Tuesday Time Out
As I wrote yesterday, I love collecting quotes. At the moment I’m in the mood to share them, so here are some of my absolute favourites:
“It’s all ok in the end. If it’s not ok, it’s not the end.”
“Sometimes a majority simply means that all the fools are on the same side.”
and in the same theme:
“If 50 million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.” - Anatole France
Deep and Meaningful Quotes for Monday
Some people collect coins, stamps, hats, cats, you name it. I collect good quotes.
Being Yourself:
“We forfeit three fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people.” - Arthur Schopenhauer
which reminds me of this quote:
“Always be a first rate version of yourself rather than a second rate version of someone else.” - Judy Garland
Achieving:
“The important work of moving the world forward does not wait to be done by perfect men.” - George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans)
“Never doubt that a small group of individuals can change the world, in fact, it is the only thing that ever has.” - Margaret Mead
Reviewing the preview, some notes about this week, and some free Chinese lessons.
Heading in to Week 6 (not that I can believe it’s here) I thought I would take a moment to review my preview of last week and think about this week.Last week I…
1. Wanted to use my SMART Board in three different ways. Does this count:
*many of my students have been blogging on it and writing comments on other blogs. I almost had a few fights on my hands over who was going to use if for that class! Children! Back down!
*I made a SMART Notebook file that featured the Timer and StickyNote functions to time the whole Year 7 class to each write one goal as quickly as they could then drag a new sticky note over for the next person. 17 students took about 6 minutes.
*It’s not 3 ways, but there are more weeks to fill…
2. I wanted my students to know how to leave comments on technoChinese - this happened with most students. I got them to leave comments on Friday Vox Pop as well. Stats spiked that day!
3. I didn’t do much reinforcing to students that Chinese is an important thing to learn. The main class I think about when I say this is Year 8. I have them early in the day on a Thursday on Period 5 on a Friday. They’re a tough class (individually REALLY great kids!) and I’m going to have to set them some really engaging tasks. But, I’m still working on promoting what I teach more.
4. The intercultural knowledge that I got into a few (not every) class this week was that the character for ‘me’ is made up of two parts - a hand and a sword, indicating that ‘I/me’ am standing here with my sword, being me. I’m getting to kids to use this idea this week when they decorate their own characters and I put them all together on the technoChinese blog.
5. I did give most of my classes the ongoing assignment called ‘Where is China This Week?,’ which asks them to look out for anything in their daily lives that mentions China or Chinese. I posted the assignment on technoChinese, as well as giving each student a handout, as well as putting it in the newsletter - so no excuses for not knowing!
6. Hmm, didn’t get around to grabbing those iPods from the library.
So, this week will involve:
1. Some more intercultural knowledge! I’m setting a few year levels this assignment called ‘Different But The Same‘ where they have to find 2 images of China - one that is completely different to their lives and one that has some similarity. They have to post the images (we’ll talk about Creative Commons) on their blogs along with an explanation as to why they chose them.
2. I still want to get the ‘Chinese is a GREAT thing to learn’ message across to Year 8 this week. Am still pondering how exactly this is to be done. Tough audience.
3. Several blog posts! I am feeling fairly organised tonight and have planned most of the week, so I might just have some time to do some good old fashioned blog writing. That would be nice.
4. Getting those iPods from the library and putting my Chinese lessons on them. Should anyone reading this wish to learn how to ask someone what their name is, how old they are and where they live and give the same information, feel free to have a listen to:
And if, by any chance, you have made it this far down this post and you’d like to check out some of my kids rapping, click here. We had a Rap Party last week that was great fun! the kids had to rap their name, age and where they live in Chinese. There is also a pic of their very cool teacher.
