Foam Party at School-yard Many Years ago

End of Course Foam Party in the School-yard

This is a very old picture I just found by chance from many years ago. We were just celebrating the end of a hard school year, and I wonder whether the activity could have further didactic applications from the point of view of bodily-Kinesthetic Intelligence like, for example, illustrating the cultural revolution of the sixties, the French May of 1968, the Oil Crisis of 1973.

Any other suggestion?

Physical Education in FLT - Bodily-Kinesthetic intelligence

Rochelle is our Conversational Assistant from California. One of our last classes was about Health Issues, and since she is an expert on diets and exercises, she did not hesitate to bring her own devices to our language class and invite everybody to give it a shot. My students were delighted with the experience and so was I. Rochelle, you are wonderful!

This is a summary of bodily-Kalisthenic activities and proposals, hope you enjoy them:

Paleolithic and Neolithic Venuses against Bulimia and Anorexia,

Newaza - Ground Techniques,

Giving each other a Rub,

Haka - Maori Dancing as an Ice-breaker,

Why a Pub in a Classroom?

Human Castles,Karaoke session,

Lindy Hop Dancing

Physical education and FLT
Foam Party

Ladder workouts - pasadas de escalera

School orchards - huertos escolares y urbanos

Lindy Hop Dancing

Hi again,

Mingo asked me to provide you with some caving story or to explain what my dancing is about. Although right now I do feel like telling a story, it's not going to be one about caves but about the latter topic: for the last year I've been taking dancing lessons for a dance called Lindy Hop.

As you might have guessed, dancing is something that never had crossed my mind, until more or less a year ago, when my girlfriend casually mentioned, that she had appointed us for some dancing lessons. I was shocked. Me dancing?
Since she made clear that the decision already had been taken and the lessons paid, there was nothing I could do about it except to hope that by some twist of fate I still could escape from it. No miracle happened and D-day arrived far too early.

In the meantime I had been told that the dance in question was called Lindy Hop and that it's danced to Jazz music - not the contemporanian one but rather that of bigbands from the thirties, of Ella Fitzgerald and so one. In short, it’s one of various styles of dancing to Swing music. Since I don’t dislike that kind of music at all, I came to the conclusion, that it could have been worse.

The day of our first lesson I was so nervous that I even felt sick. At the beginning of the class everything was apparently under control, but soon disaster struck. It came in the form of the order to switch partners. I couldn't believe it. I was forced to stay close to women totally strange to me and I not only had to touch but even grab them! Furthermore I was told to keep on moving as awkwardly as I had been taught before, trying to remember a most complex pattern of steps and twists, while standing emberassingly close to my everchanging partners. What in name of other's gods had I done to deserve that? (I'm an atheist, by the way.)

But once I accepted the new situation like a kind of divine punishment for the sins somebody else had committed in my name, it soon turned out to be real fun. During the rest of the class (and every class since then) the partner switching went on on a 2-to-3-minutes-base, interrupted by further instructions given, so that by the end of the class I rejoined my girlfriend and for the first time in my life actually danced with her. With the passing of some time and more lessons, both of us got slowly hooked to Lindy Hop.

By now you might ask yourself what exactly Lindy Hop is and what the differences to other dances are. I’ll try to enlighten you as well as I can, but please have in mind, that I’m absolutely no expert at all at this. The following is only what I believe to remember of the information I gathered together during the last year. I haven’t consulted any sources of information in order to write this for you.

It’s said that the name Lindy Hop has to do with Charles Lindberg’s “hop” across the Atlantic that took place in the twenties. Lindy first evolved in US-cities and was exclusively danced by black people, especially in Harlem, New York. And that’s why it’s less stiff and more elastic compared to other dances like waltz or cha cha cha. Lindy’s godfather was a lad called Frank Manning who invented most of the steps and inspired most of the later dancers who then figured out the rest of them. After the Second World War Lindy disappeared and got kind of forgotten until in the eighties (again, please don’t nail me down on the numbers) it started to regain popularity. Some Swedish dancers then contacted Mr. Manning in order to ask him to teach them how to hop properly. Despite of his age he taught them, giving the spark for a new Lindy community to grow. It’s still Sweden where the popularity of this dance is highest, but during the last twenty years it also started to appear in more and more cities around the world. Today a large number of annual Lindy festivals take place, the most important in a Swedish village called Herräng, but also in most big European, North-American and South-East-Asian cities Lindy happenings take place and lessons can be taken.

In Barcelona for example, several dance-schools and associations offer Lindy lessons and so does one in Terrassa, which is called the Terrassa Hoppers. That’s the one my girlfriend and me attend on a weekly base.

