Grasmyr Ungdomsskole

On November 10, 2008, I visited two schools in Langesund. This was a town that had no direct transportation to it. So I had to take a train and then a bus and then a taxi to get to my hotel. The town is on the coast and therefore is a sleepy tourist town in the winter.

This was a difficult trip in general because I was so unsure about what was going on. I had difficulty getting information from the contact person, so I didn’t know how many lessons I would doing, how many students, or what level the students were. The contact teacher didn’t even tell me what lesson the teachers wanted nor passed on the information about needing a projector for my PowerPoint. I am not sure if this was due to timing, emails getting lost in cyberspace, miscommunication, or just disorganization. So I showed up at the first school and just assumed I would be doing two lessons with 25 students each and I picked the inquiry stations as the lesson I would do. I chose this as it requires the least in terms of language ability and if the students struggled with English, then this lesson works well.

When I arrived at the school, I found I was to do three lessons in the morning. The students were great and their English was fairly strong. However, I have been doing the election lesson for so long (and I really like the format of it) that the inquiry one I like as much and didn’t find it as engaging for the students. So I am trying to think how I can update it. For example, the students know a lot about music and movies and so this part of the stations is not as exciting for them unlike getting the chance to look at bumper stickers in the election lesson. So I am working with Allyson, who is having her middle schoolers create a video of what school is like in the US and will figure something out to do with that to get the students interested and thinking about something they may not know as much about.

Once again, I found it interesting that the teachers told me the last class would be the worst and it turned out they were my favorite class. They were the most talkative, asked a lot of questions, and were more engaged than the other groups.

However, overall the students did a great job. The following are some of the things they said as a result of rotating through the inquiry stations:

• In American there is all kinds of cultures, and America is a country for all kinds of people [sic]
• America is creative to make things, movies, who people watch around the world. Music what people listen to. It’s a lot of difference cultures. Beautiful woods and nature. [sic]
• I think that mostly all people in America thinks they own the world. [sic] I am not sure where they got this from, but I think it is interesting that this is the second time I heard this type of comment.