Category: English Literacy

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Refugee Narration – Inspired by “Inside Out and Back Again” by Thanhha Lai [English Literacy]

Let’s rewind back to last year during our first round of English literacy class. I was excited as soon as I knew the theme of the round was about Refugees. According to the United Nations, there are over 70.8 million refugees on this planet, and 30 million of them are under the age of 18. Even though it is just a small amount compared to the entire population, if all the refugees were the population of a made-up country, they would be ranked as the 20th most populated country.

“Inside Out and Back Again” Book by Thanhha Lai

Let’s get back to what we did in our class. Have you ever heard or read a novel Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhha Lai? The author quoted the novel’s description, “Inspired by the author’s childhood experience as a refugee—fleeing Vietnam after the Fall of Saigon and immigrating to Alabama—this coming-of-age debut novel told in verse has been celebrated for its touching child’s-eye view of family and immigration.”. I really enjoyed spending time working on this theme and learning about what happened to the country and the citizens, the hard times of refugees, and the lives of many during the war. 

 

To take the lesson into the perspective, we had been assigned to make our own novel poem. We discovered many stories of the refugees around the world and wrote our own poems inspired by them. I was influenced by a story from Afghanistan, but I won’t spoil the story here, I would love you to read it at the end of this article.

To sum up the lesson I’ve learned from the experience of the refugees, the information, and lives during a really tough time like them made me imagine the perspective of myself (e.g. what would happen if that ever happened to me? What would that change my life? How would the country be like?). I suggest you read the novel if you are interested and below is the poem I composed. I really hope you enjoy reading and explore around in my portfolio, thank you, and have a great day!

INSIDE OUT

(Mimmy = Munny)

My name is Munawar,

I am 18 years old,

And I am from Afghanistan.

 

I fled because of the notorious Taliban,

Dropping bombs,

Making bullets rain,

Is peace possible with the Taliban?

 

I was lucky enough,

To live in a safer place,

But still controlled by the Taliban,

We still can’t live peacefully,

They did not allow me,

And even my friends to work,

So, LIFE is like NOTHING!!

 

After my 18th birthday,

Mimmy told me to go to Paris!!

 

One day before leaving,

I spent all my times,

With my family,

Including my parents,

Grandma,

Grandpa,

And I couldn’t imagine leaving

Every one of them!!

 

The next day has come,

And I had to say goodbye!

 

The personnel carrier came to pick us up!

 

It’s hard to describe my feeling,

Mixed of joy and sadness,

I was so happy and full of joy,

But at the same time,

I felt so sad and sorrowful,

To leave everything behind.

 

While going to the airport,

We faced the people at the office of the organization,

Asking us in English to test us,

I knew if I speak English,

I’ll be in trouble,

I was scared,

My hands are shaking,

But I pretended to not speaking,

And replied,

“No…..Anglis”, which means no English!

 

I was sitting in there for a moment,

I wrote a diary with my extreme feeling,

Here’s what I wrote my mimmy;

 

Sitting here is not easy,

This is making me feel like once again,

I am accused of an offense, a treason,

Dear mum, these guys have the same rough attitude,

As the people who were interrogating me,

At the beginning of my imprisonment,

Do you think I will survive a new life with such a start? 

 

I didn’t know how to describe my feeling!

 

I got out of the military check,

But still a little nervous,

I started to feel more relax and happy,

And, even more, when arriving at the airport,

I was given Coca-Cola,

Salmon,

Eggs,

Steak,

Chicken,

Tomatoes,

Which I haven’t seen and taste for YEARS,

And it was all……YUMMY!!

 

We flew from Saravejo,

To the incredible Paris!

 

In Paris,

There’s electricity,

There’s water,

There’s Gas,

There’s everything,

There’s LIFE,

And once again, it’s INCREDIBLE!!

 

I caught sight of the iconic Eiffel Tower,

Arc de Triomphe,

Cars,

Houses,

Roads,

People,

And….LIFE!!

 

I’ve written a diary to my Mimmy,

Describing the beautiful,

INCREDIBLE,

Paris,

And how Paris welcomed me.

