HAIR - THE FILM

THE PLOT AND ITS CHARACTERS
The film Hair tells the story of Claude Hooper Bukowski, who was a naïve farm man from Oklahoma that goes to New York in order to serve in Vietnam War. Once he still has some days before enlisting in the Army, he meets a group of hippies (Berger, Woof, La Fayette and Jeannie) with whom he spent his days using drugs. He also gets to know Sheila Franklin, a rich girl that he fell in love with.

Claude had to go to a camp in Nevada, where his new friends (the hippies and Sheila) try to make him quit from his duty tour in Vietnam. Berger changes place with him so he can see Sheila and the others who were outside the camp, but while Claude is driving back, Berger is sent to Vietnam. Unfortunately, his friend dies during the war.

This plot is a very important one because it stands as an example of the counterculture movement that was happening in the U.S.A during the 1960’s and early 1970’s. The hippies in the film, who endlessly attempt to make Claude give up of serving the army, are symbolizing the youth and hippies that rejected the Vietnam war, the segregation and the social norms. It can be clearly seem the sexual freedom with the character of Jeannie, who is pregnant and does not know who the father is, the presence of Sheila, the rich girl, and Lafayette, the black man, in the same group of friends show their position towards segregation.

Well, it is a must see!

XOXO,

Bruna

HAIR - SONG: I GOT LIFE

SOUNDTRACK : Text Linguist Analysis on the song:

(If you click on the image it gets bigger and easier to see )

           
This song shows that it does not matter your skin colour, your bank account or your sex genre and it stresses that everybody is the same.


XOXO

Bruna

Sly and The family stone

Bruna

Sly and The family stone

Sly and The family stone were from San Frascico.

Their members were:

• Sly Stone (Sylvester Stewart) (1967 - 1975): vocals, keyboard, electric guitar, bass, piano, harmonica, among others.

• Freddie Stone (Frederick Stewart) (1967 - 1975): vocals, electric guitar.

• Larry Graham (1967 - 1972): vocals, bass.

• Rose Stone (Rosemary Stewart) (1968 - 1975): vocals, piano, keyboard.

• Cynthia Robinson (1967 - 1975): thrumpet, vocals.

• Jerry Martini (1967 - 1975): saxophone.

• Greg Errico (1967 - 1971): drums.

• Little Sister; Vet Stone (Vaetta Stewart, Sly's sister), Mary McCreary, and Elva Mouton: backing vocals


With Sly´s death the band was over.


Bruna

Sly and The family stone

                Vietnam War, Feminism, Racial Injustices were the context of the Woodstock Festival, which was part of the Counter-culture movement.

Bruna

Sly and the family stone

Their songs talk about peace, love ans social consciouness/ awareness.

Sly and The family stone

Linguist Text Analysis on the song Stand

It is important to observe that what the song asks to do is to STAND for what we believe is right. But it is not said that we should change the system or what was happening. This is really meaninful once this band was part of the Counterculture, which did not purpose nothing (system, way) but the denial of what was happening in the world (Vietnam war, prejudice towards black people and women).

Love,

Bruna    

Sly and The family stone

XOXO,

Bruna

October 27th Class

On this class we talked about theory, motivation and methodologies, and we reflected about what do we believe in and what are our values as English teachers and learners, through the questionnaire below:

This was a really good exercise because it made us rethink what sometimes get as an automatic practice, as it could be seem, the questionnaire makes us pay attention on the learners (questions 2 and 4), language conception (questions 1 and 8), teaching (questions 3, 6, 7, 10, 11, 12 and 13), motivation (question 5) and culture (question 9) .

Maslow's pyramid

Maslow's pyramid

Maslow's pyramid (Hierarchy of Needs) a part from its basis, which is related tp physiological needs, is really subjective. Once it is not clear enough what he meant with the other terms, for example safety (peaceful atmosphere, no agression) or security (feel protected, comfortable about every activity) and so on. It must be said that some activities by being challenging or aiming to get the students more sensitive about a social issue may cause anger, stress, conflicts instead of pleasure and self-confidence, those activities are necessary in order to improve the students' logical thinking, social relationships etc... It is also important to mention that nobody is equal so hardly the activities will fulfil everybody´s needs.