As I mentioned before, Lindy is a more elastic and less strict dance when compared to the commonly known partner dances. At our level that might not be important, since we usually stick to our memorised patterns and soon get lost if something doesn't turn out properly but more advanced dancers, by contrast, give space to each other while dancing and they often encourage their partners to improvise. The best way to understand Lindy is by watching an advanced couple on the dancefloor. If you ignore their footwork for a moment and just look at their bodies, they seem to be connected by a rubber band and constantly stretch apart only to almost bounce together a moment after, preventing this by twisting around each other or passing under the partner’s arm. To reach a point of fluid dancing, though, an important amount of time spent into practicing is required, because hopping well is a quite difficult task.

This summer my girlfirend and me participated in the Herräng Dance Camp, the Swedish festival I've mentioned before, in order to boost our dancing skills. We inscribed to a week of classes in the intermediate course. At that moment we didn't know that Herräng was the world's cathedral of Lindy Hop with both, dancers and teachers coming from all over the world. During our week there we were tought by six different couples of teachers, all of them considered to be world class hoppers and we even had a master class given by an old Lady called Dawn Hampton who back in the golden age of Lindy Hop was Frank Manning's dancing partner. Herräng was a very interesting experience to us and quite a different way to make vacations. Furthermore we got to know interesting people from all over the world and we're already keen on returning there in 2012.

Dirk Hamdorf - October 2011

Come on Guys, a Little Bit of Common Sense!

Welcometo our school,

we share with you the thrill of breaking linguistic barriers and sharing our experiences with the rest of the world,

there's nothing more challenging and enriching than getting to know other cultures, their social and even working conditions.

We only hope you students don't expect to learn a foreign language

just by coming to class,

that'd be totally unrealistic and immature!

In a way, a language school's like a music school,

you NEED TO PRACTICE your instrument -that is, your voice- outside so

Homework

is essential to complete your learning process; otherwise, please forget it, don't waste your time and ours.

READINGout loud and SPEAKING must be part of it, not for too long, but at least five or ten minutes of your daily homework routine:

Read the transcripts of any LISTENING activity while playing it; then, tape your voice. Wait for a few days, and replay both your own recording and the listening track. Can you recall most of the message?

PLEASURE& COMPANIONSHIP

are usually the keys to keep up these challenges, so try to enjoy the ride with someone else:

Read lyrics, Listen to songs, Sing along and Learn them.

Read movie transcripts and watch them, then memorize a few sentences, play with pronunciation and entonation.

Review the upcoming lesson beforehand, complete the new VOCABULARY & GRAMMAR activities on your workbook and check it out with the answer key. Then,make a point of practicing the new stuff in the SPEAKING activities of the next class.

Keep in mind that we're all competent speakers of our mother tongue without any grammar explanation whatsoever, and so are speakers from other languages,

Which, of course, doesn't release us teachers from the resposibility to explain GRAMMAR or answer your doubts, but it gives you enough autonomy to practice SPEAKING in the classroom with limited supervision for

both purposes: accuracy and fluency.

Remember that understanding, completing and checking any activity from the student's book, workbook or grammar book is only half of your assignment, the other extremely important half is to transform those examples into personal statements with an emotional load and the commitment to verbalize them right away.

Being repeatedly exposed to the new code and using it is obviously the best way to increase your activevocabulary and language structures -particularly in advanced courses.

If you follow these instructions, you can rest assured that your real command of a foreign language and your self-esteem will increase dramatically; were you visiting or working in another country, your linguistic adaptation should be fast and smooth; otherwise, you might pass a certificate exam, but you won't experience the deep satisfaction of sharing your music, that is, using a language with ease and fluency.

Screenwriter Paul Laverty's Article on Route Irish

 

We are all familiar with the ritual of the body of a dead soldier returning from foreign soil; solemn music, the national flag, escorts and salutes recorded in detail by the nation’s media. Words of consolation flow from politicians and generals to broken-hearted relatives, many so young they often clutch infants.   It wasn’t quite that way for Deely, the sister of Robert, an ex-Paratrooper who was ambushed in Iraq.  He was flown back from Kuwait and arrived at Glasgow airport.  The undertaker told Deely there were ten bodies on the plane that day, two of which were unidentifiable.  Robert’s coffin looked “like a big orange crate”.  There was no fanfare, no union jack, no journalists and not one question.  His death, as far as we know, wasn’t added to any list.  The reason is simple.  Robert was no longer a Paratrooper, but a private contractor.  Some call them private soldiers, or Corporate warriors, or security consultants. Iraqis call them mercenaries.  

The business of war is being privatised slowly and deliberately before our eyes.  Robert’s orange crate of a coffin tells us so, as do the statistics.  Patrick Cockburn, a well respected commentator on Iraq, estimated that there were around 160,000 foreign contractors in Iraq at the height of the occupation, many of whom, perhaps as many as 50,000, were heavily armed security personnel.  The conduct of the war, and occupation afterwards, would have been impossible without their muscle.

