Tag: EEH
Man bun hairstyle :)
Personality: Let It Shine!
The 11th grade students from Ms. Ceci, Ms. Maca, and Mr. Garfield’s English classes experienced an ambitious start to the school year. Their first few classes all took place in the English Hub! The topic: personality. It would be more traditional to kick off a new year of foreign language class with a lesson on culture, grammar, key vocabulary, the importance of English in business and diplomacy, or a review of last year’s material. However this English department is more ambitious.
Mr. VanderZee explained the thinking in an anecdote about a friend of his who moved to Chile without any Spanish skills.
One of her friends said, “I am so sad that you’re going to South America. Everything that makes you you: your sense of humor, your passions, your listening to your friends, your thoughtful ideas… that will all be gone when you don’t speak the language. You aren’t going to have any personality in Spanish.” And in a sense, the friend was right. It is harder to really express yourself in a second language. It doesn’t happen overnight, and it can be awkward and frustrating. But English classes at our school are all about helping you reach a level of fluency where you can share who you really are, to let your personality shine, and really communicate.
Students watched a few intriguing TED talks about personality, and took a personality test to consider the results. One highlight for the teachers was seeing the student’s whiteboard annotations from the talks and ensuing discussion. They not only jotted down key phrases and unfamiliar vocabulary, but also diagrammed big ideas. See the links to the talks they enjoyed and more pictures below!
And just FYI, my Spanish-novice friend in Chile has been taking lessons and is doing great! Just as our students are adapting to using English full time while inside the English Hub, the entire country of Chile has been her Spanish classroom–and there’s no better environment for learning a new language than that.
TED Talk: Julian Baggini, “Is there a real you?”
TED Talk: Dan Gilbert, “The psychology of your future self”
The Hub is ready for 2015!
Get ready for a great new year in the Hub! There are some exciting changes waiting for students tomorrow, including a new weekly raffle, some USA state flags flying proudly over the computer lab, and additional upgrades.
This year students will be rewarded for participating in the Hub, and also in their English classes, with raffle tickets. Every Monday, a winner will be drawn to select one of the fantastic prizes, imported right to Chile from the USA. Features include stickers, books, comics, and candies you can’t find in South America.
The Hub also looks better than ever. New shades will help the projectors look great at any time of day, and the new wheels on the moving furniture will help us set up the room in even more creative ways. Your two US-American teachers are also proud to display their home-state flags in the Computer lab–which has also been equipped with air conditioning! Over 100 books and audio CD’s have been added to our library, and students may now check out these resources to take home for one week at a time if they wish. 
Can you spot the new air conditioning unit?
Finally, for the first time students from all grades will be invited to spend 3rd recess in the Hub to enjoy a variety of activities thanks to some extra help from English department teacher.
We can’t wait to see you this week and throughout the rest of 2015!
High School Students Study for Final Tests in Hub
Various high school students chose to study for their finals this week in the Hub. Even though they were required to speak in English, they did a great job explaining core concepts in Biology, Physics, and Math to one another and to Mr. VanderZee. Ms. Sonia even asked some of her brilliant physics students to teach her some of the problems, and they gave an exceptional Physics lesson using the glass walls of the Hub–completely in English! A few words may have been invented until Mr. VanderZee helped by looking them up (do you know how to say “Foci” in another language??)… but the students were very, very impressive.
Good luck to all of them on the results of their final tests, and here’s to an amazing summer of rest for these very hardworking students.
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10th Graders Use Hub for Final Presentations
The 10th grade students in Mr. Garfield’s class used the Hub to present their final project–an investigation about a particular sub-culture. The selected topics ranged from hippies to hipsters, and the presentations were humorous, informative, and very well researched. Great job 10th graders!
10th Graders Prepare for TOEFL
Last week, Mr. Garfield and Ms. Maca’s 19th grade students spent two hours preparing for the TOEFL in the hub. 
Even though they usually complain about the boring practice exercises in their TOEFL prep book, students agree that they feel more relaxed, more interested, and more alive when they work in groups in the Hub. 
They took advantage of the large inviting space with the large glass walsl for writing, and even a “break station” where they could read a magazine or book, or even play a game. 
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Games Build Vocabulary and Communication Skills
Seventh grade students from Ms. Poli’s class played a variety of fun games in the English Hub last week in order to practice vocabulary sets from past units, and improve their communication skills. Some had to ask for their “paydays” as they played the game of LIFE, while others traded Monopoly properties. They also needed to describe words without using certain phrases (think Taboo), and did a great job. They were also joined by two volunteers from the United States!
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Students use organizers in the hub to write exceptional paragraphs
10th graders from Ms. Melo’s class visited the hub to work on writing well-organized paragraphs. They completed a graphic organizer to write a sentence in groups, and then designed their own organizers to match their topics.
Here are some pictures and samples of their excellent work–some chose serious themes, and others are quite funny!
The PSU system, in which Chilean students are selected to enter at different universities according to the scores they get, is a really bad method. In the first place, they determinate every teenager’s future, at a very early age in which is impossible to know what they want to do with their lifes. Secondly, it doesn’t measures all of the habilities people has, such as helping or advicing poeple, or others like running, strenght, dancing or even painting, which may be really important for some persons. Finally, because of the difficult that this test has and the importance the society has given to it, many students get really stressed and freak out at the moment of doing it, that they can’t express all of the knowledge they truly have. Therefore, PSU isn’t a good method to select students and it should be changed.
-Sofia Pavanati
Continue reading Students use organizers in the hub to write exceptional paragraphs