In class we had to answer the following question:

Maslow's pyramid of needs is a well known model of motivation. With your partner, come up with some example of how certain "ordinary classroom routines may in fact be important precursors to motivation for higher attainment. At what point do these routines become dull, boring or ineffective?

I believe that overuse of any activity (music, video, lab class etc...) or of the way the activity is done (Group work, Class work, Team work, Pair work, Individually) can make a class boring, but you can not take it as law, Iknow many kids who enjoy playing tha same game over and over again.

So the teacher must be sensible and chose according to its goals.

Hope to get your comments on it!

Bruna  

Crossing our universe

      Across the universe offers to its public much more than The Beatles´ songs, on the film you can see different perspectives of war, love and life.

    There is a young man, who was Lucy’s boyfriend, going to Vietnam´s war because he feels that it is his obligation as an American citizen, while Max, Lucy’s brother, has to go to the war, once he dropped college, when he comes back he has serious mental issues.

   Lucy gets involved with a group of peace demonstrators, which by the end showed to be too radical for her. Jude, a British man, Max´s new friend and Lucy´s boyfriend, a talented artist, sees the demonstrators and the war as violence, although he wants the world to be different.

   By the end of the movie, thoughts of how our society is and how do we behave about it are helpless. Sometimes it seems that we don’t do nothing about it or even worse we pretend not to see what bother us (poverty, injustice, violence), as long as we can carry on our lives. Where are our believes, values and ideologies? Are we a lost society?

   There is an interesting videoclip, called The fear, which shows what is happening to our society according to Lilly Allen. The link is : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-wGMlSuX_c. Is this it?

ABOUT THE SLIDES BELOW

I hope it helps everybody to comprehend the subject any doubts, feel free to ask!

XOXO

Bruna

SLIDE 1

SLIDE 2

SLIDE 3

SLIDE 4

SLIDE 5

SLIDE 6

SLIDE 7

SLIDE 8

The table

The table below to be better seem needs your click!!!

Methods and Aproach Table

Understanding a text - THE BOXER

We worked with the song "The Boxer", by Simon and Garfunkel. The activity started with the song listening, after we had some questions to answer and by the end we had a debate abou itt. I really enjoyed that class, because it gave a practical way of how to teach taking into consideration LC and the text as the minimal meaning maker, as well as it was open minding.    

Teacher / Students

When we think about applying a theory in the classroom, we must take into account the profile of the group. As teachers, it is worth being aware of our practices so that we can not make them like an eternal pattern, we must adjust them according to the class. This is the biggest challenge for the teacher, He/She must be aware of new practices.



Aims: as teachers we might want to check how effective the activities we do are or if the way it was done was correct or to know ourselves as teachers. Anyway, according to the text, it is important to have a specific purpose to be more effective on our research.



Methods: Keeping a journal - the way we have been doing as students.



Observation Tasks: recording what it has been said in class.



Interviews: direct answers from stds and colleagues

Class debate (20th of August)

On our debate I realise that:

-Working with listening skills: when the activity involves listening and music, it's better for me to have the lyrics and just listen to the song, once with the videoclip I don't know where to pay attention (on the image or on the lyrics) that give us different things to be reading at the same time.

-Student's autonomy: I still have a lot of questions to be answered on this matter, so I will leave my questions to be answered latter on.
1) Can you always learn like that?
2) Do all the students can be autonomous?
3) How autonomous can you be in an oppressive world like ours?

If you want debate it in here you are more than welcome...

Our parody "Another kick in the ball" by Bruna Lopes and André Vieira

Another kick in the ball

We don't need no Ronaldinho

We don't need no Dunga's control

No dark sarcasm in the cloakroom

People leave the players alono

Hey! People! Leave the players alone
All in all they want it's another kick in the ball

All this stuff is a complication
And some players are out of control
Ronaldo and "two" girls in the bedroom
Media don't leave Ronaldo alone
Hey! Media! Leave Ronaldo alone
All he wants it's another kick in the ball
All he wants it's another kick in the ball

Another brick in the wall & amolda o bicho na parede ´s videoclip

On the 13th of this month we watched Pink Floyd and Falcão videoclip´s.
It was an interesting activity because it was clear that the images and lyrics produce an effect of contiguity and more than that it was another opportunity for me and my classmates to try to read critically all the languages that are present on a videoclip.