Aust Eng Comp, Scenario Writing, Sabbaticals and the long awaited CAP report

We had the Australian English Competition today.
There was this article on the Singaporean toy piano player Margaret Leng Tan in the paper.
Too bad my language arts lesson with 107 fell during the time of the comp.
So 108's currently further ahead than 107.
Must try to catch up with 107 tmrw.

I've read through all of the first drafts of my classes' scenario writing.
The AFIs I have already mentioned in class,
So maybe I will write about other things here...
1) A few of the scripts touched me a lot
2) Many of the girls could empathize with and wrote well about the plight of lonely old people
3) There were 2 scripts with violent and bloody endings
4) Few wrote on 'Population'
5) The favourite topics were 'Privacy' and 'Caring for our elders'
6) Most who chose 'Privacy' wrote on how children's privacy are being infringed upon by their parents via embedded microchips in their heads etc
7) Most who chose 'Caring for our elders' wrote on how lonely old people are being neglected by their busy 'high-flyer' kids and are taken care of by robots

Hmmm....do all students think alike?

I'm now thinking of my sabbatical module - 'Writing a short play' in wk 6.
In term 2, I showed my group a 1950s film of Oscar Wilde's 'The Importance of Being Earnest'.
Great film, with killer lines.
But perhaps some of the humour is lost with 13 year olds.
I have another film in mind,
(which I will not tell now)
which I may use with my next group of sabbatical students.

Okay, after more than a month...
I'm finally going to update you on my experience at the Creative Arts Programme (CAP) camp
from 28th may to 1st june.
actually i'd intended to update there and then at the camp -
every night of it,
so that the memory is fresh
and the ideas will be vivid.
i even brought my laptop from school there
expressly for that purpose.
but alas silly old me didn't realize that one needs a visitor's account to login to the nus network.
argh! what made me think that there'll definitely be wireless to tap on in the nus halls?

anyway, we stayed at nus's eusoff hall for 5 days.
i was there as a teacher observer,
and who did i expect to see but ms grace chua (hci teacher) there!
met her last year at the gifted education foundation course at ri,
so was very glad to catch up with her again.
she's a very creative person -
full of ideas (as can be seen from the drawings and poems she improvises in her notebook)

the CAP camp is a great place for student writers to interact with like-minded peers,
they attended plenery lectures (we had a great one by the very wise and self-deprecating philip jeyaratnam, on what is art), were mentored by well-known local writers (I attended workshops by alfian saat, jean tay and christine suchen lim) and they went to a performance workshop of their choice, which culminated in a performance at the ucc theatre on the last day.

I was asked to be one of 3 judges for the haiku slam contest. a haiku is a japanese poem where you have a syllabic pattern of 5, 7, 5. the students were up on stage reciting their haikus, and we had to raise red japanese (looked more chinese) flags to indicate the winners (haha, felt like an american idol judge!)

there was this haiku by these hci boys which was so funny:
"This is a haiku
Not a very good haiku
But still a haiku"
so ridiculous! the 3 of us couldn't stop laughing.
Of course they didn't get through.

I also managed to meet up with my jc classmate, liwei at nus.
he's working at a tuition centre there.
managed to have lunch with him
and talked about old times.

during one of the workshops,
i asked this rgs councillor about the books that girls enjoy reading.
i know some suitable titles,
but they are mainly classics.
so i decided to ask her as i'm sure she'll know more about the reading habits
of girls around her age.
well, she (very helpfully) suggested a few titles -
from these, I asked my students to read Ender's Game.
and i think they enjoy it! :)