English Week 2012!

Last week, the other English teachers and I prepared a series of open lessons and extra-curricular competitions for English week in our school. As usual, I prepared some decorations for the door to my little mini-classroom. I've found that the students love checking out whatever I post on my door, so its actually one of the most effective ways of advertising my events and projects to my students.

Don't laugh at my crayon drawings....

I prepared a poster about school rules for one of my English teachers.

We started off the week on Monday with a small assembly of 2nd through 4th form students. Three girls from the 7th form prepared a presentation on why English is important in our lives, and they translated it into Russian for the younger students. I tried to capture what our hall assemblies look like, but the lighting from the big windows makes it difficult.

The first competition of the week was for 10th form students. Students from the 10A and 10B classes split into 2 teams and answered a series of trivia questions about Great Britain, including geography, government, history and of course the major facts about London.

The Rainbow team. 

Team Smiles with their teacher, Svetlana Ivanovna. 

Two of the students acted as hosts for the competition (or "leaders", as they refer to it in Russian) and the English teachers served as the jury panel. 

The setup of the competition. 

Students answering questions from the hosts. 

Next, the 9th form students prepared some projects about environmental protection and presented them during an open lesson. An "open" lesson is when anyone is permitted to come and observe the lesson, this usually means that the director or one of our vice principals will attend the lesson.

Diana from 9A presents her project about the different ideas of things you can do with an old candy box. 

Katya from 9A presents the 3 R's.

Misha from 9A presents about water pollution.

Tanya from 9V with her leaflet about 7 important environmental problems. 

Katya from 9V presenting her project about the protection of whales. 

I organized an after-school competition for students from the 4th form with another one of the English teachers. I only teach the 4A class, but the 4th graders love coming to my English club to play UNO every week. We had the kids divide into 2 teams and they competed to see which team could complete coloring and matching worksheets faster and correctly. We also learned and sang Old MacDonald Had a Farm together :)

The team from 4B. 

The students from 4A. 

Explaining the different tasks in the competition. 

Connecting the dots with the alphabet... this was completely candid and its my favorite photo. 

Liliya Nikolaievna checking one of the worksheets. 

Teaching the words to Old MacDonald. 

A vocabulary game - I said a word in Russian and they had the find the correct translation in English. 

The 4B students. 

With my students from 4A. 

This year, the Men's Day holiday was in the middle of English week. This holiday is not an official school holiday, but women in Ukraine still give cards and small gifts to their husbands, sons and friends to celebrate it (similar to Father's Day in the US).

The girls from 11A welcomed all the male students into the school by congratulating them. 

The girls from 5A organized some interesting contests... including apple eating. 

They also had a mini-show for their class party, including dancing :)

Men's Day was traditionally celebrated as Soviet Army Day in the past, but it has now been changed to the Defense of the Fatherland Day (День защитника Отечества). My teachers had prepared a small lunch party (in the regular Ukrainian style) and we celebrated this holiday after the school concert. A few old veterans from WWII came to our school concert and I wanted to take a photo of them, but I was afraid to ask because I didn't want to be rude. But it was amazing to see that they were so decorated with medals and its crazy to think that they were young men on the battlefield during the war.

One of the 11th form girls singing at the school concert. 

The lunch table... complete with sandwiches, salo, and pickes!

A few of my teachers with our physics teacher Yuri Alexeyevich. 

An ensemble of our teachers singing for the male teachers. 

We finished up English week with a display of the students' project work. There were reports on the environment from the 9th form, media/press in Ukraine from the 8th form, leaflets about sports from the 6th form, recipes for cooking from the 5th form, and different drawings from 4th form.

Sasha, Inna and Leyla from the 9A class with their projects. 

And the final competition of English was was about pancakes, but this has already been a super long post so I will write about it separately in my next post :D

Euro-Club: an English Week Karaoke Talent Show

Last Friday, I went to my friend Whitney's school in Kharkiv to attend their karaoke show. Whitney is a TEFL (Teacher of English as a Foreign Language) Peace Corps Volunteer like myself, and she organized this karaoke talent show as the culmination of her school's English week, and it was certainly an impressive show! The school's auditorium was all decorated professionally and the event was called Euro-Club, complete with MCs, a jury panel, and a projector screen of music videos and lyrics.

