Group 6's first week at the Arab Institute

Group 6 (Jelena and Charlotte) have finished their first week of teaching at the Arab Institute.  It was really great to meet all the wonderful students at the institute, consisting of Grade 9 & 11.   We look forward to the weeks ahead.

Grade 9 

Today in the class we discussed the positives and negatives of social networking. This resulted in a debate at the end of the class. One group argued for the positives and the other the negatives and they came up with lots of interesting ideas. Below are some of their views:

Positives	Negatives
Meeting new people and making connections	Wasting time
Easier/faster to communicate	Bullying
Getting to know more about different cultures	Bad for your health e.g. eyesight
Access to current news	Meeting bad people
Shopping online	Reading bad things, blogs etc
Learning e.g. homework, languages, Google translate	Addictive/bad habit e.g. on Facebook all of the time
Using GPS, Google maps	Isolation
Watching football matches, moves and games entertainment	Some people use fake I.D on the internet
To find jobs	Content not suitable for children
To improve twinning links!	Gambling websites
Listening to music	You may come across wrong information/websites may not be reliable.

They really enjoyed this lesson and topic and they all participated well in there groups. 

Grade 9 debating their views on Social Networking

Grade 11

In class today, we introduced Human Rights as a topic. First we showed them a video about ‘The Story of Human Rights’, then they worked in groups to order which human rights are most important to them. We took articles 1-15 from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and they chose seven and presented them to the rest of the class. The groups tended to find the following rights particularly important:

The right to life                                                       We are all born free and equal
The right to nationality                                          No torture
No slavery                                                                Your human rights are protected by law
Freedom to move

Below are some photographs of the classes work and them presenting their ideas to everyone.

Student profiles and drugs in Palestine

Grade 9 had a great time preparing profiles.  We practiced vocabulary and had them discuss personality traits in pairs - at the end some pairs came and told the rest of the class about their partners.  They then wrote about their hopes and dreams as well as hobbies so Acland Burghley students will know more about their twinning partners.  The lesson flew by so fast that we didn't get a chance to take profile photographs but we will be doing them next week!

With Grade 11 we discussed the issue of drugs in Palestine and how the occupation is encouraging Palestinians to take drugs.  The students read the following article about drugs in Silwan, a Palestinian neighbourhood in Jerusalem under threat of demolition to build the City of David Park:
http://weareallhanashalabi.wordpress.com/2012/12/07/all-they-want-our-children-to-do-is-take-drugs-and-throw-stones-drugs-israel-and-silwan/
We discussed the main points of the article; the reasons for people to take and sell drugs and their opinions on it; whether the problem can be found all across the West Bank and 48 or is Silwan a rare case; what they think the future will bring.  Interestingly, despite understanding people's reasons for selling drugs, many felt that dealers were being selfish as they put themselves before the Palestinian community and the struggle against the occupation.  They predicted that the problem will get worse in the future, with more drug-related deaths and suggest educating people about the detrimental effect of the drugs is one way to combat it.  The session gave us, and the students, lots of food for thought.

Next week is our last week here.  We can't believe how quickly the time has gone!  We will be posting all the work done here after then; it'll be something for the Acland Burghley students to look forward to in the new year!

On the third of December I went to Acland Burghley School to do an Arabic lesson with the students.
Four students came ,three of them had some knowledge of Arabic and one was a beginner.
I divided them into two groups: with the first I did conversation and making sentences. With the beginner I did very simple conversation in how to introduce yourself to other people ,also the numbers system. I tried to divide my time between the two groups. It worked very well and me the student had lots of fun.

Following on from the 11th grade's discussions of teenage social problems in the last couple of weeks, this week the 11th grade have completed group presentations. These presentations focused on the polices and campaigns that the students would introduce, if they were in government, in order to reduce the number of young people that smoke in Palestine.

The class was split into four groups and here are their views on the policies and campaigns that they would introduce to reduce the number of young Palestinian smokers:

Group 1's Views

Group 2's Views

Group 3's Views

 Group 4's Views

Puppets Lunch Time

We did achieve some puppets, the children were happy for that and we had a conversation asking them to prepare for the last show to write a story or play.

Acland Burghley lunch-club :)

Invitation for Arabic classes

Ehab is teaching ( how we start an Arabic conversation)

Students from different levels are interested to learn Arabic conversation 

With 15 students we've just started our Arabic classes by Ehab Bader, A student at Al-Quds University.

How 9th Grade Students in The Arab Institute Celebrated Eid

Over the last couple of weeks the 9^th grade at The Arab Institute have been working on a paragraph to send to students at Acland Burghley describing how they celebrated the Eid holiday at the end of October. The students got up to a variety of activities including praying at the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem and visiting their relatives in various cities and towns across the West Bank. Here are a couple of examples below:

My name is Murad Waleed.  I am 14 years old and I am from Jerusalem . I go to school at the Arab Institute.

On the first day of eid , I woke up then went to pray . After that I visited my family and my neighbours.

On the second day my family and I started picking the olive trees .We have 16 olive trees so it took us three days to finish picking them.

My name is Mo'ayad Srour, I am 14 years old, and I am in the 9^th  grade. I am from eastern Jerusalem in a town called Sawaherha. I study in the Arab Institute school. On the Eid holiday I did so many interesting things. First I woke up early, second I wore my Eid's clothes, then I went to the Eid prayers. After that I got back to home, I played with my cousins and friends, and we sacrificed a sheep which is a ritual action in Islam to get closer to Allah. The Eid was very beautiful and I did very interesting things during it.

Mo'ayad Ameen Mohammad Srour.   

We are sending the rest to Ehab, who is a CADFA volunteer at The Arab Institute, so that the 9^th grade’s work can be shared with students at Acland Burghley school.

We are now helping each of the students to write about their home town which includes places like Abu Dis, Azaria and Sheikh Sar. The students have already been working hard on writing about their home town so that students can learn a little bit more about the towns that students at The Arab Institute come from and they are hoping to be able to send them over to you soon.