After you've finished reading, get together with your group and make sure everyone understood everything they read. Also, go over the definitions for your vocabulary words together. Finally, come up with three discussion questions to share with the class.
You will be asked to tell the class about your story, to share your vocabulary words and definitions and to present your questions for class discussion afterward.
Keeping in mind your discussion from the classroom, watch this video.
Does it affirm your opinion about beauty? Has it changed your mind at all? Discuss the video and questions with your partner.
Now think of something (a song, a place, a person, etc.) that you find beautiful. Go to your own blog and write a post about your "beautiful thing". Write about what you find beautiful about this thing, and include a prediction about whether or not you think others will find your thing beautiful.
Your homework is to comment on at least one other person's blog post. Mention whether or not you agree that their thing is beautiful, and why you do or don't agree.
Here are some things I find beautiful to help get you started.
Paul Gauguin - Mohana no Atua
Frank Ocean - Thinking About You
William Shakespeare - Sonnet #130
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
Students in Quebec have been protesting proposed provincial tuition hikes since November, and they have recently been receiving a lot of media attention. Check out this timeline of the protests. Read the summary of each article, as well as the entire article from November 10, 2011, and answer the following questions with your partner:
1. Are the proposed tuition hikes fair? Why or why not?
2. Does it seem as if the protests are having any effect?
3. Have there ever been similar protests in your own country? If so, tell your partner what you know about them. If not, why do you think that is?
Now watch the videos below.
Michael Moore on Student Debt: "The Boot On Your Neck"
Write a blog entry (on your own blog) about something you wish you had done differently in the past, or something you wish was different now. Use the "I wish..." and "If only..." structures that we looked at in class. This is also an excellent opportunity to practice mixed conditional sentences. Make your post at least 200 words long, and add any videos or photos you want.
For homework, comment on someone else's post.
Here's a song from my childhood to help get you in the mood . . .
2. lecturing/to lecture 3. seeing/to see; watching/to watch; reading/to read 4. moving/to move; racing/to race; to move; to race 5. driving; taking 6. to drive; to take 7. to inform 8. not listening 9. to explain 10. crying; holding; feeding; crying/to cry; burping; changing
Exercise 35
2. to help; (to) paint 3. quitting; opening 4. to take 5. looking; to answer 6. watching; listening 7. to take; to pay 8. not to wait; to make 9. talking 10. to water 11. going skiing 12. not to smoke 13. not to know/not knowing 14. to renew 15. to tell; to call; going; swimming 16. to ask; to tell; to remember; to bring 17. doing 18. convincing
I'm not a lumberjack
Or a fur trader.
And I don’t live in an igloo
Or eat blubber
Or own a dog sled.
And I don't know
Jimmy, Sally or Suzie from Canada,
Although I'm certain they're really, really nice.
I have a Prime Minister, not a President.
I speak English and French, not American.
And I pronounce it “about”, not “a-boot”.
I can proudly sew my country's flag on my backpack.
I believe in peacekeeping,
not policing,
Diversity not assimilation,
And that the beaver is a truly proud and noble animal.
A toque is a hat. A chesterfield is a couch.
And it is pronounced “zed”. Not “zee”, “zed”!
Canada is the second largest landmass,
The first nation of hockey,
And the best part of North America!
My name is Joe, and I am Canadian!
What are some of the Canadian stereotypes mentioned in the commercial above? Did you believe any of them before you came to Canada? Do you believe any of them now?
Watch the videos below.
Great White North - Back Bacon & Long Underwear
Great White North - Using Snowshoes as Spatulas
Rick Mercer Report - Canada Explained
Rick Mercer On Annoying Canadian Stereotypes
Discuss some of the Canadian stereotypes mentioned in the videos with a partner.
Classified - Oh Canada!
Fill in the blanks on your paper while listening to the song above. What does the singer think about Canadian stereotypes?
Now, talk with a partner from another country. Tell them some stereotypes about your own country. Are any of them true?
