Wednesday 7th

Today the 11th-grade students in many schools in the Lester B. Pearson School Board had a walkout in the first period to show support to the teachers. Some parents were there because security is a big issue here in something like this: who supervises these students? There were TV cameras as well in front of the school. In fact, the rules for this protest were negotiated upon last week, so these students won't be suspended.

Click here and here to read about the students' walkout

Period 1: English 3

Today I attended classes with Mr. Robert Cloney, another English teacher at St. Thomas. This was his classroom before the bell rang.

From his classroom windows we could see students walk out to protest so he decided to spend some time talking about it. He asked students what they knew about the protest and, since many of them, just mentioned rumours, he used that fact to relate rumours to his class and the novel they are reading right now, Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. At the same time he used a story to show how dangerous rumours can be and to introduce his topic today: storytelling. The moral of this story was : "you can't take rumours back"

He used one more story to show how 'fabrication' works in a story, how important details are, and he asked students to pay attention to different things as he spoke: his tone of voice, the sound effects he used, his eye-contact, how he represented motions of what characters did in the story. This last story also helped him to make students understand that, whenever you hear a story, there is always a little bit of truth in it. This is Mr. Clonesy's definition of storytelling: it is like TV without the box, like theatre without a stage.

His third story today was meant to show the magic of number 3 in storytelling, i.e. the repetition of things three times ( like in Goldilocks, The Three Little Pigs). Repeating things 3 times is enough to make a pattern but not enough to bore an audience. He also focused on the importance of making a story your own and making it happen naturally, adapting to audiences because each audience responds differently.

Periods 2 & 3: English 3IM

Today is vaccination day at school for girls (3 shots: measles, the vaccine to prevent cervix cancer and one more I didn´t get) and boys (1 shot: measles) so throughout the morning there were continuous announcements over the loudspeaker to remind them to take their vaccination books and go to the library to get their shot.

Girls going to get their shots:

In this lesson, Mr. Cloney did an oral activity. First of all, he asked the students how many of them felt comfortable speaking in public and, to my surprise, most of them do.

The object of this activity was to help them feel comfortable and contact with the audience not just with words; this is the activity:

1. The students choose a random piece of paper with a topic on it
2. The students have 2 minutes to brainstorm what they are going to speak about: they are allowed to jot down some ideas but it is an ' impromtu' basis, basically. They can take a pro or a con position or both sides
3. The students stand in front of the class and speak for one minute about the topic (they are timed)

After each student delivers his/her short speech, he stays at the front of the class while the others comment on his production. These are some of the reflections, with a big emphasis on their comfort level at the moment of speaking: eye-contact, gestures, speaking clearly, enthusiasm, the ability of being convincing...

These are some of the topics that came out:

• My favourite meal and how you cook it
• Cities are for people, not cars
• How to buy a car
• Uniforms at school
• Your favourite movie, food, TV show, superhero
• One thing you want to impress someone with
• If I had a mission statement
• My favourite phone app
• Poverty is a state of mind (this topic made the student uncomfortable when he spoke because he did not want to be rude)
• The most difficult thing I have ever done
• Poor health begins at the mind
• 3 uses for a product rather than its intended use
• My first memory
• My favourite movie
• A favourite nickname of mine

These photos were taken in period 1:

And these photos were taken in period 2:

The real purpose of this activity is to prepare the students to feel comfortable when they have to do their presentation for a test: a philosophical question from the novel they are reading ( To Kill a Mockingbird)

Helping some students to prepare the topic

My reflection: it is a great activity to boost students' confidence to speak in front of an audience. I liked the way they (both teacher and students) emphasized positive things but they also pointed out many of the things they did not like,eg. "I felt neglected because he/she did not look at me". I also liked the way the teacher made students reflect about their own presentation and subtly encouraged students to do things differently in the future, spending their brainstorm time to take notes, for instance, and telling them to personalize their story to create an intimate contact between the speaker and the audience.

Period 5: Drama 3 INTRODUCTION

Mr. Robert Cloney also teaches this subject; since it is one of the electives, there were more students in the class, 34.

In this class they did an activity which consisted of expressing an emotion with a body part - in silence. By the end of the term, these students will have to represent a 3/4- minute silent play so the activity today was meant to help them get familiar with expressing emotions through gestures.

The class took place after lunch and these students were very talkative so they were reminded that they had to keep an `audience mode´since they would also be evaluated as an audience.


Each student got 2 pieces of paper, where they had to write the name of an emotion and the name of a body part. To help them choose an emotion, he showed them a list - and he had to explain some nouns like `beligerant´; as for the body parts, since we all know what it is like to work with teenagers, he explained that they could get suspended if they wrote a part of the body that was inappropriate.

Then the students left their pieces of paper on different boxes and they formed groups. One student in each group got one note from each box and represented  the emotion to his/her group with the part of the body mentioned there as well. First, they did it in their groups and then in front of the whole class. There were quite a few volunteers.

Period 6: English 3 IB

I went back to Mr. Katz´s class for the last period. After reminding the students of some things ( the blog due tonight, the test on 21, Oct.), he told them they could work on the projects for the whole period. Some worked in the classroom and Mr. Katz was there in case they needed his help.

Here he is showing them how to use the Go-Pro camera:

Most of the students left the classroom to do their videos

Some groups even left the building

This group was looking for a dirty grey car:

And then asked their teacher to be one of the characters, a salesman,  in their videoclip:

Everybody was engaged doing something related to the project but having so much fun... This is how one girl put it as she left the classroom `Mr. Katz, you are giving us too much freedom. I´m not used to it.´

And my day ended with a walk in Centennial Park near my home:

Temperatura hoy: 6ºC- 17ºC ( la sensación por la tarde era de más calor)