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There once was an English teacher,
With one distinguishing feature.
Whether young or old,
All her students were told,
They were good, and all did believe her! |
The unofficial Limerick Day,
the birthday of Edward Lear, has just passed us by on May
12th, so in order to not let it go totally unnoticed we're
going to look this week at using limericks in class. Here
are a couple of well known limericks by Edward Lear:
|
There was
an Old Man with a beard,
Who said, 'It is just as I feared!
Two Owls and a Hen,
Four Larks and a Wren,
Have all built their nests in my beard!'
|
|
There was
a Young Lady whose chin,
Resembled the point of a pin;
So she had it made sharp,
And purchased a harp,
And played several tunes with her chin.
|
|
|
First of all, the structure behind the
limerick - It is a five line poem that consists of a triplet
& a couplet. The 1st, 2nd & 5th lines rhyme, with
3 beats per line, while the 3rd & 4th lines rhyme, with
two beats per line. The last line is usually the punch line.
Here are a few ways of using
limericks. For reception, limericks are good for helping students
to become aware of rhythm. As you read out the limerick get
them to beat the stress by knocking on their desks or clapping
their hands. They can then go on to read limericks out loud
to each other. See the links at the end for sources of limericks.
If you have cuisenaire rods,
give out a couple of colours to each pair & ask them to
represent the rhythm with the rods. To
see this done on the site with nursery rhymes
Asking students to produce limericks
can be fun but challenging. You might want to start off by
giving some limericks with gaps the missing vocab jumbled
up. The students have to choose the most appropriate word
to fit the limerick. For example:
There once
was a man from ______
Who interrupted two girls at their ______
Said he with a ______
"That park bench, ______
Just painted it right where you're ______ |
|
Missing parts:
well I
knittin'.
sittin'
sigh,
Great Britain
|
And another one:
There was
a young woman named ______
Whose speed was much faster than ______
She set out one ______
In a relative, ______
And returned on the previous ______ |
|
Missing parts:
day
night.
Bright
way
light
|
Then go on to giving out the
first lines of 3 limericks & also the other lines all
mixed up. Through the content & the rhythm, the students
unjumble them all.
Then to the first line of a
limerick to all of the students:
'There was an
old man from Ham'
Brainstorm all the words they
can think of that rhyme with 'Ham' - am, clam, cram, dam,
damn, dram, gram, jam, lamb, ma'am, ram, Saddam, scam, slam,
spam, swam, tram, wham. Then give out your list & go through
them. The students then invent their own limerick. You could
get them to rotate their limericks after each line, with a
new pair adding the next line to each limerick.
Here's another teaching-related limerick:
| Democracy
takes education
And commitment to the relation.
If people would come
With their homework all done,
There wouldn't be so much frustration. |
From: http://bruichladdich.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/OldLimericksDir/Limericks.html
A few more limerick sites:
http://home.earthlink.net/~kristenaa/faves.html
http://www.jy-muggeridge.freeserve.co.uk/limericks.htm
http://limerick.s5.com/
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 |
Silently chatting |
Most people who are familiar
with the internet know how a chat room works - you log in,
read & type away when you want to say something, conversing
with the others in the 'room'. How about trying this out in
class? And without a computer?
All that your students need
is a piece of paper & pens. In pairs get them conversing
to each other through a written dialogue. This really gets
them to think carefully about what they are writing &
work on accuracy. And there isn't too much time to think as
there is the pressure of the other student waiting to receive
the 'utterance'.
The activity could also be done
in small groups & it is a very nice warmer activity. You
could state the area you want the students to focus the chat
around or let them choose. If a chosen area, it is very good
for revision. If a free chat, then the first lesson after
the weekend would be a good time for it, catching up on what
each other has been doing. Or if you have presented an area,
such as telephone language, it would help the students to
'fix' the language first in this form before using it in a
spoken dialogue. While the activity is going on, you could
wander round helping out, correcting & suggesting alternatives.
If you have an overhead projector,
you could have all the class involved, all can see the conversation
evolving & they raise their hands when they want to say
something, then go to the projector & write their addition
on the transparency. At the end go over the conversation for
good & not so good things written. It has similarities
to the process used in Community Language Learning.
For a noisy group of teenagers,
this is an ideal activity. They might well be expert chatters
on the net in their own language & will see the transfer
to the class as an interesting one, as well as keeping them
quiet! Begin with this to quieten them down before starting
the lesson.
And if you do have access in
class time to computer terminals & the net, then the chat
room is clearly a useful tool to use. It would also be easy
to sort out an outside of class chat room meeting with all
those who have internet access. Another opportunity to develop
their English outside of class. Check out Nicenet
to set something like this up.