Whitney with a few of the English teachers from around her district and fellow PCVs - Sally, Ty, Sam and myself.

We kicked off the show by singing the Glee version of Bill Wither's "Lean on Me". Students from the 5th through 11th forms participated in this event, complete with costumes and choreographed backup dancers. They all memorized their songs and sang very well in English, I was really impressed! I tried to sing a song in Russian called "Pozvenee" by Tatyana Bulanova and was horribly embarassed because I didn't realize that I wouldn't be able to see the screen with the lyrics from on stage. Here are a few highlights from the show:

The 7th graders sang a song called "Valentine".

These 5th graders were adorable, they stole everyone's heart while singing a Marilyn Monroe song.

Several of the 8th graders performed Bob Marley's "Don't Worry, Be Happy".

A girl from the 9th form sang Maroon 5's "She Will Be Loved".

A group of girls from the 11th form sang and danced to Shakira's "Waka Waka: Time for Africa"

The MCs sang a song in French!

These 5th graders were super cute while singing Aqua's "Barbie Girl".

Overall, I think that a karaoke talent show was a great idea. I might even try to plan an event like this during my school's English week next year :D Sam and I were the only two PCVs that participated as contestants, the others were judges. The panel of judges each held up pieces of paper to give marks from 1 through 10 to each contestant, like American Idol style. After all 14 groups/contestants went, the jury went out to debate and selected the top 3 winners based on their marks and criteria like vocals, pronunciation, overall performance, etc. All of the participants received a little certificate ("gramota" in Russian/Ukrainian) printed in color on glossy photo paper with their names on it. Ukrainians are crazy about certificates like these and all the students were excited to have them. Prizes were given out for the top 3 participants and each participant also received a box of chocolates!

Sam (my sitemate) gave his own rendition of Celo Green's "Forget You".

We were also featured in the Euro-Club's official blog. I am not quite sure what Euro-Club is, but from what I understand, it is about sharing cultures among European countries and it is quite popular among secondary schools in Kharkiv. I will have to research some more information about it... maybe my school will be interested in participating!

English Week Part 2: More Valentines, International Writing Olympics, Puzzles, and "Beyond the Orange Curtain"

This is my 100th post on my blog! So much has changed from my first "Hello World" post, I can't believe it has been more than a year since I started the Peace Corps application process.

The second half of my school's English Week has been really busy! We celebrated Valentine's Day at my school by displaying many more handmade valentines and doing some special activities in our classes. I printed and photocopied a Valentines-themed word search for my 5th form class and a crossword puzzle for my 10th form class. We also had a small competition in the auditorium between the 8th and 9th form classes. Each class selected a male and female representative, and they competed in pairs to answer questions, act out charades, and even dance a slow dance at the end.

One of the 11th form girls hand-sewed this pillow for me! It is super cute and about the size of a steering wheel!

Several of my 5th formers working on the Valentines Day word search worksheet.

I also had 11 students participate in the International Writing Olympics at my school this week! This writing competition was apparently the first of its kind to be held at my school, so I'm glad that at least a handful of my students were able to participate. The IWO is a creative writing essay contest for students ranging from 6th form to University level, coordinated by Peace Corps Volunteers across Ukraine and in the surrounding Eastern European countries. Like English Olympiads, students were each given 3 questions (based on their form) and they select one question to answer in their essay. The students had 60 minutes to write essays based on different prompts, corresponding to their grade level. The essays will be judged by myself and several of my school's English teachers based on a rubric which awards more points to creativity of ideas than perfection of writing mechanics. We will select one winner per form (only 8th-11th forms participated) and send our school's winning essays to compete at the Kharkivs'ka Oblast level. Here are a few sample prompts from the 2010 International Writing Olympics (I don't want to give away any of this year's prompts in case any PCVs haven't had their school-level competitions yet):

• What would you do if you could become invisible? (8th form)
• Why is the grass green? (9th form)
• If people had to hold hands to talk, how would the world be different? (10th form)
• What would the world be like if all cell phones disappeared tomorrow? (11th form)

In English club this week, my 5th-7th formers worked on some American puzzles that I brought from home. One puzzle is a map of the lower 48 United States and the other puzzle is a picture of the $100 bill with Benjamin Franklin on it.

