WEEK SIX: VISITORS, THEATRE AND MOVIES!

We had one more teacher visiting us. A teacher of English Anna Grubert gave a lesson on linguistics, more precisely on pidgin and creole languages.

“Before this lesson I hadn’t heard of these topics. These creole and pidgin languages are mixtures of different languages. I think that it is quite important how humans from two countries can form their own language. I think that the hawaian creole seemed like some humor language with words like “da”. Good lesson and a lots of new information!”

On the final actual lesson day we covered various themes, such as peace.

“Today we talked about peace negotiations and watched a video about Martti Ahtisaari’s career as a peace negotiator. It was an interesting lesson. Then we had an exercise where each one of us had to give a speech, and then listen to another speaker’s facts and feelings from the speech, each one respectively. It was an interesting exercise.”

We also prepared ourselves to see a play. We went to the Oulu International School to watch Oliver Twist, performed by the American Drama Group Europe.

“The play was really fun and interesting. The performance was easy to follow because they spoke clearly. I liked this lesson because I wouldn’t have come alone to follow such a show. It exceeded my expectations.”

“The actors were really good and they really gave life to the characters they acted. I think I’m going to have to read the book now, if I ever have the chance to do so.”

On the final meeting we watched the videos the students had made in small groups. They were supposed to touch the UN 2030 sustainable development goals somehow. I have to say the videos were great! After watching each video we talked about it and the making process for a while.

“I think that it is fun to make a video with fellow students. It helps us to get to know each other better.”

“We chose the goal 15 Life on Land because nature is important for all of us. We thought of also mentioning something about the climate change. We managed to make a good plan and give everyone something to do. We decided to have some videoclips of nature and then some still images with keywords and a voiceover.”

Here are a couple of the videos below. I chose these ones because they deal with different topics and are different in style as well.

Goal 15

Goal 2

Climate action

And then it was over. I am really looking forward to the next time I get to teach this course. It gives such great opportunity to talk about very, very important themes and learn English on the side. The following year will be a break for me. The school will offer the Global Me -course given by AIESEC students, which is great as well. Bye!

 

WEEK FIVE: TEACHERS VISITING

This week was a bit different. There were two of our own teachers who held lessons for the English Worldwide group. First one of our history teachers Inka Hekkala gave a lesson on nationalism. There were many great discussions on the theme.

“I think that the video on American and European nationalism was quite interesting. It made me rethink how nationalism shows up in our community.”

On another day our Finnish/drama teacher Kaisu Mäki gave a drama workshop. I wasn’t able to attend (busy with teaching Kaisu’s own group) but the students told me it had been great fun, relaxing but also educational.

“I think it (the drama workshop) was really good, it was a different class form the others and it was relaxing. The time ran so fast that we didn’t notice that the class was over .”

On the last lesson of the week the students worked on their videos for real.