Thanks to Paul Bremer, the US appointed head of the Coalition Provisional Authority each and every one of those contractors was given immunity from Iraqi law in the shape of Order 17 which was  imposed on the new Iraqi Parliament.  (Order 17 lasted from 2003 till the beginning of 2009.)

Nobody is interested in counting how many Iraqi civilians have been killed or injured by private contractors, but there is a vast body of evidence to suggest that there has been widespread abuse.  Blackwater’s massacre of 17 civilians in the middle of Baghdad was the most notorious incident, but there were many more that went unreported.  One senior contractor told me, on condition of anonymity, that he spoke to a South African who told him killing an Iraqi was just like “shooting a Kafir”. Other bone fide contractors, proud of their professionalism, told me of their disgust at the violence of “the cowboys”.  If a contractor was involved in an incident which caused a fuss, they were whisked out of the country by their company.  Impunity, by order.

While lowly contractors gambled with lives and limbs on Route Irish, the Chief executives of those same companies made fortunes.  Mr David Lesar, chief executive of Halliburton, (former CEO being Dick Cheney) earned just under 43 million dollars in 2004. Mr Gene Ray of Titan earned over 47 million between 2004 and 2005.  Mr JP London of CACI earned 22 million.  The devil is always in the detail.  Private contractors charged the US army up to 100 dollars to do a single soldier’s laundry bag.  In an official report dated January 2005 the Special Investigator General for Iraq Reconstruction Stuart Bowen revealed that over 9 billion dollars had disappeared in fraud and corruption, and that was only during a very limited period of the Provisional Authority.  Financial impunity too.

As one contractor told me the “place stank of money”.  Little wonder poorly paid soldiers and elite Special Forces left in such numbers to join these private military corporations, as they saw their chance of a life time “to load up”. 

These men “load up” with more than cash. 

We are now used to seeing images of carnage and slaughter “over there.”  We are accustomed to stories of missing billions, corporate greed, abuse, torture, and secret prisons. The Lancet’s detailed estimate of 654,965 dead as at June 2006 is almost beyond the mind’s capacity to grasp.  It all seems now at a safe distance in time and place. Iraq fatigue, we are told, is upon us.

But “over there” is on its way back home to the UK and the United States.  Iraq is inside the heads of “our boys”.

I was stunned to learn from the charity Combat Stress that deals with ex soldiers suffering from Post Traumatic Stress syndrome that on average, it takes approximately 17 years for PTSS to manifest itself.   They are bracing themselves (as is the US army) for a massive surge in the years to come.

Norma, a gentle nurse on the point of retiring who had spent years with ex-soldiers, opened the way for this story when she told me “many of these men are in mourning for their former selves.”  An ex-soldier showed me a painting he had drawn of himself.  “I just want my old self back.”      

Order 17 may have been revoked in Iraq but its spirit still reigns supreme: the stink of impunity, the lies, the contempt for international law, the undermining of the Geneva conventions, the secret prisons, the torture, the murder……the hundreds of thousands of dead. As I imagine the intellectual authors of the above, Bush, Blair, and co with Aznar tailing behind, collecting their millions in after dinner speeches and setting up their interfaith foundations I cannot help but think of the nurses in Falujah today assisting the births of babies born with two heads and deformed bodies thanks to the chemical bombs rained on that city.  Our gift to the future.

In a shameful speech to the soldiers of Fort Bragg on the 14th of December 2011 marking the end of the US military occupation Obama told the cheering troops they would be leaving with "their head held high". With the usual mix of sentimentality and hypocrisy in which they excel, they mourned their dead and ignored the Iraqi slaughter. In a decent world they would hang their heads in shame, beg forgiveness for their brutality, and start paying compensation to the millions of lives destroyed for generations to come.

          

Paul Laverty - 14th of December 2011.

Ken Loach and Paul Laverty at Cannes 2010

Collaborative Writing and Guided Compositions

Collaborative Writing and Guided Compositions

INSTRUCTIONS

1.pick up paragraphs, copy and paste, then adapt the text to suit your needs,

2.formal writing style with some informal expressions to jazz it up-no contractions

3.Please use TimesNewRoman type of 12

4.print it out and deliver by December 12/13

5.introduce ammendments and rename document as DVC- FirstNameLastName 5ABC – chapter

6.send to dmncmndz@gmail.com with name of document as subject

Syntactic and Style Analysis of Chapter …............ from

The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown

This three-page chapter describes Character's struggles to run away from.../discover the truth/reveal the identity/accomplish his objective of (gerund)

 (Name of character) (describe action) in this short/long fast-paced chapter, taking place in... and involving as well (name of other characters).