The Kids in the Hall was a Canadian sketch comedy group formed in 1984. Their television show ran from 1988 to 1994 in Canada, and 1989 to 1995 in the United States. Below are three sketches from their show. Watch them and leave a comment. Which video do you like the most? Which do you like the least? Which is the funniest? Which is the most interesting?
Read the following story. Click the links to find definitions for new words.
The Gift Of The Magi
by O. Henry
One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it in the smallest pieces of money - pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by negotiating with the men at the market who sold vegetables and meat. Negotiating until one's face burned with the silent knowledge of being poor. Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty-seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas.
There was clearly nothing to do but sit down and cry. So Della cried. Which led to the thought that life is made up of little cries and smiles, with more little cries than smiles.
Della finished her crying and dried her face. She stood by the window and looked out unhappily at a grey cat walking along a grey fence in a grey backyard. Tomorrow would be Christmas Day, and she had only one dollar and eighty-seven cents to buy her husband Jim a gift. She had been saving every penny she could for months, with this result.
Jim earned twenty dollars a week, which does not go far. Expenses had been greater than she had expected. They always are. Many a happy hour she had spent planning to buy something nice for him. Something fine and rare -- something close to being worthy of the honour of belonging to Jim.
There was a tall glass mirror between the windows of the room. Suddenly Della turned from the window and stood before the glass mirror and looked at herself. Her eyes were shining, but her face had lost its colour within twenty seconds. Quickly she pulled down her hair and let it fall to its full length.
Now, Mr. and Mrs. James Dillingham Young had two possessions which they valued. One was Jim's gold time piece, the watch that had been his father's and his grandfather's. The other was Della's hair.
Had the Queen of Sheba lived in their building, Della would have let her hair hang out the window to dry just to reduce the value of the queen's jewels.
So now Della's beautiful hair fell about her, shining like a brown waterfall. It reached below her knees and made itself almost like a covering for her. And then quickly she put it up again. She stood still while a few tears fell on the floor.
She put on her coat and her old brown hat. With a quick motion and brightness still in her eyes, she danced out the door and down the street.
Where she stopped the sign read: "Madame Sofronie. Hair Goods of All Kinds." Della ran up the steps to the shop, out of breath.
"Will you buy my hair?" asked Della.
"I buy hair," said Madame. "Take your hat off and let us have a look at it."
Down came the beautiful brown waterfall of hair.
"Twenty dollars," said Madame, lifting the hair with an experienced hand.
"Give it to me quick," said Della.
The next two hours went by as if they had wings. Della looked in all the stores to choose a gift for Jim.
She found it at last. It surely had been made for Jim and no one else. It was a chain -- simple round rings of silver. It was perfect for Jim's gold watch. As soon as she saw it she knew that it must be for him. It was like him, quiet and with great value. She gave the shopkeeper twenty-one dollars and she hurried home with the eighty-seven cents that was left.
When Della arrived home she began to repair what was left of her hair. The hair had been ruined by her love and her desire to give a special gift. Repairing the damage was a very big job.
Within forty minutes her head was covered with tiny round curls of hair that made her look wonderfully like a schoolboy. She looked at herself in the glass mirror long and carefully.
"If Jim does not kill me before he takes a second look at me," she said to herself, "he'll say I look like a song girl. But what could I do? Oh! What could I do with a dollar and eighty-seven cents?"
At seven o'clock that night the coffee was made and the pan on the back of the stove was hot and ready to cook the meat.
Jim was never late coming home from work. Della held the silver chain in her hand and sat near the door. Then she heard his step and she turned white for just a minute. She had a way of saying a little silent prayer about the simplest everyday things, and now she whispered: "Please God, make him think I am still pretty."
The door opened and Jim stepped in. He looked thin and very serious. Poor man, he was only twenty-two and he had to care for a wife. He needed a new coat and gloves to keep his hands warm.
Jim stopped inside the door, as immovable as a dog smelling a bird. His eyes were fixed upon Della. There was an expression in them that she could not read, and it frightened her. It was not anger, nor surprise, nor fear, nor any of the feelings that she had been prepared for. He simply looked at her with a strange expression on his face. Della went to him.
