G10-09 Homework!

Yes, that's right you have homework, G10-09. You thought you'd just have a brain dump session and nothing else? Since you did such a good job coming up with words you encountered during the school day, you should know what they mean so find the definition of each of the words below and send them to me by email by 7:30 am on Thursday, 30 December. Anything after 7:30 will not be accepted. Originally I asked for 5 words from each of the five groups which means there should have been 25 words altogether; however, since some of the groups didn't do their assignment or were removed from participating from this class activity because of bad behavior there are only 18 words to look up, which shouldn't be a problem at all. In fact some of these words you already know....like podcast and harsh. See you in class!

poop
conclusion
podcast
dull
hotspot
smooth
intermission
rush
harsh
agriculture
punky
quadrant
bumpkin
judge
encouraging
crime
generate
creativity

Don't forget, failure to turn in this assignment on time will result in a zero, and that can be bad for your overall mark.

Vocabulary at work

Oh boy...what a class we had today on the vocabulary we found at the Gulf News article about cheating at Abu Dhabi University. The words used in that article are words used in everyday English that come with a special meaning which says cheating isn't allowed not only at IAT but on any educational campus. So your assignment is to know the meaning of the words below and their part of speech; be able to use them correctly in sentences and understand their meaning for you the student. For example, plagiarism means much more than 'cut and paste'. When you write a paper for any English teacher you must know how to use your own writing to express a thought of someone's writing.

We also learned two words that deal with English grammar; premeditated and spontaneous. These are words that are used in everyday language as well that may have nothing at all to do with the grammar of present continuous or future tenses. I expect you to know how to use these words correctly when they deal with grammar or when they deal with behavior or actions. Of course we'll talk about them as the week goes on.

Here are the words you are expected to know by the end of the week

expel
expulsion
collusion
collude
fraudulent
plagiarism
red handed (an idiom)
spontaneous
premeditated
coed

As we get deeper into project work I hope you will use some of the supplemental vocabulary words to describe your projects. Can you think of ways to use spontaneous to talk about any of your projects? See you in class!

Why it is important to unlock your genius:

"Among the few things more expensive than education these days is the lack of it".

Being a successful learner is no longer a matter of choice or more preference. It is a necessity inorder to survive and thrive in the "information age". The future belongs to learners. As we are constantly told by the various media, we live in a time of rapid change. And the pace of that change is faster than at any other time in human history. Every year, 20% to 30% of what we learned and understood about our world is obsolete.

Today and in the future, it is mind power that will dominate. Wealth and jobs are no longer in the land or physical commodities. Knowledge is wealth. Knowledge is where the careers and security are. So, gentlemen, teaching yourself how to learn is the most valuable skill you can learn today.

10.11, 10.9, 10.8

"A stitch in time saves nine"

Gentlemen,
Let me remind you that your End of Term- 1 Exam begins on 9th of January 2010. I expect all of you study seriously leaving all the activities for few days.
TIME MANAGEMENT- the most important thing in your life. If you manage your time well and plan out your priorities according to your time, you will always be successful in life. Yes, you are now in a phase to manage your daily schedule in such a way that you give ample time to prepare for each subject. REMEMBER! You will hardly get time to revise for the next day during your exams.......Please don't leave it to the last day. 'After all hard work never goes unrewarded'
Also, don't forget that the deadline for the submission of LC2 Project Presentation is by the 27th of December.

Writing Time for G10-04 & G10-09

Gentlemen, please go to the article in The National newspaper here and read it. Then write a 7 sentence summary for homework. This should be a short, sweet and simple exercise. We will go over your submissions in class and correct them where necessary. Afterwards we will file them on the writing submission pages for Grade 10 English. See you in class!

Homework for G10-04 & G10-09

This is an easy peezie yet very essential exercise and a continuation of what we did in class today. Please do exercise 2 entitled 'Making Questions' on page 39 of your brightly colored student book. There are only five sentences to do and they must be done the very same way we did the exercises during class today. If you've any questions, please see me tomorrow. Also, we will have one of our weekly pop quizzes on Wednesday so be sure to read for about 15 minutes from either of our two newspaper sources during the evening tonight.

G10-09 the Quia quiz is ready for you to take and the link has been sent to you, but just in case you can find it here. The "secret word", not much of a secret now is it, is "iat". As we agreed upon in class, the link will be available from 6-9pm and it is more practice on what we did in class today, working with prepositions. See you in class on Wednesday, God willing.

