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I was reminded of this poem when I was talking to our student English teacher last week. Peter Ford recited it at the first Communicate Conference, talking about the difference teachers can make by getting themselves and their pupils into blogging. My slam poetry skills and memory for poetry aren’t as good as Peter’s so I’ve downloaded it to share with her.
Thursday is National Poetry Day - as I’m studying “Au revoir les enfants” with my Higher class I’ve been looking for some French war poetry and came across this beautiful version of “Le dormeur du val” by Rimbeau.
This has come out a bit blurred (maybe because I had to hang out the window to take it!), but this is the view of the full moon over Tobermory as I’m typing.
We celebrated today as we have done over the last few years by having coffee and cakes (well COOP’s finest biscuits!) with S1 and invited guests. Amongst us we had Spanish speakers (from Argentina), an Italian, the Education Officer of Mull Little Theatre who is fluent in French, and our former Gaelic teacher. Added to these we had our own fluent Gaelic speakers (both staff and pupils), myself and another French teacher as well as our Norwegian exchange student and our Portugese native speaker who is in S1. Whilst the guests circulated, in the background we had a few interesting videos playing - reasons to learn a language, the Haka, “I’m a lumberjack” in German, Runrig, Lauren’s French lesson and a selection of Disney classics in various languages.
It shouldn’t really have been a surprise, but it was with some trepidation that I watched S4 enter the room. Today was the dreaded day of talks. Despite more planning than is London is putting into the Olympics, discussion of structuring the talks, writng the talks, redrafting the talks, how to learn the talks and of course the actual learning, they approached with the kind of expression which suggested I’d set up a guillotine in the room. The usual volunteering of their friends to go first and themselves to go last took place, but I ignored those and starting selecting randomly.
And bless them, they’d actually learned them and they left with smiles all round.
So maybe the day they moaned and groaned through the period as I repeated at every opportunity “most people don’t get a good grade because they don’t spend enough time learning” paid off and they’d actually taken the time. However let’s not forget the technology and it’s worth noting that mp3 recorders, an iBook, Bluetooth and one or two mobile phones played their part.
To get you in the mood for the European Day of Languages which is this Wednesday, here’s a reason for learning languages.
This was a quote from an S3 boy today - he’s had it on the go for a week now and I think I can confirm that it is indeed a record!
My other quote from today, “My jotter’s a bit wet Miss, I cycled to school and didn’t think it would rain so didn’t put it in a plastic bag” - now given he lives 10 miles away and the road is single track, the cycling is now mean feat, but to think it might not rain on Mull?
It’s been a surreal day altogether!
Following on with the cooperative learning and S3 there are glimmers of success. Their ultimate task was to be able to produce a letter about their own family using one in their text book as a model.
This takes some a long, long time when working on their own. However working cooperatively - picking out useful phrases in groups, doing a model letter in the group using their useful phrases and finally writing for themselves using the group for support has made a big difference to some who would have struggled to write at length in French, but they have and everytime I see some of the heads of some of this interesting class bent over their work and writing I could cry with joy!
Yesterday I had to choose Guides from Argyll to Scottish International Selection. No easy task I’d have happily sent all of them! However in order to make the choice I had to find them a few activities and thought making a podcast would be a good idea.
Unfortunately we ran out of time - what’s new? In the end they only manged to record some interviews between themselves and the adults present, so my mission over the next week is to put it together.
Thankfully I actually managed to download the soundfiles from the mp3 recorders. The law which says that technology will go wrong when you are at your most stressed kicked into play and yesterday the iBook wouldn’t recognise the mp3 recorder, giving me all sorts of messages about not hearing the sound (just what you want when downloading sound files) - in the end it was just a low battery on the recorder, but I was convinced I’d lost the lot - not something I would have wanted to confess to the girls who are waiting to hear the results of their work.
Two local primaries have been involved in a project which lead to them meeting Michael Palin. I didn’t get that far, but today I went to a meeting to discuss the future of the project.
Mediascape is a project lead by the John Murray archive. The archive contains many documents written by everyone from Darwin to Livingston, many of them by explorers and being some of the first travel writing. Pupils of Ulva Ferry and Dervaig primary schools researched their local area and produced guides which are downloaded on to PDAs - if you have the PDA and are on the beautiful Isle of Ulva, as you walk around it beeps when there is a piece of information recorded for that spot. It uses the same technology as satellite navigation systems. Visit Scotland are also involved and as more primaries come on board they will be able to add to the mediascapes which can be used. We are hoping to have some language input by helping to add content in French or Gaelic.
As this was being talked about tonight someone mentioned turning your playground into the African plains with lions etc - a kind of fantasy version and I’m sure I saw an example of this recently, on someone’s blog?
So I may not have got to meet Michael Palin, but hopefully saw the start of a new adventure, and who knows one day Michael may come to try out what the pupils have done.
