self access

hi friends. i want to share another nice application in metu college with you. maybe u already know but there is a teacher who has no class and she is walking in and around the library all the time. i wondered what she was doing. i asked to my mentor teacher and she said that:
"she is self access teacher and if there is a student who needs extra teaching in a particular english topic, this teacher teaches in breaktimes or in their english hours. if it is english hour, the student is directed to self access, rather than the normal course, so that he can close the distance as fast as possible..."

abbreviations in ELT

hi friends and teachers (from now on :)). i just fed up with facing many abbreviations that i dont know and i decided to look them up on the internet. they are the names of the organizations related to elt issues. i thought it would be nice to share them with you. here is the link you can follow:

http://a4esl.org/q/h/nr/abbr-elt.html

acrostic poetry

hi friends! one of my friend asked me do you write acrostic poems? i said no but i didn't know what acrostic poem is. but my answer was not a lie as i don t write any kind of poem. but i needed to learn it. i googled it up and i wanted to share what i have got so that if one asks you what is acrostic poem, you can answer:)):

Acrostic poetry is a form of short verse constructed so that the initial letters of each line taken consecutively form words. The term is derived from the Greek words akros, "at the end," and stichos, "line." The word acrostic was first applied to the prophecies of the Erythraean Sibyl, which were written on leaves and arranged so that the initial letters of the leaves always formed a word. Acrostics were common among the Greeks of the Alexandrine period and with the Latin playwrights Ennuis and Plautus. Medieval monks and poets also made this form of poetry popular during the Middle High German and Italian Renaissance periods.

An example of an acrostic written by the popular Edgar Allan Poe was found in his cousin Elizabeth Herring's album. Based on the handwriting and signature, it was probably written between 1831 and 1834.

ELIZABETH

ELIZBETH -- it surely is most fit
[Logic and common usage so commanding]
In thy own book that first thy name be writ,
Zeno 1 and other sages notwithstanding;
And I have other reasons for so doing
Besides my innate love of contradiction;
Each poet -- if a poet -- in persuing
The muses thro' their bowers of Truth or Fiction,
Has studied very little of his part,
Read nothing, written less -- in short 's a fool
Endued with neither soul, nor sense, nor art,
Being ignorant of one important rule,
Employed in even the theses of the school --
Called -- I forget the heathenish Greek name --
[Called anything, its meaning is the same]
"Always write first things uppermost in the heart."

The acrostic spells "Elizabeth Rebecca," Poe's cousin; her full name was Elizabeth Rebecca Herring. Miss Herring says that Poe wrote her love poetry in the early days.

good news!!

i needed to inform you all that the disabled student in my class that i have mentioned before got recovered. yes i have learned that he had broken one of his leg when he was in uludag, and after operations for months, he can walk now, not run or jump, though. but i hope he will be able to run and jump just like the others, soon.
and i wonder what did he feel at first, just after he left the wheelchair and looked at it. or what would you think?

april fools' day

it was a very enjoyable day the 1 st of april. the 2 nd grade pupils had prepared a joke for us. their classroom teacher warned our mentor teacher and us before entering the class. she said, they had hidden under the tables and let you pretend that you don t see them. we got the message and entered the class. they were under their desks and they were literally seen but we didn' t look at them. and we pretended to be surprised. and there were two of them standing in front of the class and one of them said "mam, my friends are absent today only we two are here" by the way others were laughing under the desks. it was very hard for me not to laugh but our mentor teacher said. " aaa! where are they?" and they all appeared suddenly. we pretended to got shocked. and they all shouted " 1 nisaan!" . our mentor teacher said "oh yeah it is april fools' day and let us not have lesson today. let us play games and sing songs." and all the class cried in happines "yees" ooooleeey". and she said "1 nisaaan".

what a great disappointment for them!

one detail

there is a disabled student in my class and he sits on his wheel chair, he cannot walk. yes it is not sth good but what is fine here is that he is not isolated from his friends, rather he is very symphatic and all his friends show their regards towards him. for example while entering the class he is the first one or in lunch time. in break times his friends drive him to the wherever he wishes. in fact there are servants in the coridors and it is one of their responsibility, i dont mean they are not doing their job, but other pupils don t let those men as they love their friends.

for example, last week it was a computer session and everybody were in quee and he is the first of course. our mentor teacher asked me to drive him to the lab. i began to drive but the servants run towards us and he said " let me drive him". and i said "no, its not a problem for me". but he insisted and he took the weelchair back.

and i thought he is the most fortunate disabled i have ever seen!

computer and the pupils

hi everybody. i have one thing to share with you. the 2 nd grade class we are attending in metu college has an hour allocated for self english practice through computer. they go to the computer lab in one of the lesson time and it is in fortnight periodically. as they study a topic they practice those topics using computers. in computers there is a soft library including the subjects in their coursebooks, they switch on the computers by them selves and they are able to use the computer by themselves. there are few students who cannot do all that job properly but they are learning.

i think it is a very good activity for children to make them familiar with the computers and especially the academic use of technology.

a nice application

hi friends i want to share sth that i got surprised very much. last week i saw that they have a fruit hour and the students are to eat fruit of the day. last week we also participated that program and it was the apple hour. our mentor teacher and we ate some apple, too. and i saw that the students who would not like to eat fruit are required to get permission from the teacher. for example there were two students and one is suffering from stomchache and the other is suffering from toothache and they explained their excuse and they were the only ones who doesn t eat that day. as we all know fruit is very important for health and however the school seems placing importance upon freedom, they don t let students free about critical issues such as health.
they have to take care of their health.

it is just the first impression we have!

It has been two days since I have got my first impression about METU College. In these two days we had the chance of sharing our first impressions with our instructor. That is why I will not write the same things that I have said in the class but I have some other points that I want to share with you.

As far as I can see most people felt the same things about the school however there were differences between the perceptions of being a teacher in a primary school. Some of my friends, including me, has experienced that it is not that easy to be a teacher in a primary school or it is not that unfortunate to have pupils who are speaking English very well already.

I think the important thing is that this is just the first meeting and there will probably be lots of changes in our way of thinking about the college, the teachers, the pupils and the English teaching as a vocation. I think we should keep in our mind that whatever we feel about our first visit, our words in the last class were not the reflection of our first impression but the last impression as we haven’t gone to the school for a second time yet. We will go to the METU college for a second and third and forth…etc. at the end of the semester, when we are asked what is our opinion about the school, most probably we will have sentences like “at first I thought…, but in fact….”. The time will fill in the blanks.

So, make sure that it is just the first impression we have.

hi