Random Quote
It is a paradoxical but profoundly true and important principle of life that the most likely way to reach a goal is to be aiming not at that goal itself but at some more ambitious goal beyond it.
---- Arnold Toynbee
Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain.
---- Lily Tomlin
Drink coffee! Do stupid things faster!
---- unknown
A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students.
---- John Ciardi
Just because your voice reaches halfway around the world doesn't mean you are wiser than when it reached only to the end of the bar.
---- Edward R. Murrow
Don't knock the weather. If it didn't change once in a while, nine out of ten people couldn't start a conversation.
---- Kin Hubbard
If the English language made any sense, a catastrophe would be an apostrophe with fur.
---- Doug Larson
One man alone can be pretty dumb sometimes, but for real bona fide stupidity, there ain't nothin' can beat teamwork.
---- Edward Abbey
it's probably not a good idea to underestimate my ability to make an ass out of myself—just when I seem to have it under control, I'll turn around and surprise you.
---- Tenser said the Tensor
Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.
---- H. G. Wells
I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.
---- Thomas A. Edison
A magician pulls rabbits out of hats. An experimental psychologist pulls habits out of rats.
---- anonymous
I never teach my pupils; I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn.
---- Albert Einstein
Study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in.
---- Leonardo DaVinci (1452-1519)
The least of learning is done in the classrooms
---- Thomas Merton
This may be the most interesting blog theme I've ever seen. http://eflgeek.com/index.php Definitely in my top 5 at least.
---- Steve Dembo
Those who know nothing of foreign languages, knows nothing of their own.”
---- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749 -1832)
As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life - so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls.
---- M. Cartmill
The important thing is not to stop questioning.
---- Albert Einstein
We don't know a millionth of one percent about anything.
---- Thomas A. Edison
Tact is the knack of making a point without making an enemy.
---- Isaac Newton
I'll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there's evidence of any thinking going on inside it.
---- Terry Pratchett
Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence.
---- Abigail Adams (1744 - 1818)
There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun.
---- Pablo Picasso
Arguments over grammar and style are often as fierce as those over IBM versus Mac, and as fruitless as Coke versus Pepsi and boxers versus briefs.
---- Jack Lynch
Smallville Pilot
I prepared a two hour lesson on the pilot episode of Smallville for my advanced students doing independant study. The prep for this lesson took a large amount of time and I thought that it would be nice to see the lesson used by other teachers if they are interested.
The class met for two hours. The first fifteen minutes I had students discussing what they knew about Smallville and Superman in general. I talked a little bit about what native English speakers, especially from North America, would know due to superman being embedded in pop culture. You can see the handout for that section, which students downloaded and printed before class, here: Smallville Assumptions (pdf).
After this I handed out script excerpts with questions. This handout is eight pages long with what I felt to be key scenes or scenes with cultural or language significance that would be worth discussing with students. We watched the episode in 3 sections: opening to 10:25, 10:25-28:16, and 28:16-49:14 (the end) with scheduled time after the first two sections for discussion. The first half of this hand out was prepared by a friend for a different class - I modified it and added the additional four pages. You can download it here: Smallville Script excerpts (pdf).
My lesson plan is formatted the way my university requires them. This plan is not particularly detailed which leaves room for teachers to change their approach. You can view the plan here: (MS Word).
The two handouts above are in pdf format because not many people have access to MS Publisher, which I use for all handouts. If you have publisher and would like to modify the handouts send me an email. If you can’t open MS word documents I can also change that to pdf if you are interested.
Anyhow I hope someone finds this lesson useful.
Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Thursday Mar 30, 2006 at 06:47 PM
Materials | Lesson_Plans |




gordsellar wrote 15 words on Wednesday Apr 5, 2006 at 12:49 AM
Woah, this looks very useful to me, except… the PDF is locked. What’s the password?