Reading: When books are open you discover you have wings...

"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read".

There are different kinds of reading. Scanning the menu at a restaurant is reading. Skimming through the phone book searching for a particular name is reading. Glancing through a magazine while waiting for your turn, at the hospital is reading. Devouring every word of a best-selling thriller is reading.

And "reading" is also the label given to the process in which we engage when we try to understand, learn and retain complex material published in printed form. So, now is the time to start READING.......to ACHIEVE.

Preparation: The most important part of learning.

Gentlemen,
Your mind is like a parachute - it only works when it's open.

Preparing yourself to learn is the most important part of learning. Your deadliest enemies are

• Fear


• Stress


• Distractions


• Low self -esteem


• Poor concentration


• Low level of will power


• No will to suceed

Most of these enemies can be dealt with by good preparation, before you begin to study. So, be optimistic and create the optimum state of mind for learning. Be confident, enthusiastic,relaxed, calm, focused, alert and move on.........All the best in realizing your potential genius and becoming a better learner.

10.11, 10.9 &10.8

Well done on submitting your summary in the the "Google Documents". I was also glad to see how well you use adjectives to describe people. Don't forget to complete the worksheet on adjectives. You'll be asked to use all of them in describing the 'appearance' and "personality". If you have any difficulty or questions, you can ask me in the class or see me during the break.

G10-04 & G10-09 assisgnments to be completed

Gentlemen, work that I expect you to complete over the next several days is the following. The 75 word summary on the article that can be found here (click on the word "here") is due on Thursday morning by 7:30. It is to be sent to me by email at abdel.saber@iat.ac.ae . Please save it the way we discussed in class. [yourname-hw-161210] The project is due by 3pm on Thursday. That too can be sent to me by email and saved [G#-your class section-161210]

After I have read your news summary, I will return it and ask you to put it on the writing submission page of the G10 English blog. That deadline will be in the email I send you. When I see you have put it on the website, then you will receive your grade. See you in class!

G10-04 & G10-09- Writing submission rules

That's the way I feel sometimes when I get some of your work; too many colors and shapes and sizes are enough to make me dizzy, so I want to make standard the way you should submit writing via computer to me your English teacher. Please refer to this post all year long so that there won't be any confusion. We've talked about this in class but I still see some very strange looking assignments turned in to me.

All text must be typed in black with no highlighting of the text. The background of the application, be it MS Word, or Neo Office's word processor, or any other word processing program you use must be white, or unchanged. Do not put any borders on your writing submission, nor is there any need for header or footer information. If you save your document properly that provides me with all the identifying material I need to grade and return your work to you. At the moment, I don't care which font you use as long as it's legible. However, avoid the fancy, artistic fonts available on your word processors. Also, make sure you are typing from left to right; align your text via the format command so that the words flow from the left side of the page to the right side, not the other way. Finally, do not use a font size larger than 16 for work you turn in to me.

I respect everyone's own style of expression but in order to return your papers quickly with an explanation you can understand I'm trying to keep writing within a style that will allow me to do that. As usual if you have any questions please see me in class.

G10-04 & G10-09

Here are two worksheets I want to explore with you this week. One is the supplemental vocabulary exercise I've been telling you about for the last week; I finally got around to making it so look over it, make sure you understand what it is you're being asked to do and then complete the exercise. You should already know the extra vocabulary words by now, so this exercise should be fairly easy. The second worksheet is even easier but will require some creative writing on your part. Do it first, since it's easier. If you have any questions, please ask me in class. See you there!


Supplemental vocabulary exercise

Adjectives of feeling

Brain Dump

Brain dump. We all do it in one form or another, whether reciting a telephone number someone has given us until we can write it down, or talking to a classmate about the last test he took and what was on it. In our English classes we try to do it almost everyday. The definition of brain dump from Wikipedia is "the transfer of a large quantity of information from one person to another or to a piece of paper". What we do in English classes is get students to talk about words they have come across in their other lessons in order to understand the meaning. Most of the time it's as simple as a student giving the teacher a word which is written on the board, followed by a brief explanation, but sometimes when we are all in a creative mood, it can lead to further things, like a brief skit or presentation or even a show and tell....or if we're all lucky an entire class period spent on understanding, talking, discussing, arguing over the meaning of ONE word! The point is to get students active in exploring vocabulary, especially those words they come in contact with during their classes.

