term 3! I was so excited for them all, and yet so sad to see them leave. This was a class of 18 girls who were all genuinely amazing people. Each and everyone of them were kind and caring souls and made my job in teaching them so easy and something to looks forward to.

This is a quote that I gave to them all upon their graduation, along with a little personal message to show my appreciation.

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? ... Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do... And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

-Marianne Williamson-

Iview Widget

This is a really good tool to catch up on some really great ABC shows that people may have missed or that you may like to show classes. A lot of teachers at my prac school used this to show students shows like the Gruen Transfer, which looks at things like advertisements and analyses them for us (good for English).

Poetry Takes A Stand

So on my internship i was given the opportunity to teach year 9 a poetry unit called 'Poetry Takes a Stand'. This was a thematic based unit looked at poems and songs that were about particular issues in society and I thoroughly enjoyed teaching it, and my students were highly engaged in learning. It followed a visual texts unit which tied in quite well with music films clips as visual representations of the lyrics.

Here is a clip for a song called 'Hero of War' - perhaps one of the most moving war songs I've heard.

Another song we looked at was Tracy Chapman's 'Fast Car'. This song really allowed my girls to engage with the issue of poverty which led to quite a heated class debate which was great to see!

Just thought I would share these with everyone as I thought it was a great way to learn about poetry (along with poems that linked in with these themes) and I particularly enjoyed teaching these songs :)

Inspiration....

Before the internship begins, I wanted to post a few clips from films that are quite inspiring to me and demonstrate some of the values I hope I can pass on to my students.

This is a great scene from the film Freedom Writers.

And this is another great scene from the film Coach Carter.