Sean. wrote 42 words on Wednesday Apr 5, 2006 at 07:39 AM
damn...that’s a habit of mine. I’m not sure whehn or why I started that. Anyhow all my PDFs are locked and the password is always christmas. do you have publisher? if so, it will be much easier for you to modify this.
gordsellar wrote 246 words on Wednesday Apr 5, 2006 at 10:24 AM
How very very strange. christmas isn’t working for me, but when I open the files using Adobe Reader in Linux, they’re not locked at all—or, in any case, the lock is automatically bypassed. Weird. I’ll see how it goes on my other computer, the WinXP box, which is where I’d be printing all of this out. I’m seriously considering giving it a try in a week or two… though I don’t have a copy of Smallville, it seems like something I wouldn’t mind having.
The only drawback is how intensive this lesson is to plan. I mean, I thought *I* had to do a lot of work for the kinds of lessons *I* plan. If I use this in class, I’m a little worried students will want something like this every week, and heaven knows I don’t have the time to create something like this weekly. Ha, your co-worker wouldn’t have any more pre-made scripts for other episodes in this or other shows, would s/he?
I’m thinking of doing something like this up for the Lost Pilot. Actually, you know, I bet if someone put together, say twelve or sixteen different random episodes from different TV shows in this way, and got the rights to the episodes for an education DVD, it’d go like mad. Except, of course, that securing those rights would be so damned expensive. sigh
Anyway, thanks for sharing. I’ll let you know how it goes, if I do end up trying it.
Sean. wrote 58 words on Wednesday Apr 5, 2006 at 10:43 AM
Actually he only did half of the script excerpts. I did the rest. My plan currently is to do 3-4 episodes this semester. I was going to do random ones, but my students have requested that we go in order so the next episode will be season one episode two. Of course I’ll share with you as well.
gordsellar wrote 178 words on Friday Mar 9, 2007 at 09:15 PM
I’ll be using this, as-is, for my Media English course this week. My students are high enough level that it should be doable but not so easy as to bore them. It’s really just a warm-up, since the main point is to look at superhero narratives in the class.
After that, we’ll be doing something with V for Vendetta—reading the graphic novel, looking at the film, discussing the adaptation, the way it uses (and adapts) the idea of the hero, and so on. It’s a big subject, but it should be interesting, and challenging enough for the students I’m working with these days.
I have a similar exercise, somewhere among my files, for two other shows: the film Almost Famous, and the pilot episode of Lost. I’ll try make them available once I consolidate my files. (And I think I may work on a few more episodes of Lost, since I find my students really like that show.)
If there are more episodes of Smallville you have on hand, I’d love to get my hands on the PDFs.
Sean. wrote 22 words on Friday Mar 9, 2007 at 09:20 PM
I would love to get a hold of your Lost lesson plan as I was considering doing that this year or Heroes.
gordsellar wrote 43 words on Friday Mar 9, 2007 at 09:23 PM
I’ll try dig it out on Sunday. It’s backed-up somewhere. I might even have the original document files to send to you so you can edit them. Otherwise, I will at least have the PDFs.
Keep your eyes open for an email!
Gord
gordsellar wrote 180 words on Wednesday Mar 14, 2007 at 11:35 PM
EFL Geek,
I just found the files, and I’m sorry, but I misremembered last semester. I actually did handouts similar to your one for Smallville for the film Almost Famous. For Lost, pilot episode, we just viewed it straight through and then discussed some questions at the end.
I did do up a handout, but it was just discussing the idea of the “castaway” in Western literature and culture. (A concept I suspect is a little familiar from film and media, but as it’s at least in part a product of the kind of naval globalization of the Age of Empires, it’s more embedded in Western society and more unfamiliar in Korean society. When we see castaways, at the least we have Swiss Family Robinson and Robinson Crusoe in our heads… at the very least, and usually there’s also SF castaways, the iconic castaways in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, The Lord of the Fliesand all kinds of other literary/pop-cultural castaways as well.
If you’d like either thing—the Almost Famous film thing, or the handout I made for Lost, let me know.
Sean. wrote 40 words on Thursday Mar 15, 2007 at 09:12 AM
Gord,
I would be interested in both of those lessons if you are willing to share. I can use as is, or modify to suit my tastes.
I edited your comment to remove my real name, but changed no content.