 

But I always wondering,

Can a glimmer of the light in Paris,

Ever illuminates the darkness of Saravejo,

So Saravejo can be my INCREDIBLE life as well?

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Happiness – English Literacy (Round 4)

Every round of English Literacy, we learn different themes and “Happiness” is the theme for this round. The big ideas of the themes are to define happiness, how can we achieve happiness, which is essential to ensure happiness, and what is the nature of happiness.

To begin the round’s theme, we watched a video about a man who was called Mr. Happy Man. So, Johnny Barnes (Mr. happy man) was a native Bermudian man who performed a daily ritual of standing on a street corner in Bermuda’s capital city of Hamilton to shared positive affirmations to passers-by since 1986. If you want to watch the video about him, click here. What I learned from that video was how people can be very happy and motivated by positive affirmation. Also, when you make someone happy, you’ll be loved by all of them.

Besides that, we also read a few articles about different ways of happiness, significant details about happiness in the articles, and how can we achieve happiness. And now, I am writing an essay about how to be happy when you don’t have friends. The essay is still in progress of editing so if you are interested in reading it, please stay tuned and I’ll post it in just a few weeks. What I think of the essay is that even though you face problems, there are so many different ways to be happy.

https://www.yourfamily.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Meet-your-happy-hormones.jpg
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English Literacy – Round 3

Every round of English literacy, we have different themes. For this round of English Literacy, the theme was about “The Search of Identity”.

For the first week of the round, we started the theme with genetic. We thought about how do we know who we are. Then we read a CommonLit article called “Where Did I Come From” that was written by BirdBrain Science published in 2016. Then we read another story called “The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros in 1984. After that, I also wrote a paragraph about my name.

For the first day of the second week of the round, I studied about connotation and denotation. Connotation is the figurative, emotional, and cultural meaning attached to the word; shades and degrees of meaning. Denotation is the dictionary definition and literal meaning of a word. After that, we read a poem called “Where I’m From” that was written by George Ella Lyon. Next, my classmates and I wrote our own Where I’m From poem inspired by George Ella Lyon. Then, we post it into FlipGrid and if you want to watch mine, click on this LINK.

The next lesson was about story elements graphic organizer. Then, we watched a short animation film called “The Present”. Then we wrote about the story elements which are exposition/hook, characters, setting, conflict/problem, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution/solution. We also introduced to tone, mood, motif, foreshadowing, suspense, poetic justice, conflict, and theme. We didn’t learn all of them at a time so we got to learn only tone and mood first. So we watched another short animated film called One Man Band and thought about the mood and the tone. Then, we learned about foreshadowing. We read a story called “The Land Lady” and identify the foreshadowing in that story. If you are interested and want to read it, click on this LINK, and if you want to watch the movie, click on this LINK.

My classmates and I were reading four different books, and they are Monster (Walter Dean Myers), Looking for Alaska (John Green), Wonder (R. J. Palacio), and The Outsiders (S. E. Hinton). So, I chose Monster to read. It was an interesting book and I also recommend you to read it, too. Not just reading, I also needed to discuss what I read with anyone who read the same book as me.

That’s it for this round! Hope you enjoy reading it! Thank you!

One of the pages in the book, Monster.

 

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English Literacy – Round 2

English literacy is one of the essentials that I enjoyed and felt enthusiastic this second round. Every round for English literacy, we always have different themes. The theme for this round is about social and environmental injustice. For the first week of this essential, we discussed the African American community in Connecticut that was discriminated by many people and most of them lived in poverty, and they lived in the place that was affected by air pollution. After the discussion, we were researched about different countries and waste management in the country. That time, I was selected to research about Kenya. What I research was about the country’s relationship with trash, waste management, the government action and the affection of people that live near the dumpsites. Then, we all shared and I got to know many more country about their waste management. The next week came, and it was Halloween week!

