In our first class we will be looking at material produced in the University and adapting it to our teaching context. we have some two sets of songs with acompanying lesson plans. tomorrow we will be looking closely at the first two lesson plans.

We also recieved a holidays magazine. it is a very interesting book on US holidays. I think that this book will be useful as a model for the creation of personal media by the students. It presents a model for approaching a holiday from which the students can draw to create their own material. You could ask students to look at the holidays presented and identify the familiar celebrations, then explore the similarities and differences in the way of celebrating so we can finish with creating a piece appropriate for the local culture. The magazine then is a scafold on which to support the re-creation of knowledge through personal media.

With the songs we could explore something similar. The songs, because they are short and full of imagery, are good for close reading exercises. It is good material to encourage exploration of suttle messages and appropriation of concepts. Singing is a form of appropriation, when I sing the song, it becomes mine. Then we can ask our students: What are you singing about? I am curious to hear the answers.

My homework is to preview the material and tomorrow we will have interesting discussions I am sure.

The second class was an introduction to the topic of Culture. I have to say that it was a very interesting presentation and I will link to my notes for now and later will try to post some thoughts.

Link to notes on the topic of culture.