It is one of those activities
that you can use again & again. Perhaps writing dialogues
like this isn't a particularly new idea but taking the chat
room idea can make it more motivating & interesting. Try
it out & get them silently chatting.
Have you used the
chat room we have on the site? Please feel free to use
it.
Back
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Match up the following film
titles with their respective summaries:
| TOOTSIE
BIG
TITANIC
GLADIATOR |
| • The story of a
man who dresses like a woman and becomes a better man
• Fictional romantic tale of a rich
girl and poor boy who meet on the ill-fated voyage of
the 'unsinkable' ship
•When a Roman general is betrayed
and his family murdered by a corrupt prince, he comes
to Rome as a gladiator to seek revenge
• When a boy wishes to be big at
a magic wish machine, he wakes up the next morning and
finds himself in an adult body |
In last Wednesday's Independent
newspaper there was an article about how film scriptwriters
put forward their ideas for new films to the film producers
who contract them. Apparently, as the producers are so busy
they require a 25 word description of the film & if the
ideas in the 25 words are appealing enough the writer is contracted
to write the film. The British Film Council is taking this
idea to promote homegrown films in the UK. The article then
goes on to give some summaries of well-known films. Great
material for class!
Summary writing can be tricky
&, apart from being needed for certain examinations, it
can generally help with our students' writing. It focuses
them on the subject & really gets them to think about
the ideas & language they are using. A very nice way into
this is using this article.
You could begin with a reading
of the main body of the article, not the film summaries, or
orally tell the group what the article is about, developing
it into a listening activity. By the way, the headline of
the article is written in 25 words - possibly begin with this
& ask the students to reduce it to 10 words.
Then give an obvious example
from the summaries by reading out the summary & inviting
the students to guess the film. Next, hand out the films &
summaries & they match them all up, leaving aside the
films they don't know. Careful with the titles as the students
might know the films but with a completely different title
in their own language. I should go through them first to make
sure. If this seems a lot, then only use half of the films
& their descriptions. You could discuss which are good/accurate/humorous/silly/etc
summaries. Personally, I don't think some of the summaries
are very good, so you could discuss how they might be improved.
And then you're on to the students
writing their own descriptions of five films. I would do this
in pairs & set the 25 word limit. With this limit they
will really have to clarify their ideas together, draft &
redraft their descriptions. Think about the language they
will need to do this in pairs & review some of it before
they begin, in order to maximise the activity. As they are
writing their summaries, go round & help out by offering
suggestions & corrections.
To round off, have the students
read out their summaries for all to guess the titles or put
them on the walls for all to wander round, discuss & guess.
The film titles
& the summaries
- the answers are at the bottom of the
following article
| Match
the film titles with a description |
|
TWISTER
GHOST SHIP
WHAT WOMEN WANT
JAWS
ALIEN
THE OTHERS
FLASHDANCE
SPLASH
SPEED
THE NUTTY PROFESSOR
A FISH CALLED WANDA
TOOTSIE
BIG
TITANIC
GLADIATOR
LIAR LIAR
MY LITTLE EYE
GROUNDHOG DAY
MEET THE PARENTS
MEMENTO
BEVERLY HILLS COP
DEAD CALM
THE HAND THAT ROCKS THE CRADLE
TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE
POLICE ACADEMY |
|
• After
an accident, a chauvinistic executive gains the ability
to hear what women are really thinking
• When a boy wishes to be big at a magic wish machine,
he wakes up the next morning and finds himself in an
adult body
• A salvage crew discovers a long-lost 1953 passenger
ship but as they try to tow it back to land "strange
things" happen...
•A police chief, a scientist, and a grizzled sailor
set out to kill a shark that is menacing the seaside
community of Amity Island.
• Jaws in Space
• Bill is trying to get his tornado-hunter wife,
Jo, to sign divorce papers so he can marry his girlfriend,
but Mother Nature has other plans
• When a Roman general is betrayed and his family
murdered by a corrupt prince, he comes to Rome as a
gladiator to seek revenge
• A young cop must save the passengers of a bus
that has a bomb set to explode if the bus goes below
50mph
• Fictional romantic tale of a rich girl and poor
boy who meet on the ill-fated voyage of the 'unsinkable'
ship
• The story of a man who dresses like a woman and
becomes a better man
• A fast track lawyer can't lie for 24 hours due
to his son's birthday wish
• Grossly overweight Prof. Sherman Klump, desperate
to lose weight, takes a special chemical that turns
him into slim but obnoxious Buddy Love
• A man falls in love with the mermaid who saved
him from drowning as a boy, not knowing who - or what
- she is
• A woman who lives in a darkened old house with
her two photosensitive children becomes convinced that
her family home is haunted
• Five people apply to live in an isolated house
together for six months whilst their every move is filmed,
then things start to go wrong ...
