20 May
This is what I made to thank my English club for being so fun to work with; we watched this on our last day of English club. It was very difficult to leave all of you, and I hope that you are having a good summer break.
Я скучаю по Вам! У всех вас есть яркое будущее.
3 Nov
It’s been awhile! We had fall break last week, and the 2 weeks before that, we watched a movie (“Step Up 3”), accompanied by translating exercises and vocabulary from the movie.
And I failed to blog about it; I should have.
But here’s our Halloween post from this week! October 31st was Halloween, and yesterday we celebrated it in English club. Last year we had Bingo and origami “candy boxes,” and this year we switched it up and did some different, slightly more challenging, activities (I can’t believe how much these kids’ English has advanced since a year ago!)
After matching the Halloween pictures with their words, each student filled out a crossword puzzle using those vocab. words plus a few extra. For every two correct answers, they got one piece of candy. Since these kids are smart and did really well on the crossword, I now feel very responsible for their possible future visits to the dentist. BRUSH YOUR TEETH, KIDS.
We also watched an awesome video of a house this year in America with a very impressive light show.
Along with the light show was the song “This is Halloween.” We watched a second video – a clip from Tim Burton’s famous “Nightmare Before Christmas,” which has this song in it.
Different Halloween characters sing different choruses/verses (there are pumpkins, witches, ghosts, and more) – in order to get more candy, the group had to fill in the blanks in the lyrics. The pumpkins’ chorus was easy (Level 1) and that earned each person one piece of candy. The ghosts were next (Level 2) – 2 more pieces of candy! And the witches sang a verse (Level 3), of course equaling 3 pieces of candy.
We then sang, it was fun, and before we knew it, Halloween was over for this year. But fear not, children, Halloween WILL be back (probably in the form of a package mailed from the U.S. – it’s the best I can do.) 🙂
Next week’s topic: A review of our 30+ previous English clubs, interviews, and more
6 Oct
Harry Potter could be a theme for a year, or even more. There would be more than enough to talk about. But, we settled for 2 weeks of Harry Potter English club. Andrey pretty much ran the show – he’s possibly the most dedicated Harry Potter fan I’ve ever known. He took charge of making sure we had the school laptop during those hours (thank you, those who donated to the Partnership grant – you know who you are :)) AND he brought Harry Potter part 7, the movie (the first half.)
Not only that, he wore a custom-made T-shirt with a picture he found on the internet of Harry Potter. And he brought 2 wands.
Both English club hours had 2 parts – first, an activity, and then watching the movie. Last week, our activity was a 15-question personality quiz: “Which Harry Potter character are you?” (to keep it simple, there were just 4 possible results – Harry, Ron, Hermione, or Malfoy.) Everyone except Andrey (who got Ron as his result) had Harry as their personality twin.
The second week, yesterday, we went over vocabulary words related to Harry Potter and to stories in general, and everyone had to make sentences out of these words:
Harry Potter vocab –
wand: палочка
wizard: волшебник
spell: магическое заклинание
magic: магия
magical creature: волшебное существо
fantasy: фантазия
elements of a story –
moral: мораль
plot: Сюжетная линия
conflict: конфликт
people in a story-
protagonist = hero: главный герой
antagonist = villain: злодей
sidekick: Друг героя
Next week’s topic: Hip-hop dancing
21 Sep
Our topic today was dreams and their interpretations. We also talked about the sleep cycle.
First, everyone had to close their eyes (since we generally all dream with our eyes closed) and draw a recent dream that they can remember. Then, they each had to describe their dream. One kid drew a computer, and he said that he plays computer games so often that he has started dreaming about them.
Then, 5 people got slips of paper with a stage of the sleep cycle on it. They had to put the sleep cycle in order. The REM (Rapid Eye Movement) stage is when dreams occur. The average (full) night of sleep includes 4 to 7 dreams (whether we remember them or not.) 20-25% of our sleep cycle is the REM (dreaming) stage. Each sleep cycle (it repeats itself over and over during the night) lasts between 90 and 110 minutes. Some mornings, if you wake up feeling exhausted and not at all ready to get up, it’s probably because your alarm caught you in a deep state of sleep, possibly the 3rd stage or the REM stage. If you’re woken up during the 1st or last stage, then you’re more likely able to get up without feeling nearly dead.
