week 5: Interpersonal relationships

Community Building - Do you think you have a good relationship with people around you? Do you have a good relationship with your family members? How about your friends and your co-workers?
In your opinion, what is most important in maintaining a good relationship?


Cultural norms - Body language

Interpersonal Skills - Students will briefly read "Pass a Good Word Along" and /or "A Marvelous Way of Communicating Your feelings." Follow up discussion questions will be posed to discuss and analyze.

Culture Corner (35 mins)

Idioms for social Life - Students will read a couple of sentences on social life with idioms embedded.

Week 4: Personalities

Community Building
Life's Little Stories

Becoming a poet....
Students will construct a simple form of acrostic poem (e.g. if the name is Joy, then they would say something like Jovial, Outgoing, Youthful; should take no more than 5 mins to write down). Rather than characters, they will be asked to describe themselves in a condition
-Handout on character traits will be given as a reference

What I value most?
Reaching a better understanding of your most significant values

Culture Corner
'If'

Idioms on Personalities
(if time remains)
Choose an activity from one of the five activities for Idioms' section from Week2. Can also use those idioms to describe a made-up person

Week 3 Vocab, "I have a Dream Speech"

I most likely added some words, but here's a reminder of all the vocabulary words we had difficulty understanding last week. I will be posting the excerpt of the, "I have a Dream" speech later so that after we all understand these words, we can go back to the speech and re-read it with our new knowledge!

1. Recognition
2. nonviolent protest
3. segregation
4. injustice 
5. tangible 
6. plight 
7. rhetoric
8. rooted
9. self-evident
10. slaveowners
11. sweltering
12. oppression
13. exalted
14. jangling discords
15. symphony
16. " 'tis of thee"
17. Pilgrims
18. hamlet
19. Jews
20. Gentiles
21. Protestants
22. Catholics
23. God almighty

Remember to define the words you were assigned as fully and best as possible! Whatever you tell the group is as much as the class will know. I believe everyone has two words (or less) to define, so it won't be that bad...

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Week 3: Dreams

Community Building
What was one of your birthday wishes? Tell us more about it. Has/have your wishes come true?
If you could travel to the future or past, where in time would you want to go? Why?
Describe your dream vacation place.

Sing-Along
i. Gloria Estefan, "Reach"
ii. Somewhere Over The Rainbow
     -Lukas Kamargo
     -Harry Nilsson

Filling in the thought
"...not...but..."

Culture Corner
Choose from one of the two readings
1. I have a dream, Martin Luther King, Jr
2. Seven-dollar dream

We will be discussing either one of these, in addition to reading Langston Hughes' "Dreams"

Idioms on dream/sleep
Share a personal story about your dream/goal using one of the idioms provided in the supplementary guide (will be used in class)

Personal Story Time
While we are asleep, we dream from time to time. Some dreams are sweet. Some are terrible. Do you usually dream? When you dream, what do you dream about? Do you remember your dream? Would you like sharing a dream that was memorable or a dream that you have had recently?


Optional alternative activity (in case dreams are, y'know, too boring):
Poem talk! What is poetry and why we preserve them.

WEEK 2: Origin of Valentine's Day and relationships

Community Building
Current Events (see supplementary guide)
A while ago, a policeman asked a lady out on a date by tracking down her address after issuing her a ticket.
Culture Corner: Discussing the origin of Valentine's day
Idioms on relationships!