"Jim, my love," she cried, "do not look at me that way. I had my hair cut and sold because I could not have lived through Christmas without giving you a gift. My hair will grow out again. I just had to do it. My hair grows very fast. Say 'Merry Christmas!' Jim, and let us be happy. You do not know what a beautiful, nice gift I have for you."
"You have cut off your hair?" asked Jim, slowly, as if he had not accepted the information even after his mind worked very hard.
"Cut it off and sold it," said Della. "Do you not like me just as well? I am the same person without my hair, right?
Jim looked about the room as if he were looking for something.
"You say your hair is gone?" he asked.
"You need not look for it," said Della. "It is sold, I tell you--sold and gone, too. It is Christmas Eve, boy. Be good to me, for it was cut for you. Maybe the hairs of my head were numbered," she went on with sudden, serious sweetness, "but nobody could ever count my love for you. Shall I put the meat on, Jim?"
Jim seemed to awaken quickly and put his arms around Della. Then he took a package from his coat and threw it on the table.
"Do not make any mistake about me, Della," he said. "I do not think there is any haircut that could make me like my girl any less. But if you will open that package you may see why you had me frightened at first."
White fingers quickly tore at the string and paper. There was a scream of joy; and then, alas, a change to tears and cries, requiring the man of the house to use all his skill to calm his wife.
For there were the combs -- the special set of objects to hold her hair that Della had wanted ever since she saw them in a shop window. Beautiful combs, made of shells, with jewels at the edge --just the colour to wear in the beautiful hair that was no longer hers. They cost a lot of money, she knew, and her heart had wanted them without ever hoping to have them. And now, the beautiful combs were hers, but the hair that should have touched them was gone.
But she held the combs to herself, and soon she was able to look up with a smile and say, "My hair grows so fast, Jim!"
Then Della jumped up like a little burned cat and cried, "Oh! Oh!"
Jim had not yet seen his beautiful gift. She happily held it out to him in her open hands. The silver chain seemed so bright.
"Isn't it wonderful, Jim? I looked all over town to find it. You will have to look at the time a hundred times a day now. Give me your watch. I want to see how it looks on it."
Instead of obeying, Jim fell on the couch and put his hands under the back of his head and smiled.
"Della," he said, "let us put our Christmas gifts away and keep them a while. They are too nice to use just right now. I sold my gold watch to get the money to buy the set of combs for your hair. And now, why not put the meat on."
To help you understand what happened in the story, watch the following video from a popular children's TV show, "Sesame Street".
Go back and read the story again. Look for things like similes and metaphors. Talk to a partner about the symbolism, setting and characters in the story.
Below are some videos of popular Canadian music, along with a couple of Dave's personal favourites. Check out the videos and leave a comment about the one you like the most. What do you like about it? Does it remind you of music from your home country? What's the same? What's different?
You will be divided into two groups. Each group will present one of the following newspaper articles to the class. Read your article, find a definition for your vocab words, and answer the related questions. We will discuss the two articles as a class afterward.
Group 1
Read and understand this article and answer the following questions:
1) This is an opinion article. What is the writer's opinion? Find words/phrases/paragraphs that show this opinion.
2) Do you agree with what the writer is saying? Why or why not?
3) Do you see any opinions being presented as facts? What are they? Can you find anything online that supports/disproves these "facts"?
Group 1 - Vocab
carbon footprint
volcano
ice fishing
crystal ball
boiling point
Group 2
Read and understand this article and answer the following questions:
1) What is this article about? What's happening in Eastern Canada?
2) What's happening at the golf course?
3) Does David Phillips think things will continue?
The video below has become very popular recently. It has been all over Facebook, and it has incited a huge reaction from many people. Watch the video, and then discuss the following questions with a partner:
1) How important is it to capture Joseph Kony?
2) What should governments of other countries do to help bring him to justice?
Next, watch this video from 11:00 - 18:30 and discuss these questions:
3) In what ways, if any, does the second video change your answers to questions 1 and 2?
4) In what ways, if any, might the first video be considered harmful?