The new laptops students have come with a handy application, a dictionary, which makes it really easy to look up the meaning of words. No more thumbing through the pages of the dictionaries we had in class, although, I'm happy to say I still see some students using them. Sometimes the meanings in the dictionaries are as confusing as the words themselves so whenever you run across a word you don't know that you want to know, write it down and bring it to class so we can talk about it. We will discuss it until you understand it and when we finish, hopefully our white board won't look as messy as the one pictured above. See you in class!

10.11, 10.9

The group discussion in the class about shopping and traditional souks vs modern shopping centre in your town was really interesting. The skimming and scanning activity about "Markets around the world" was an additional information of how people enjoy their shopping in different styles. Some people like traditional way of shopping like going to "The Souks of Marrakech" and "The floating markets of Bangkok" while others prefer malls like "The Dubai Mall and " The Emirates Mall" After reading the text you were required to submit a summary about "The markets around the world. I have received most of your summaries.For those who haven't submitted still can turn in before 12th Dec 2010.

Contemporary versus traditional shopping

You need to buy some things for school and at the same time get a few clothes to add to your wardrobe as well. Where do you go to do your shopping: the traditional market that's common to this area or the new, large mall that has all the places you need under one comfortable roof? We read about market places in countries like Thailand, Morocco and France, as well as things you can buy from cafes, pharmacies, clothing stores, news stands and more. Now it's time to talk about shopping in the UAE.

What kind of market do you like to do your shopping and why do you like it. Is it the choice your favorite market offers you? Can you find all the shops you want to buy things from easily and quickly? Is your favorite shopping place comfortable to shop in or do you prefer it because it has everything you want? Perhaps you like to "hang out" and window shop just as much as shopping to buy things at your favorite shopping hangout. Finally, maybe you like both kinds of places, the contemporary as well as the traditional. Whatever the case on Thursday, we will have our writing exercise where each one of you will have to write a 150 word essay on your shopping habits; where you shop, what you like to buy, what other things you like to do at your favorite shopping market and what you like best about the place. This assignment will have to be completed by the end of school Thursday, so you have plenty of time. Be sure to refer to unit 4 vocabulary to help you with this task. Of course if you have any questions, please ask me during class time. See you there, God willing.

National Projects-G10-04 & G10-09

I received some very nice National Day multimedia presentations. Two of which I will link to here and highlight other mentionable ones as I get around to them. Thank you gentlemen, well done!




National Day in G10-04

Group 3's Project-G10-04

The United Arab Emirates celebrated their 39th anniversary as a union of independent sheikdoms with a constitution that was finalized December 2, 1971.

The oil rich country is famous for it's many wealthy states, the most well known of which are Abu Dhabi, the richest and the second largest city in the UAE, and Dubai the rising star in the Middle East and home to Khalifa Tower - the world's tallest erected structure.

How well do you know the UAE? Take a short quiz by clicking on the attached link.

http://gulfnews.com/multimedia/quizzes/quiz-yourself-on-national-day-1.543290

Language Never Takes a Break

Here's hoping you all have a safe, yet fun filled holiday weekend. Congratulations on the 39th anniversary of the unification of the United Arab Emirates. BUT.....there is language work to do.

First I want you to write a journal about what it is you did different this holiday weekend from any other weekend for the occasion of National Day and the New Hijrah Year. Please 7 sentences on what you did on National Day and seven more sentences on what you did to ring in the new year. Since you will describe what you DID, your sentences should be written in the past with past tense verbs. Please write about those things you did in order to celebrate National Day or New's Year. That way I expect to see more than the usual 'I played football with my friends'.

The second task I want you to perform is read an article at www.thenational.ae and write a five sentence summary about what it is you read. Please include the url, or address of the article that you can get from address bar of your web browser. You may choose any article that you like and any length, BUT you must write what that article is about in at least five sentences. This should be written in paragraph form. At the end of your paragraph, please copy and paste the url.

Finally, I want both of these items emailed to me....I know that's a first, by 7:30a.m. Monday, December 6th. There will be a lot of class work to do on Monday and I don't want to spend some of it trying to log onto different hotspots. My advice to you all is to send it to me Sunday night before you go to bed. Ok, gentlemen...make it a great holiday period. Enjoy yourselves with friends and family, get plenty of rest and be prepared for your classes Monday morning. God willing, see you in class!