The kids are working hard on matching up all the pieces!

Ta-da! Here is the finished $100 bill puzzle :)

Georgia Tech is ranked 24th in the Peace Corps Top University and College Rankings (for medium sized colleges & universities), which is really exciting! I'm featured for being a current Peace Corps Volunteer in this week's edition of Georgia Tech's campus newspaper, The Technique. You can check out the text version of the article online here or download the full pdf version of this week's newspaper (the article can be found on page 11 and 12).

Several of my 5th formers and I with our "Invitations to a Birthday Party" class writing activity.

Larisa Alexandrovna, a Ukrainian English teacher, and I with some of our 8th form students.

My friend Tiago Forte (a PCV in the same town as my good friend Alison, about an hour from my town) just published a book called "Beyond the Orange Curtain" about his experiences in South America. It is the story of his adventures working and traveling in South America - from the slums of Rio de Janeiro to the Caribbean Coast of Colombia - and what those experiences taught him about life, love, and the Orange Curtain: the bubble that surrounds Orange County and makes life there so different from anywhere else. In the spirit of the Peace Corps, 100% of the proceeds from the sale of this book (after production and shipping costs) will go to fund ABC Camp, a youth summer camp in Ukraine that teaches leadership, creativity, and civic skills. I have also applied to work as a camp counselor at ABC Camp this summer, with the hopes that I can influence some young Ukrainians to become leaders in their schools and communities. With each purchase of the book for $19.95, $12 will be donated to fund the camp. You may also donate to the camp apart from purchasing this book by clicking here.

And last but not least... it has gotten so cold this week that they canceled school yesterday and today (Thursday and Friday). We have had some beautiful sunny days and bright full moon nights this week but they have been very chilly. Apparently it is a school policy to cancel school if it is colder than -25 degrees C outside! I planned a little trivia quiz game on holidays, sports, movies, geography, and music from English speaking-countries for my 8th, 9th and 10th formers and we didn't get to have it because school was canceled. So hopefully it will be the last cold frost of the winter and we can start school again next Monday!

Kicking Off English Week at School

This week is English Week at my school, along with next week. I started off the week by having my 5th, 6th, and 7th formers (graders) make Valentines Day cards during English club. They did a great job, here is a photo of their Valentines posted on the wall in the main hallway on the 1st floor of my school. A few 11th form students made the posters in the middle.

Happy Valentines Day!

My 5th form class is studying holidays right now, so we discussed different holidays in Ukraine and the USA. Then my teacher Larisa and I assigned them Valentines Day cards for homework. I wish I had homework that was as fun as making Valentines Day cards when I was back in school! Here is a photo of me with the 5th formers :)

How do you like my Ukrainian boots with the fur? Those are the boots from my host sister, they have like 4in heels and all the teachers always comment on how they like the boots.

Just for fun, I asked my 8th, 9th and 10th form students to draw a Facebook profile since teenagers in America all use Facebook, as opposed to Vkontakte.ru (the Ukrainian/Russian version of Facebook). I only convinced a few students to do this assignment (since it wasn't mandantory), but here are the profiles that they made! I taped them to the wall of my classroom door and now they can write on each other's walls (with a pen or pencil) in English :-D

Now all of the students love crowding around my door to stare at the Facebook profile pages haha.

 We also played the UNO card game during English club, all my students are crazy about this game! I'm not sure whether its the novelty of the cards or the fact that they can play silently, without needing to practice their English haha. Last week during English Club, I taught my 8-11th formers how to play Go Fish and we ran out of cards to "fish" from really quickly since I only had 1 deck of cards and about 10 students.

UNO!

My school also had its annual Fire Brigade Competition this week between the 8-11th forms. I had never heard of such a competition before, it is apparently all about fire prevention and poison mushroom awareness education. The students performed creative short skits, danced, or sang songs by class on stage in our school auditorium. They all worked very hard on their performances!

A few girls from the 8V class show off their posters of dangerous fire hazards (and to call 101 in case of fire emergency).

Students from the 10A class have to identify different types of poisonous mushrooms as part of the competition.

Several girls from the 11th form dance in traditional Ukrainian dresses as part of their play.