[etni] Fw: re: History in English

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Mitzi Geffen - mitzi1002001@xxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [etni] fw: History in English

I think this thread is very interesting. Do you all remember the topic of 
the composition for the 5 point bagrut a year ago? The kids were asked to 
express their opinion about a suggestion from the ministry to have different 
subjects taught in English. I marked about 1000 exams, and every single one 
was opposed to the idea! Most of the kids said that the subject teachers 
didn't know enough English to teach in English and the English teachers 
didn't know enough about the subject to teach the subject. Another reason 
that was frequently given was that subjects taught in Hebrew raises the 
Hebrew level of the students and that would be lost if those subjects were 
taught in English.

I have to say that I agree with the kids. Though I think general knowledge 
is improved through much of what we do in English class - especially through 
the projects, I am strongly against testing subject matter in English. We 
should not be testing knowledge about History or any other subject, we 
should be testing fluency and accuracy in English. I think it's not fair for 
success on an English test to depend on knowledge of History.

Wishing everyone an interesting and successful new school year.
Mitzi


Nehama wrote:
>I have thought of a similar idea for a few years now.
>In order to make our teaching relevant to the pupils
>what is better than making it part of the curriculum of
>other subjects. In this way there is no more "there is
>nothing to study for the English exam" excuse.
>My vision is teaching parallel to other subjects, part
>of the material or supplementary to it. For instance,
>one month we teach about the industrial revolution at
>the same time as the History teacher does. The month after
>that, we teach about rain forests with the geography
>teacher. etc.
>The pupils are tested at the same time on what they learnt
>in the Hebrew and English classes - content wise. Of course
>in the English class we use the texts we teach also for
>teaching English as we always do i.e. grammar, vocab, writing etc.

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