• A group of hippies travelling through 1970s Texas
fall prey to a trio of murderous brothers and their
cannibal grandparents
• Male nurse Greg Focker meets his girlfriend's
parents before proposing, but her suspicious father
is every date's worst nightmare
• Four very different people team up to commit
armed robbery, then try to doublecross each other for
the loot
• Phil, a sarcastic weather man, finds himself
having to live the same day over and over again
• While on a sailing trip, in dead
calm sea waters, a couple come across a ship with one
survivor who is not what he seems
• Peyton Flanders seems to be the perfect nanny,
but secretly she's out to wreck the lives of the family
she's supposed to be helping ...
• A man, suffering from short-term memory loss,
uses notes and tattoos to hunt down his wife's killer
• An exotic dancer from the wrong side of the tracks
dreams of becoming a ballerina
• The Mayor decides to make it easier to join the
Police Force, but the new recruits are the last people
you'd call in an emergency
• A freewheeling Detroit cop pursuing the murder
of his friends finds his methods under question in the
very different culture of Beverly Hills |
| http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/media/story.jsp?story=401706
Budding British
screenwriters, invited to pitch movie storylines in
25 words, delight producers, get green light.
Will they achieve celluloid greatness or lose the plot?
By Ian Burrell and Andrew
Gumbel in Los Angeles
30 April 2003
The best ideas are always the simplest.
That, at least, is the hope of the British Film Council,
which is using an old Hollywood studio hook to reel
in talented home-grown screen- writers: tell me your
story in no more than 25 words.
The council announced yesterday that it had already
paid out tens of thousands of pounds to writers it hopes
will script the next generation of commercially viable
British films.
Four ideas for scripts were successful. Among them was
Peter Michael Rosenberg's idea for a film called The
Cleaner. His pitch read as follows:
"When a crime-scene cleaner haunted by his past
uncovers evidence that suggests LAPD cops are working
as assassins, he becomes their next target."
That 24-word sentence earned him £12,500 in development
money - more than £500 a word.
The pitch for Storage by Chris Denne and Matt Winn was:
"Terror stalks a storage facility. Survival for
those trapped inside depends on the secrets in those
endless units. But some doors are better left locked."
They were awarded £5,000, plus £2,500 to
hire a script editor.
The council is making no apologies for its nod to one
of the more vulgar ways that Hollywood does business.
The so-called "high-concept" pitch has long
been considered a byword for crass commercialism in
the film world, a symptom of studio executives' reluctance
to focus on anything for more than a minute.
On the other hand, its virtue stems from the fact that
if writers can sum up their work as one catchy idea,
there is every chance that audiences will latch on to
it too.
The council acknowledged that its scheme was based on
a comment by Steven Spielberg, who once said: "If
a person can tell me the idea in 25 words or less, it's
going to make a pretty good movie."
The original pitch for Jaws - the 1975 Spielberg film
that first introduced the notion of the cinematic blockbuster
and helped to transform the entire industry - stated
simply: "A police chief, a scientist and a grizzled
sailor set out to kill a shark that is menacing the
seaside community of Amity island." The synopsis
for Alien, made four years later, was shorter still
- "Jaws in Space."
The council said that it hoped the "25 words or
less" programme would help professional writers
to "focus on the concept at the heart of the story".
Writers with an agent were invited to compose pitches
for films in three genres: comedy, thriller and horror.
The council received 370 applications and hopes to finance
about 12 ideas a year. Grants for genres including romantic
comedy will be announced next.
Shoeless Joe, a film idea by Andrew Clyde, is
based on this single sentence: "A holiday of a
lifetime across the desolate heart of the Australian
outback turns into a living nightmare for five friends."
The pitch for Egomania, a joint composition by Paul
Alexander and Simon Braithwaite, runs: "Hotshot
young lawyer Michael Stark becomes so successful, so
arrogant and so full of himself that his ego decides
to go solo - with disastrous consequences."
The winning teams have been given up to eight weeks
to complete a first draft. Ultimately, the hope is that
one or more of the scripts will be good enough to produce.
Natalie Wreyford, of the council's development fund,
said: "The four projects we have chosen are great
examples of good genre writing. I really hope this initiative
will encourage UK writers who have the ambition to write
commercial genre films and provide some exciting new
screenplays for the rest of the industry." Clearly,
the council believes that the Hollywood approach will
be refreshing rather than an exercise in dumbing down.