We then discussed meanings of dreams, and if dreams really do have meanings or if they’re mostly completely random. Most of the group agreed that dreams often have some sort of meaning since it’s connected with something in our real life. Dream interpretations are studied by both psychologists and mystics; it is said that they can help people get through difficult times in their life (and realize what their underlying problems are) and it’s also said that dream interpretations are just purely for fun. In my opinion, they’re mostly just fun to read about once in awhile, but who knows? Maybe looking deep into the meanings of dreams really has helped some people, and in that case, that’s great!
Sets of partners got some words (things that might appear in dreams) and some meanings. They had to match up what meanings they thought went with which things/ideas in a dream. Only one set of partners didn’t match them up correctly; everyone else guessed the right ones.
We kept in mind that different cultures have different beliefs as to which dreams mean what; this particular list is from a website written by an American.
Falling = a loss of control
Marriage = death
Death = a life transition
A goldfish = success and wealth
An egg = money
A large bird = friendship
Flying = a sense of freedom
An elephant = you need to learn to be more patient
Wearing a hat = you’re trying to hide something
Wearing a mask = you’re trying to be someone you’re not
A piano = you want harmony in your life
A horse = strength and power
A book = calmness
Fire = anger
Water = many emotions
Afterward, each kid wrote answers to these 3 questions and read them aloud:
1. Why do we dream?
(Answers included things like: We feel nervous/stressed during the day, so our brain cannot stop thinking during the night; It is part of our psychology; Our brains have active imaginations; Because we want to. :))
2. Do you think dreams have meaning?
(Answers included: Yes, because they can sometimes tell us the future; No, because we often dream what we wish was real; Yes, because I play computer games.:))
3. Do you usually remember your dreams?
(Answers included: No, never – I have never remembered a dream!; Yes, almost every night; Sometimes – I want to remember them.)
We also talked about the expression “to jog one’s memory” – oftentimes, one has to “jog their memory” to recall a dream. To demonstrate another situation in which a person generally has to jog their memory, we did a short exercise. At the end, 2 volunteers sat with their backs facing each other and had to recall what clothing each other was wearing.
Til next week!
Next week’s topic: Harry Potter!
14 Sep
Vampires are everywhere. They’ve been present in novels, art, movies, and theater for hundreds of years. Toward the end of the 1800s, the story of Dracula made them even more popular and intriguing. And suddenly, in the 21st century, teenagers, and even children, are becoming fans of the countless representations of vampires in pop culture.
So, because they’re often referred to in conversation among the age group that I teach, I decided to make today’s English club about the fascinating creature that is the vampire. To be quite honest, other than my past fascination with Dracula, I have completely ignored and resisted the vampire hype until a couple months ago, when my friend Yana showed me some episodes of The Vampire Diaries. Now I am more than okay with taking (at least) an hour to talk about vampires. 🙂
First, I had Dasha (who is a huge fan of vampire novels and TV shows) list (with the help of the group) vampires popular in the media today. Together, they listed characters from:
Twilight
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
The Vampire Diaries
True Blood
Underworld
(Plus, there’s even a music group called Vampire Weekend!)
Then we listed common legends about vampires, such as:
They drink blood.
They cry blood.
They cannot be in direct sunlight.
They dislike garlic.
Silver cuts them.
They can read minds.
The kids added these:
They’re cold.
They live forever.
Wooden stakes can kill them.
They sleep underground.
They can hypnotize people.
Do you like vampires? Here are the English club’s answers.
Because I don’t have a clip of a vampire TV show appropriate for their age group in English (“True Blood” is a definitely too intense), we watched half of an episode of “The Vampire Diaries,” which I have in Russian. I turned it into a translation exercise. A huge part of the curriculum in Ukraine is to (daily) translate things from English to Russian, but students don’t usually translate from Russian to English. So this was good practice for them – they had to translate at least 5 sentences from the episode we watched into English. It’s more difficult than the other way around!
And thus concludes the hour of vampires.
Next week’s topic: Dream interpretations
25 May
Today was the last English Club of the school year, and our theme was American party games (the typical games you see at things like school carnivals) and popular American desserts.
First we played Bingo, using vocabulary words in the squares. Everyone had to write a collection of 25 adjectives on their Bingo card, in any order. Then, I drew slips of paper from an envelope, which had the adjectives’ antonyms on them. I also drew a slip of paper with one of the letters B-I-N-G-O on it. So, for example, if I said “B, new,” they could cover up a square if they had the word “old” written in the “B” column. Anyone who had 3 in a row said “Bingo!” and won candy.
