Film Study

 Kia ora ano. This Term 3 we are learmning about Film Studies and in particular film techniques with my students. One of the techneques we looked at was mise en s'cene - or put in the scene. This is where students look at the set design, costumes, props, compsition, lighting and the general visual environment. 

In order to highlight this technique we decided to creat our own scenes using the backround removal app to pop characters, people, animals, props into our created scene. 

Here is my simple example of what we are creating. 

Creative Writing

Kia ora koutou, this week we have had a teacher trainee Caitlin Thomas, who is studying at the Auckland University, come in and teach our 9T English students creative writing using the SEXE paragraph writing technique. In lesson one students were asked to chose a favorite song, locate and highlight all the nouns, adverbs and adjectives. This activity took a couple of lessons. Yesterday Caitlin worked with the whole class. They chose one song Gangster Paradise by Coolio to study. Using the SEXE paragraph model they started with a statement and what the song is about. They explained in greater detail, their thoughts. They then gave an example by way of a quote from the lyrics, and followed this up with another example before ending with an open link for further discussion. Here is the work our students completed in a lesson.  

2022 Starting with 9T English

Kia ora koutou katoa This year will be my second year teaching Year 9 English with students from the Totara Reo Rua Unit. There are currently 28 students and they are amazing young people very keen to learn and increase their knowledge at Secondary School level. During the first three weeks when we realised we would not have our chrome books until later in the Term, we jumped straight to our second unit which was Speeches. The three topics were (1) an issue at school or in the community, (2) someone I admire (3) determination creates success. It was amazing how many chose the third topic and the content of what they wrote and spoke about was inspiring. I can see very clearly that this group of students are going to be a preasure to teach. I am looking forward to the year ahead.