Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

Valentine's Day is a big thing at my little international school. The kids all come prepared with roses and chocolates or heart-shaped candies for each other and their teachers. (Yes, I'm talking about high school kids!) The Student council does a big fund-raiser by selling and delivering hand-made cards and candies (even singing valentine's!) and running a chocolate fountain at lunch. Everyone is encouraged to dress up in red or pink and white (rather than our school uniform). Teachers had better be prepared to have something slightly special to hold their students' attention!

Grade 9: Just by luck we were doing the balcony scene of Romeo and Juliet-- how perfect was that! My students are mostly not native speakers of English, and Shakespeare can be hard going for them. I found a wonderful set of support activities for lower ability students at teachit.co.uk-- some matching things and other activities that get the kids looking critically at sections of the text. Today, after a bit of eye rolling at the "Romeo, Romeo" one students asked "Just why is Romeo and Juliet so popular anyway?" Good question, which since it came from one of them rather than from me, will be an excellent one for them to formulate an answer to as we continue through the play.

My AP English kids, who are currently working on argument, were rolling on the floor at "Love is a Fallacy" This is a great little story and good review for logical fallacies. We watched a modernized video version from Mutlimedia-NY which is available as a free download. then looked at the original 1951 text, discussed the fallacies and answered some questions.

My other groups read NY Times articles about love accompanied with "My Perfect Mate" or other pre-reading surveys. There's a nice NYTimes lesson plan using My Coy Mistress which fit in with the group doing poetry.

Don't you just love the Internet and wonderful resources like New York Times among others!

All in all a satisfying day. Too bad there is no romantic evening for me. I spent the weekend working on curriculum documents and now I have a stack of essays to be graded and another set of drafts to be commented on before tomorrow comes. :-(