After the Storm Comes a Calm

For a few months my students and I worked hard on staging "The Tempest" by Shakespeare for the 4th Regional Contest of School Theatres in English, which took place on March 9th. The work was hard as it isn't easy to adapt the whole play to a maximum twenty-minute performance.



What is more, the rehearsals didn't go as well as we had planned as some of the actors fell ill. On March 5th we had a dress rehearsal and it turned out that one of the girls was in hospital... On Wednesday two more fell ill, on Thursday morning the student who played the Prospero part was sent home with an upset stomach... The contest was on Friday...



On Thursday evening, while ironing the costumes, I thought that either it would be a total bomb if someone couldn't turn up or an excellent job as, knowing my students very well,I knew they would be able to muster all their strength in the time of crisis.



Everybody turned up, four of them still feeling unwell... Yet, they did their best! I was so proud of them! They won the first prize, the second time in a row (last year we staged "A Midsummer Night's Dream"), and Prospero got a special prize for outstanding acting. But first of all, they did a great job! The cooperation, the great team spirit, and, what's the most important, A LOT OF FUN!!!




I wish you could see all the people who were involved in the play. The girls who made decorations and costumes worked really hard, so did the guys who worked on the sound. The girl who played the part of Ariel had composed the music for the song she performed, she also played the flute. 'What a brave new world that has such people in it!




I wanted to upload the video but I failed. At least I managed to upload the pictures :)




Have a great week! I'm sure I will :D

Estonian teachers on strike

My Different Classroom

Last time when I wrote about my school, you could see water pipes running along my classroom, just below the ceiling. I've been thinking all the time how to hide them. Well, I finally found a way... :)

American Literature syllabus

I have been really busy at school and new chores and obligations pile up continuously.

I've been working on the syllabus of American Literature course (which actually focuses on the literature of the USA). The title of the course is deliberately broad :)

The course itself consists only of 35 lessons, so you can imagine, I cannot really introduce the whole mountain of good literature that has sprouted from the United States which is a great pity.

I would really like somebody to comment on what I've put together this far and maybe help me make this course a bit better for next year. It's a work in progress. We have had about a third of the lessons thus far and I've only been able to cover SO LITTLE. I feel overwhelmed.
They do have to read one book and make a presentation - so that will be about 3-4 lessons as well.

The address is here: http://iamkirjandus.pbworks.com/w/page/49659057/IAMcourse12
Feel free to use the materials that are useful and give me advice on the ones that need improvement.

Christmas Show 2011

I'm so proud that we managed to pull off another great event - it was the 20th time our school celebrated Christmas with a show and 4th time when we had the Christmas Show on the theatre stage of our town! 

I think the show is improving with every year and it's quite a masterpiece already.

This year the topic was nations and nationalities or UNITY IN DIVERSITY. 

Every class was given a country - it was like lottery. 

Then they had to brainstorm, investigate and write a script. So all the short plays or shows were original pieces of work by the students. All in all, 15 classes of students participated (9th-12th grade) - which is about 450 students in all. Other classes helped to organise, host and record the show. 

To me it seems that this show really helps to create friendships and change  the relationships within the classes as well as show how wonderful their other schoolmates are. A lot of alumni came to see the show as well as many parents. I'm so happy that we managed to have another wonderful show and just to give you another glimpse I'll post another video from last year featuring our national hero whom we also talked about in Boone - KALEVIPOEG. Some sentences in that clip are in Estonian but all in all you'll get the point I hope.

AND I'd like to wish you all wonderful holidays, Merry Christmas!!

A news commentary about our show.

Christmas Show 2010

Here's just a sample of what the students do in our school every year.
In this video there is a class to whom I teach British-American literature. They were 10B last year.

Enjoy!

More poetry time

After a terribly hectic time at school I had, now the time has come to slow down a bit. The school inspection carried out by Very Important Authorities is over, I’m done with the paperwork I hate and finally I am able to take a deeper breath and come back to what I’m enjoying the most – teaching!

These days I’m giving the lessons on the unreal past to my students and I’m sure you know they are having a hard time with all these ‘wishes’ and ‘if onlys’, ‘would rathers’ and ‘as ifs’… To make things easier, I prepared a powerpoint presentation about expressing regrets – now when I have a digital projector in my classroom I can do all the stuff I haven’t been able before!!! As a closing activity, in order to revise grammar terminology and different grammar structures, I had my students write a short poem. The format is really simple and it goes as follows:

1. Noun

2. Adjective + and + adjective

3. Verb + adverb

4. Like or as

5. If only or I wish

Some students strictly stuck to the format, some of them didn’t, but it was ok – they were imaginative and creative and that was what I wanted.

Let me share some of them with you:

Life
Crazy and unpredictable
Rushing madly
Like a natural phenomenon
If only I could know the answers to all the questions

Life
Long and short
Going desperately
Like a crazy clock
If only I could turn back the time


Life
both black and white
clinging to the happiness left
like a trout against the stream
If only we could fly!

Play station
Gripping and fun
So excellent
Like Megan Fox
If only I had money for it

An old wise man
Experienced by life and marked with its scars
Persistently trying to pass down his wisdom
Like a book trying to make us live with dignity
If only I had listened to him when I could

Friends
False and trustless
Lying with every step they take
Like the worst enemy
If only people didn’t lie…

Bums
drunk and stinking
sitting desperately
like a tree in the forest
If only I could help them.

The suicide
Potent and painful
Hoping naively
Like an eternal oblivion
If only she had known what you feel for her

The assassin
Strong and infallible
Killing cruelly
Like his inviolable faith
If only he knew Allah had never called his name

Heart
True and false
Loving desperately
Like a young lover
If only I had understood that!

And this is something especially for us ;D

Teachers
Smart and friendly
Teaching so quickly
Like a fastest car
If only I had my own petrol station!