We researched the history and facts about Halloween and did some fun activities, too. Then, I learned something very interesting. It was about argumentative. My teammates and I were discussed about philosophical chairs. Philosophical Chairs is similar to debate but we can change from agreeing to disagree and it had to be very respectful. The statement was “Schools should stop the practice of giving letter grades to students. Instead, they should only give written feedback.” I was on the agree side and it was really enthusiastic. Talking about that, we were learning about devil’s advocate. Basically, devil’s advocate is a person who expresses a contentious opinion in order to provoke debate or test the strength of the opposing argument. I picked a few statements and brainstormed questions that the devil’s advocate might ask. We were also planning our essay for our thesis statement. My statement was “Single used plastic should be eliminated because it’s very harmful and effective, especially to marine lives, lives on Earth, our planet and people should use other things rather than single used plastic.” Then I started to learn how to choose evidence for our essay. I got to learn about primary, secondary and tertiary Sources. After that, I learned how to evaluate sources by using OPVL strategy. OPVL stands for origin, purpose, value, and limitation.

    • Origin: Where did this source come from? (website, book?) Is this a primary source or a secondary source? Who is the author? When was it created?
    • Purpose: Why does this source exist? What is the authors’ goal by publishing this? Who is the target audience? (is it for university students, teachers, scientists?) Why did the author choose this format? (why use a video, website, poem etc) What is the source supposed to do? (persuade the reader, provide general knowledge)

 

  • Value: Why is this source valuable? (what makes this source useful?) How relevant is this source? (example: first-hand account, analysis of..)

 

  • Limitation: What are the limitations or problems with this source? (example: the limited perspective on a topic, doesn’t show long-term consequences) Is it biased? Does the source provide a limited perspective? (opinion pieces vs factual articles)

Those are the meaning of OPVL. Then, I started to begin my body paragraph. The second round was ended and the argumentative essay will be finished at the beginning of round 3. I promise that the third round post will be published before 2019.

Argumentative Essays that I was working on.

Thank you for reading!

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English Literacy – Round 1

This is the first term of essentials in Liger Leadership Academy. English literacy is one of the most important essentials to participate in. In the literacy class, I’ve got to learn new and got more knowledge from my facilitator, Hannah and get to learn with the new class which is called the Lit Studio.

Everyday before the class, we always do the positive affirmation to make everyone feels comfortable and thinks optimistic in class. In this round, our big theme is about the history of English language. Every week, we’ve learned ten new words that we needed to know about the definitions, synonym, antonym and especially root words or where are those words come from? In the first week of the first round, we’ve learned about the pre English which it’s all about where did English come from. We also learned about the gods behind days of the week and what does it mean. For week two, we were learning about the old English which was from year 450 to year 1000. Beside that, we’ve learned about 10 new words that are related to eyes and ears. One of the most exciting moments was making teaching videos about those new words and shared it to my classmates. Then, we made it to week three which was the week that we studied about middle English. One day of that week was on the day we called “9/11” which was happened 17 years ago. We did some research about it and I thought it was an interesting thing to learn. Learning about special events in the past is related to memories. So, my classmates and I wrote a paragraph about our earliest memories and it made me feel very enthusiastic to write more about it. Let’s move on to the fourth week! During that brilliant week, we were on the way to the middle modern English which was very famous about William Shakespeare. Our facilitator made us read a article about Shakespeare and learned more about him. After that, everyone got a partner and our tasks were to research about anyone that is famous and read some biography about that person and my partner and I decided to choose Harriet Tubman. Then, we needed to plan and made a video about her biography and convince people to come to an exhibition that is mainly about her. Here is the link to my video (https://flipgrid.com/ac74b7) and I hope you will enjoy it. For week 5, we’ve learned about the modern English, which was from 1763 to 1989 which was the year that the second version of Oxford Dictionary published. Also, I wrote a cinquain poem about photography which is what I love to do in my free times. In addition to that, my facilitator introduced Mahatma Gandhi who was a perfect role model that took peace and independence back to India without any violence. October, 1st was the first day of the last week before Pjum Ben break. During that last week, we did an overall review about what I’ve learned and how well I did in the class.

Last but not least, this first round of English Literacy was one of the best classes I participated in. I gain a lot more knowledge and learned so many new words. Thank you ever so much for visiting and reading my portfolio.