Over the last two months of term 2, a whirlwind of events has happened! For the most part, the entire term felt more productive and enjoyable with the events being properly spaced out. We’ve gone through tons of word games, news articles, PowerPoints, grammar exercises, and, my personal favorite, “Scrabble” matches. But these tasks did not come without their challenges and rewards.
To name a few, let’s flashback to the beginning, January 4. This was the day when classes were resumed after a long and much needed Christmas break. Naturally, everyone was still tired from the season's festivities, so taking it easy was a must.
The week started off with Leo, a former online classmate, coming to face-to-face classes and with everyone assigned to make the term planner. It included all of our tasks and game plan for the next few weeks until finals was to come, which was sooner than anticipated. This activity really helped us get a better grasp of how on track we were in the term.
The next day, we started reading 3 different articles on “DOGONews” and played the occasional warm-up games. After reading texts about ginormous goldfishes and octopuses, we would each go around the table and state a fact we learned. This process went on for the entire session. I quite like spending our time doing this activity. It's very relaxing, but also educational at the same time.
The following few weeks were filled with learning the passive tense more. It’s actually quite simple if you think about the example phrase, “The cat ate the mouse” to “The mouse was eaten (by the cat).” I do admit that, at first, it did take some brain power to wrap your head around, but once understood, it’s much easier.
To reward ourselves, Miss Disa allowed us to play “Scrabble,” girls versus boys edition. The girls thankfully won and received 20 merits each! Spoiler alert! Round 2 was coming soon.
After a nice break, the next week was again filled with more grammar exercises, but this time it was about causatives, which are words that indicate a subject causing something/someone to do something. These words include: “let,” “make,” “get,” “help,” and “have.” Afterwards, we did a short pop quiz and were assigned a new term project.
The project was to make a PowerPoint describing why the sentence “,Help me with my homework” is not an example of a causative. My part of the project was to explain the nature of verbs and how their meaning changes depending on the context. In my opinion, this project was more to my liking because I find actually talking about a topic to be more effective rather than writing it down. I guess you could say that speaking is one of my strong suits, so I had no complaints regarding these types of projects.
The next few meetings we had went pretty much the same. Until only after about 2 sessions more did we finally present. Naturally, there was that rush of adrenaline and some nerves, but that slowly eased once I got on stage. Overall, I think we all did well in delivering out parts.
As a nice reward for all of our hard work, Miss Disa let us have a "Scrabble" rematch against the boys. Unfortunately for them, we won again with a 40-point word that put us in the lead: "spicer." Afterwards, we studied for the final exams that were the next day. Better luck next time, guys!
To sum up term 2, I must admit that I really enjoyed it! I'm happy that we got to be productive in learning grammar, but also had fun with other activities. I think that's what sets this term apart the most: the efficient and effective planning that went through it beforehand. I believe that making a term planner was probably the best change we've had all year in AEP classes because of how evenly spaced out the workload was distributed. It really impacted the class in a positive way in my opinion.
I think that if we continue on with this activity and make planning the term beforehand a habit, then we're more likely to succeed. Overall, this term was a really good one and I'm glad we got to end it happily and without that many frustrating moments. I can't believe that we've got only 1 more term to go! How time flies. I hope to look back on this in the future just like another...Flashback!
Wonderfully detailed blog !
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