Here are the words and their antonyms:
New – old
Clean – dirty
Smooth – rough
Hard- soft
Easy – difficult
Straight – curly
Kind – mean
Rude – polite
Boring – interesting
Clever – stupid
Wide – Narrow
Dark – light
Happy – sad
Good – bad
Original – copied
Correct – incorrect
Loud – quiet
Right – left
Healthy – unhealthy
Strong – weak
Cold – hot
Near – far
Ugly – beautiful
Long – short
(and then they had to repeat one of the adjectives, to make 25.)
Pasha won the Bingo game! Next, between Bingo and the next game, we read a short text telling about the history of the chocolate chip cookie, a very popular American dessert. It was originally (accidentally) made in 1930 in Massachusetts. After reading the text, everyone had to answer a question about the text. In exchange, they got chocolate cookies, which I baked yesterday thanks to my site mate Rachel’s portable oven – she gave it to me when she left Ukraine a couple weeks ago.
Next, we played “Pin the Nose on the English Teacher.” Everyone got a small square of paper, on which they drew a nose. Then, each of them was blindfolded and had to stick their nose on the drawing of a noseless English teacher! Vika, Pasha, and Oleg won candy; the three of them put the nose in the correct place.
Lastly, we did what is called a cakewalk, a popular game at carnivals (at least in the Midwest.) Sort of like musical chairs, people had to walk around in a circle while music was playing, and when the music stopped, they had to stop on whatever number on the floor they were on. My version today was with brownies (another popular American dessert), and each number on the floor corresponded with a question. Whoever understood and answered the question in good English got a brownie. Everyone did well, and therefore got to try a brownie. At first glance, everyone’s reaction was “What ARE those?” Then, everyone attacked the bag of brownies again and ate the rest of them. 🙂
At the end, we took group photos:
Thank you so much for a great year! I couldn’t have asked for a better English Club. Have a great summer, and see you in September.
23 May
Let’s start with the 6 interviews we did today 🙂
Tonia:
Sasha:
Dasha:
Vicka:
Tonia wanted me to do the interview too — I guess it was only fair!
Towards the end of today’s English Club, Sasha picked her little sister Anya up from the kindergarten next door, so she agreed to also do an interview 🙂
(The next portion is also posted on the Ucranes blog.):
This week, we are having 2 different English clubs, to make up for the English club last week that I had to miss because of an event at another school.
Today, Monday, we used our English club hour (it turned into almost two hours!) to finish the remaining 20 cranes — I had either counted incorrectly last time, or a bag of cranes had been misplaced — and to finish the posters and hang up the cranes.
Thank you to Suzanne, a Peace Corps Volunteer who just finished her service, for this origami (and thank you Jessie for passing it on to me!)
Sasha wrote the explanation of the project on one of the posters:
Vicka, Dasha, Sasha, and Sasha’s little sister, Anya (Tonia had to leave before we finished hanging everything up):
With me added in:
Us with a quarter of our cranes! We had to split up the cranes into groups of 250 around the lobby because they were too heavy to hang from anything when they were all together.
And the English Club was not the only group that made the cranes! Many of my classes participated, and were very enthusiastic about learning origami. Thank you to group 6B (one of my classes) for doing so many cranes and for doing so much work on the posters!
11 May
The Oxford dictionary defines a “flash mob” as an unusual and pointless act – this describes it perfectly!
To read more about the term and how these started, check out the Wikipedia article here.
We talked about a new (and useful) phrase in English: to cause a scene (we can also say “to make a scene.”) This means to make something unusual/disruptive happen in public, or at least, in front of people. For example, at a family dinner, if a child starts yelling or throwing food, they are “causing a scene.” Or if you are in a movie theater and you answer your cell phone during the movie, you are causing a scene.
A flash mob’s whole purpose is to cause a scene and to do something unexpected and often pointless. They are usually funny and make everyday tasks (like riding the train) interesting for observers.
The first organized flash mob occurred in Manhattan, New York, in 2003. Then, the group that really popularized flash mobs was Improv Everywhere, who has now done over 100 flash mobs.
In English club we watched 6 of them:
Human Mirror: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MBBr-a2KnM
Frozen Grand Central: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwMj3PJDxuo&feature=relmfu
Cell Phone Symphony: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LKbCGV8aH4
Russian Furniture Store Invasion: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5T_MMV3bJOI
Star Wars Subway Car: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5gCeWEGiQI&feature=related
Food Court Musical: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkYZ6rbPU2M&feature=relmfu
There are many more Improv Everywhere videos on YouTube!