The action of this chapter takes place in …., is described from the point of view of (name of character) and involves as well (name of other characters). The chapter deals with... and its most striking/surprising aspect is...

 As compared to the film, this chapter is included in one scene/takes a few seconds/minutes/is omitted.

 I loved/liked/disliked/loathed Tom Hanks' interpretation of symbologist Robert Langdon, as well as Audry Tautou in the role of cryptographer Sophie Neveu. It is interesting to see/I just can not believe that topics such as the holy grail, the supposed marriage between Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene, their descendence, the sacred femenine, etc... have stirred up/provoked the interest of millions of readers from all walks of life/ranging from scholars, critics, christians, etc...

At a linguistic level, the vocabulary that I found more interesting/practical/exotic for personal use in compositions or conversations is … (no more than ten-include them with a synonimous or short definition).

The most unusual syntactic structures spotted/found in this chapter were coordinate/subordinate/conditional/passive/subjunctive sentences (write a note and include the examples at the end of the composition).

Other topics researched here included are /From all topics of research suggested/, my focus of interest has been on.../my personal preferences led me to analyse...

verb tenses,

sentence types,

connectors, including conditional sentences,

gerund clauses,

phrasal or prepositional verbs,

use of prepositions as connectors,

transposition of clauses, use of adjuncts,

direct speach/indirect speech,

figures of speech,

I selected/preferred these researching topics because I need to impove my speaking command of the foreign language, not only for my job and education but also for holidays; besides, I think that good speaking skills will bring about an immediate improvement of the rest of skills, being listening or even grammar/

I selected/preferred these researching topics because I need to improve my writing skills in college; besides, I feel more secure with a good understanding of grammar, that is, how a language works and what are the rules before practicing orally/

Since I read the novel and watched the film, and since I have also read the rest of novels by this same author, Angels and Demonds, Deception Point, The Lost Symbol, I can also compare style and plot structure or the differences between the book and the film/

Since I dislike this kind of teasing novels but empty of good literature, I have compared syntactic and grammar features with the same characteristics in my favourite kind of novel/ what it is believed to be a master piece of world literature/

These are the elements recounted which were found from a total of ….......... units or sentences of chapter …........

list of elements and numbered notes (if you din't do it before),

Therefore, my research seems to/ does not seem to confirm our hypothesis.

Name

Place and date

NOTES

copy a selection of examples from the novel in italics.

Proyecto final de máster: "Vídeo en el aula"

Hola de nuevo, Mingo.

¡Gracias! lo postearé.

Te envió al final del mensaje un texto explicativo sobre mi proyecto. Te agradezco mucho el que hagas difusión, de verdad.

Por lo demás, no conozco ningún curso como el que dices, aunque compañeros del máster han planteado proyectos similares pero utilizando Twitter. La verdad es que las nuevas tecnologías dan mucho juego, se pueden hacer muchas cosas. Lo que no sé es cuántas personas pueden hablar a la vez por skype, en caso de que planteeis un curso en grupo.

Saludos,
Vanessa


****************
Soy Vanessa Ramírez , licenciada en Bellas Artes, aficionada al cómic, la música y el cine, y disfruto trabajando con niños y adultos en aquello que tenga que ver con la expresión y la comunicación.

Actualmente estoy realizando el Proyecto final del Máster en Educación y TIC de la UOC, que consiste en una plataforma colaborativa virtual para potenciar el uso didáctico del vídeo en el aula, de forma que:

• se potencie la visión crítica respecto las imágenes, reflexionando sobre lo que nos dicen y cómo se pueden usar.
• se estimule la expresión y comunicación de ideas y pensamientos en el aula.
• se trabajen contenidos de diferentes materias, ayudando en la práctica docente y estimulando la participación de los alumnos.

Por otra parte, el proyecto pretende aprovechar las interacciones que hacen posible las TIC en sus diferentes vertientes (comunicativa, informativa, etc) con tal de que los docentes interesados en el uso didáctico del vídeo puedan compartir experiencias, hacer preguntas relacionadas, buscar propuestas y recursos, inspirarse en otros trabajos...

La plataforma, realizada con la colaboración de la Asociación Espiral, es la siguiente: http://videoenelaula.wordpress.com/

Me gustaría animaros a participar en ella, para que pueda ser útil y enriquecedora. Podeis hacerlo de diversas formas, explicadas aquí.


¡Muchas gracias!


Vanessa Ramírez León
http://about.me/vanerale

***********

2011/11/30 Vanessa Ramírez <vanerale@gmail.com>
¡Gracias Mingo! te envío el link al post sobre Livescripts:

http://videoenelaula.wordpress.com/2011/11/28/livescripts/

Si te puedo ayudar en algo, aquí estoy.

¡Saludos!

Vanessa