According to a council spokesman, British writers are
not always comfortable preparing scripts for feature
films. "There are great television writers and
theatre writers in the UK but there is not a tradition
of great film writers. We don't live in that culture,"
he said.
"That culture" has been endlessly lampooned
because it tends to result in films that are loud, flashy
and full of references to previous, financially successful
Hollywood titles, without necessarily abiding by any
of the basic requirements for satisfying drama such
as character development - or indeed character of any
kind.
Screenwriters who have been through the pitching process
explain that it is a matter of grabbing the executives'
attention and making them feel that you are, in effect,
handing them a pot of gold with a brilliant, highly
marketable idea.
"I've pitched stories and I knew within the first
line that I sold it," one screenwriter, Robbie
Fox, said during a discussion of the screenwriting trade
last year.
"I pitched this movie to MGM and the first line
of the script was: 'One fine sunny day, three surgeons'
wives went to the fat farm for the weekend.' And I saw
the executives smile, and I just knew."
Some people in Hollywood argue that the "high concept"
pitch is actually passe, a relic from the 1980s that
went out of fashion with the rise of more challenging
independent films over the past decade.
But many screenwriters insist nothing has changed. The
money men need to be convinced an idea can sell, and
that means thinking up the advertising slogan before
the script has even been finished.
The Hollywood Way: The original pitches for 25
classic movies
WHAT WOMEN WANT: After an accident, a
chauvinistic executive gains the ability to hear what
women are really thinking
BIG: When a boy wishes to be big at a magic wish machine,
he wakes up the next morning and finds himself in an
adult body
GHOST SHIP: A salvage crew discovers a long-lost 1953
passenger ship but as they try to tow it back to land
"strange things" happen...
JAWS: A police chief, a scientist, and a grizzled sailor
set out to kill a shark that is menacing the seaside
community of Amity Island.
ALIEN: Jaws in Space
TWISTER: Bill is trying to get his tornado-hunter wife,
Jo, to sign divorce papers so he can marry his girlfriend,
but Mother Nature has other plans
GLADIATOR: When a Roman general is betrayed and his
family murdered by a corrupt prince, he comes to Rome
as a gladiator to seek revenge
SPEED: A young cop must save the passengers of a bus
that has a bomb set to explode if the bus goes below
50mph
TITANIC: Fictional romantic tale of a rich girl and
poor boy who meet on the ill-fated voyage of the 'unsinkable'
ship
TOOTSIE: The story of a man who dresses like a woman
and becomes a better man
LIAR LIAR: A fast track lawyer can't lie for 24 hours
due to his son's birthday wish
THE NUTTY PROFESSOR: Grossly overweight Prof. Sherman
Klump, desperate to lose weight, takes a special chemical
that turns him into slim but obnoxious Buddy Love
SPLASH: A man falls in love with the mermaid who saved
him from drowning as a boy, not knowing who - or what
- she is
THE OTHERS: A woman who lives in a darkened old house
with her two photosensitive children becomes convinced
that her family home is haunted
MY LITTLE EYE: Five people apply to live in an isolated
house together for six months whilst their every move
is filmed, then things start to go wrong ...
TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE: A group of hippies travelling
through 1970s Texas fall prey to a trio of murderous
brothers and their cannibal grandparents
MEET THE PARENTS: Male nurse Greg Focker meets his girlfriend's
parents before proposing, but her suspicious father
is every date's worst nightmare
A FISH CALLED WANDA: Four very different people team
up to commit armed robbery, then try to doublecross
each other for the loot
GROUNDHOG DAY: Phil, a sarcastic weather man, finds
himself having to live the same day over and over again
DEAD CALM: While on a sailing trip, in dead calm sea
waters, a couple come across a ship with one survivor
who is not what he seems
THE HAND THAT ROCKS THE CRADLE: Peyton Flanders seems
to be the perfect nanny, but secretly she's out to wreck
the lives of the family she's supposed to be helping
...
MEMENTO: A man, suffering from short-term memory loss,
uses notes and tattoos to hunt down his wife's killer
FLASHDANCE: An exotic dancer from the wrong side of
the tracks dreams of becoming a ballerina
POLICE ACADEMY: The Mayor decides to make it easier
to join the Police Force, but the new recruits are the
last people you'd call in an emergency
BEVERLY HILLS COP: A freewheeling Detroit cop pursuing
the murder of his friends finds his methods under question
in the very different culture of Beverly Hills |
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