After watching the clips, the students split up into groups to design their own flash mobs. They had to decide on a location (where?), the type of flash mob (dancing/singing/whatever!), who, and how many people.
The flash mobs they came up with were great! They included:
-a big group of people going to the cinema and sitting around it in their bathing suits and on towels, and acting as if they are at the beach
-pushing around shopping carts at one of our grocery stores, yelling, “Sale! Anyone who gets in this cart gets a child for free!” (I admit I am a little confused by this one — it may have gotten lost in translation :))
-a group of girls in long, super fancy dresses at the stadium playing football
-a bunch of people wearing huge pants (too big for them) around our town’s major supermarket
Thanks for coming and/or reading our blog; see you next week. 🙂
Next week’s topic: Your life as a film <— Just kidding 😦 At the last minute I had to cancel this week's English Club!
4 May
This week we talked about the tradition of road trips in the United States. A U.S. road trip is a great way to see the country and to see a lot of the tourist attractions the U.S. has to offer. Because everybody already knows about the Grand Canyon, the Statue of Liberty, the White House, and the Space Needle – to name a few – today we focused on the WEIRD tourist attractions around the country. There are a LOT of them, so I wasn’t able to fit all of them into an hour. I chose 18 different tourist attractions around the States that are strange (some may say they are stupid or pointless; others may say they are fun and quirky.)
Because my camera battery died today, I had to do a photoless English club this time. However, here is the slideshow I made, in case anyone is interested in seeing what the United States has to offer in the strangeness department:
The places included (we started in California, worked our way north, then east, then south, then back west):
California – Chicken Boy
Washington – The Giant Shoe Museum
Idaho – The Giant Potato
Wyoming – The Prison Museum
Minnesota (my state!) – The World’s Largest Ball of Twine
Indiana – Santa Claus (the town
New York – The Smallest Church in the World
New Jersey – The World’s Largest Light Bulb
North Carolina – Shell-Shaped Gas Station
South Carolina – Peachoid Water Tower (some people think it looks like something else…)
Georgia – The World’s Largest Peanut
Florida – The Bowling Ball House
Mississippi – Gift shop in woman’s skirt
Texas – Devil’s Rope Museum
Oklahoma – Cow Chip Throwing
New Mexico – Roswell Alien Attraction
Arizona – The Thing? (what is it?)
Nevada – Elephant Foot Trash Can
After looking at the PowerPoint presentation, the students split into teams and had to try to remember where each attraction was located!
Aside from weird attractions, to see a good example of an American road trip on screen, check out the film “Little Miss Sunshine.” It’s funny and it has a great and accurate cultural element to the heart of America, the culture of road trips, and the bonding that happens during a road trip.
Next week’s topic: Flashmobs
20 Apr
Христос воскрес! Happy Easter.
Today we did a lot of short activities related to Easter. And everyone went home with a lot of candy and stickers. Brush your teeth – you guys promised me.
Find words within words
First, we looked at the phrase “HAPPY EASTER” – everyone had 2 minutes to make as many words as they could from those letters. Examples: YES, REST, PETS, STAR
We did the same for “EASTER BUNNY” and “EASTER EGG.” Julia, a 5th-grader, completely ruled this game! She had at least 7 words after each round.
Easter egg hunt
Next, we discussed the tradition in the States of Easter egg hunts – that was something new to Ukrainians! Also, the concept of the Easter bunny was something no one had heard of. He’s basically the Santa Claus of Christmas – he brings eggs/candy to kids for Easter. Since the Easter bunny didn’t have actual eggs (or plastic ones), he hid cut-out eggs all over the room; each egg had a number of points on it (anywhere between 1 and 10 points.) The students had to search the room for the eggs, count up their points, and they got stickers/candy. The more points, the more prizes.
Ukrainian Easter
Then, the students split up into two teams. One team had to list as many Ukrainian Easter traditions as they could in the span of 5 minutes; the other team had to list as many Ukrainian Easter foods as possible. “Holy water” was one of the things listed under “foods.” That one was a little debatable. 🙂
Guess the reasons for the symbols
At the end, everyone worked individually and wrote down guesses of why the Easter bunny and the egg are symbols of Easter. Andrew was correct about the Easter egg: it symbolizes new life. The Easter bunny is a symbol of spring.
By the way, congratulations to Julia’s family – her mom had a baby yesterday evening, named Anya!
Next week’s topic: American road trips
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