Trips, Visits and Events
OPEN HOUSE IN CHAVILLE
Reports by Martine Asseraf, Sally Elie, Cynthia Kaiser, Ann King, Marie Roux and Olivier Kaiser.
September 26, 2005
The Open House evening in Chaville offered parents a glimpse into their children’s lives at school. Happily seated at student desks, participants were treated to sample lessons taught by the SIS secondary teaching team.
Bulletin contributors were unfortunately not present in every class so our apologies to Maryama Antoine, Peter Rist, Darren Griffiths and Judy Cellier. We are certain that all the workshops were as intellectually stimulating as those described below.
The general feeling as parents gathered outside to chat after class, was one of enthusiasm. One mother summed up the evening with this remark, "I wouldn’t mind going back to school myself!"
Betty Lau: WB Yeats (English Première/Terminale)
First and foremost, a big thank-you to Ms Lau for this great evening that she initiated.
As she explained the verses of a difficult poem (To Ireland in the Coming Times), obscure passages came to life; she actually "bade all (...) candles flare/to light a measure here and there." Her delight was so catching that the parent-students were all suddenly very fond of Irish poetry, and wanting to learn more.... Asked whether she did not find Yeats too difficult for teenagers, she told how her students started singing his poems in the bus during last year’s trip to Ireland. No doubt that this year too, our kids will enjoy themselves enormously.
Paddy Salmon "The importance of landscape in Emma Woodhouse’s education" (Emma, Jane Austen).
To help the audience understand the setting, Paddy Salmon first drew a map of the idyllic English landscape Emma walks into as she is about to meet her prospective husband. This gave us the opportunity to really enter the novel.
As we were strolling with Emma and her friends along the river, in the shade of limes, Paddy explained the effet de trompe l’œil built into the perspective, and pointed out the relationship between the location of the different houses and the place their owners occupied in the social scale. He then replaced the novel in its time (1816, one year after Waterloo and the end of the Napoleonic era, a period of social and economic unease for England).
Links between literary and socio-historical themes emerged (What is the industrial revolution going to bring to Emma’s secluded and peaceful world?) and the whole novel appeared both appealing and perfectly clear. As our children have been studying the industrial revolution in history and economy classes, this particular point of view on the novel was very welcome.
They also have the privilege of seeing things from different angles, for example, being able to see Waterloo both as a victory and a defeat is good training to understand the world. Thanks to Paddy for giving them this kind of understanding, as well as the desire to read literature.
Pat Short: Creative Thinking (English 4e/3e)
Our cell phones turned off and our chewing gum thrown out (class rules for Pat Short’s 3e/4e students), we were ready to try our hands at guessing, imagining and concluding the story of Tanzan and Eikido.
Dictation and punctuation were painless as we participated in this creative thinking exercise designed to introduce a unit on narrative writing or short stories. Fortunate are the students who have their creative juices stimulated by such teaching!
Vicki Salmon : Tich Miller and Incendiary (Anglais 6e/5e)
Malgré le titre quelque peu sibyllin de cet atelier (ou peut-être grâce à lui!), la classe de Vicki Salmon s’est rapidement remplie de parents impatients de savoir à quelle sauce anglaise ils allaient être mangés...
Vicki a distribué deux poèmes mettant en scène des enfants dans des situations difficiles, et nous a fait comprendre, comme elle l’avait fait avec ses élèves, à travers des questions, des jeux de rôle ou des discussions, de quelle façon leurs auteurs font ressentir les situations et les sentiments.
Vocabulaire spécifique, rimes enjambées, allitérations ou assonances, tout est susceptible de contribuer à l’atmosphère voulue par le poète. Nos enfants ont bien de la chance de découvrir toutes ces subtilités avec une prof à l’enthousiasme si communicatif!
Brian Brazeau: Shakespeare Workshop (English Terminale)
Brian Brazeau introduced us to the character of Edmund in King Lear (Act I, scene 2).
Edmund is one of Shakespeare’s villains. In Shakespeare’s plays, Mr Brazeau pointed out, the bad characters are usually smarter and more interesting than the good; just remember Richard III or Othello.
Edmund’s tragedy is to be born out of wedlock. In his monologue, he pours out his rage against his half brother Edgar, the legitimate heir. He intends to dupe his father into casting Edgar away and giving him, the bastard, the power and recognition he craves.
Many issues are at stake here, as Brian Brazeau demonstrated with amazing speed and enthusiasm: identity, legitimacy, "natural" rights versus social ones, and the architecture of power, from family to society.
But studying Shakespeare from the outside is not enough. The plays were written to be performed, or at least read aloud. So, to help his "students" feel Edmund’s point of view, Mr Brazeau asked some (intimidated) parents to read a few lines. This obliged everyone to step into the character’s shoes, to feel his anger (the parents who were not angry enough were duly corrected) and to live for a brief time in Shakespeare’s world. This is a rare pleasure, that our lucky teenagers get to experience during their Terminale year.
Ross Black: Aims, expectations and practice of history teaching at OIB level.
Mr Black explained how he taught his students to evaluate their own essays and to understand what particular aspects they should work on.
He then asked the parents to analyse and comment on historical documents. The curriculum goes as far as the 1980s, but not further, since English and American teachers prefer not to study very recent history.
The subject at hand was "the causes of WW2", and a study of Hitler’s character - was he an opportunist or did he have a plan in mind? In Mr. Black’s class, students are asked to think for themselves, to try and form their own opinions. This is indeed a very creative approach, and one that will follow them wherever they go, at university and in their professional lives.
Michelle May: Historians and How they Work (History/Geography 6e)
Sixième students are requested, as we parents were on Monday night, to construct a timeline of their lives, including at least three national or international events, three precise personal dates and three personal accomplishments. The objective is to learn how historians work, and how they categorize and present historical information.
Parents spent about 5 minutes working and then were asked to present the events. Ms May drew a general time line on the board, which she filled in with the information given. She then asked us to create three periods, naming them as we chose, to distinguish the events listed on our time lines. This reflects the way that history is broken into periods, i.e., the Stone Age, the Middle Ages or Renaissance period, for historical definition.
Ms May then explained different kinds of resource materials: primary - those created at the time of the event, such as journals, diaries, books, paintings, etc., and secondary - those created after the event. She also discussed doing outside research such as using the library, books and websites; and creating a list of reliable websites to help define parameters and assist in eliminating material from dubious sources. Everyone appreciated the "hands-on" style of the class very much.
Cindy Plecko : Les nouvelles technologies de la formation (Histoire-Géo 5e/4e)
Une fois trouvée, la salle 107 où se passait l’atelier de Mme Plecko s’est avérée être la salle informatique.
Mme Plecko nous a demandé de choisir un poste et de l’allumer. Ensuite, à l’aide d’un plan de recherche fourni et expliqué par notre prof d’un soir, nous avons, chacun à son rythme, visité plusieurs sites internet qu’elle utilise en classe pour chercher des informations ou servir comme point de départ de discussions, sans parler de stimuler l’intérêt de ses élèves. A la fin de notre atelier nous avions très envie, comme les élèves apparemment, de recommencer à la maison.
Dernière modification le 08-10-06 par
