Romeo and Juliet, June 2011

This was my most ambitious project so far. I had two main casts; Juliet was played by a Russian-speaking girl playing a Latina, and a Somali boy playing a Somali boy; the other Romeo was a Latino, playing a Muslim, and Juliet was played by an Ethiopian girl playing a Latina... Our main accent was not so much as family feud, but racial and religous predjudice. It was a powerful tool to make my students see their own narrowness of mind and by thinking about it, discussing and bringing it to the stage, overcome them - and hopefully, help others do the same. Oh, the hush in the audience when the sheikh says the morning prayer in Arabic!

Many months after students still talk about this play... it touched them, and I am happy...

http://www.hepg.org/hel/article/494#home

Midsummer Night's Dream

We have run 3 very good shows this week. I have had a great cast. Three students abandoned ship on the first day - we had to make quick changes, but the show must go on! And so, one of the girls cast as Starvelling doubled as a fairy - luckily, she practiced the Ribbon Dance as an understudy. The boy who played Quince delivered lines for Snout/Wall, and a former student was dragged out of the audience to play Snug/Lion. To tell the truth, without the two young men who were supposed to play Snug and Snout, the performance went better. Why? Perhaps the people who were on stage were fully committed...
From all of this there is a valuable learning: have as many understudies as possible!
The highlight of the show: a most talented actress Tsega - she should be on professional stage! She lived, she cried, she was Hermia! Both Helena (Nadya) and Hermia (Tsega) were so much into their roles, that their fight turned bloody - Tsega got a scratch and Nadya got a bruise!

Teachers from Korea

It was a very exciting day - I was presenting some of my favorite methods of teaching reading at the University of Washington. My audience was 30 teachers from Korea. It was really incredible how much teachers across the world resemble each other - same high energy, insatiable desire to learn and experience more, constant and deliberate search for new and effective ways of teaching. I felt as if I knew each and every one of these amazing people!

Pioneers and First Nations

This summer I was very fortunate to teach a group of almost 60 ESL students a hands-on discovery unit that included elements of Social Studies, Math, Visual Art, Drama and Language. The unit was structured so as to follow a historic route of white settlers to Oregon territory; while traveling, they discovered new lands, plants, Native American tribes and their culture. We used as many real documents and photos as we could find; we read a fiction book "Off to Oregon" (grade 2 difficulty). Students experienced situations and wrote about them. We went on field trips to study local flora. We went to Daybreak Star, Native American Cultural Center. Students researched the art of the native tribes and created blankets based on the symbolic elements used in the North West. The culmination of the project was a presentation on stage for as many as 200 people... we did well... kids loved it!

Reading Rods

These brightl attachable blocks are a great way to teach reading. Parts of speech are color-coded.

Teaching Phonics is useful - at the initial stages

http://www.sdkrashen.com/articles/does_decoding_contribute/index.html
eight:bold;">Stephen D. Krashen
Does Intensive Decoding Instruction Contribute to Reading Comprehension?
Result, not Cause
This conclusion is consistent with the views of Frank Smith (2004) and Kenneth Goodman (see Flurkey and Xu, 2003) who have maintained that our ability to decode complex words is the result of reading, not the cause.
This position does not exclude the teaching of "basic" phonics (Krashen, 2004; Garan, 2004). A small amount of consciously learned knowledge of the rules of phonics can help in the beginning stages to make texts comprehensible, but there are severe limits on how much phonics can be learned and applied because of the complexity of many of the rules (Smith, 2004).
The Reading First Final Report thus confirms the common-sense view that the path to reading proficiency is not through worksheets but through books and stories.

Please, read "The 88 Generalizations about Free Voluntary Reading" by Steven D. Krashen

http://www.sdkrashen.com/handouts/88Generalizations/index.html

Here are some of the most remarkable scientific findings:
More reading means:

better TOEFL performance
(Constantino, S.Y. Lee, K.S. Cho; Gradman and Hanania)
less writing apprehension (S.Y.Lee)
less memory loss
more hobbies
better sleep

Also: eminent people nearly all are voracious readers (Simonton)
More access to books – more reading
Comfort and quiet – more reading
One positive experience can create a reader
more reading takes place if books available (Von Sprecken)
supplementation that makes reading more comprehensible, interesting can help
(Shin, Manning)
more reading takes place if the teacher reads (Von Sprecken, Wheldall and Entwhistle)

The Taming of the Shrew for English learners

January 25, 26, 27 were the culmination of our 3 month marathon: staging The Taming of the Shrew with the students of the Secondary BOC. Among the actors - kids from Congo and benin, Russia, Guatemala, El Salvador and Mexico, Vietnam and Ethiopia... Just as at our school kids come from all over the world and make their first unsure steps in language acquisition, the actors in my drama class learn first things about stage - the pain and the joy of it, the necessity to work as a group, to speak in a loud, sure voice in front of the complete strangers...
Nothing builds up a young person's confidence as much as a public performance, but to bring him/her there!!! Oh, that is my job

My semester is 18 weeks. We begin with fun and games, learning about each other, learning to trust each other and our bodies. From "Who stole the cookie from the cookie jar?", from "Zip-zap" and other theater games we slowly move into something more serious - improvisations: mirror, imaginary qualities of things, a chance meeting, etc.
I teach them to breathe, to fall, to laugh, to fight...
We even stage 3-4 little plays they write themselves.
Then comes the script and cold reading.
I have learned the hard way to always, always have understudies!
We read for a week, talking about each episode - it is not easy, because many of my students have very limited English. I explain difficult words, jokes, customs, show pictures of where the play takes place...
Then - the drill of memorizing lines. Again, most of my students have never learned a poem in their lives. I teach them how to memorize through repetition, how to use movement and action while memorizing...
This semester I was extremely fortunate - I had a whole class of wonderful seniors from The Bush School, who diligently came every Thursday, grabbed a kid each and drilled, cajoled, demonstrated, and helped.
My sister-in-law, a dancer, choreographer and Pilates instructor happened to be visiting from Prague. I involved her! never let a resourse go unused! She contributed to the tarantella!
We built our sets during winter break, and in January we were ready to rehearse on stage.
I promised myself that next time I must have a prop manager... Hopefully... It was tough to run the show all alone.
But - the show was great! Good job, my wonderful students!


In January

As You Like It

On June 17th SBOC students played Shakespeare's "As You Like It" 3 times! The first was a mild disaster, the second was O.K., and the third was pretty darn good!

ESL and drama

3 weeks before the end of the school year - and "we are all in uproar!" 19 youngsters in my Drama class are still learning their lines... And we have just started to block the action on the stage... Why does it have to be so stressful each time? I have taught Shakespeare drama to the ESL students for the last 10 years, two productions a year, and it has always been like that. Am I the root of the evil? Oh, please, tell me that it is not me... though I suspect otherwise...
On the other side, I have learned (over the years) to cope with stress: the leading actor is late for the performance? Bah! I'll just talk a bit on the stage... Or pull somebody else up... Or get dressed in a costume and jump right in! A prop is lost? Get something else! Sound system died? Improvise! And smile at all times!
This semester we are getting ready to show "As you like it". Among highlights ( that even I like) are two songs on Shakespeare lyrics to Reneissance music and the cutest dance with a puppet sheep. I am also rehearsing a deer dance "Un Baile de Venado" with one of our newest and least verbal students. But she loves dancing - and has a great sense of rhythm!
And why do I put myself through this again and again? Guess! Those students that go through drama show much faster and greater gains in English! Many of my former thespians are University grads or college students!