School Lunches?

From time to time, someone will say that Norwegian schools should serve hot lunches like Swedish and Finnish schools do.

American schools also serve school lunches. Here's a video made up of photos one Chicago school teacher took of a year's worth of school lunches.



What do you think of them? If Norwegian schools served hot meals, do you think they would look better, worse, or about the same?

Many schools have their lunch menus on line. My old high school and my old elementary school are among them. (The elementary school also serves breakfast.)

The Difference between the United Kingdom, Great Britain and England Exp...

This might help explain what's going on with Great Britain, England, and the United Kingdom. But you may need to watch it a few times... and perhaps take notes.

Happy Halloween!

Life Imitates Movies

It's not quite the same story as the movie "Slumdog Millionaire", but computer operator Sushil Kumar has gone from "rags-to-rajah" on the real-life Indian version of the "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" game show, a Hindi-language program called Kaun Banega Crorepati.

The host of the show is Amitabh Bachchan - the very same movie star whose autograph young Jamal wanted so badly in the movie!

Happy 150th Birthday, Fridtjof Nansen!

Here's a version of his story your history teacher didn't tell you....

A wonderful (long!) video about language

Language is a fascinating thing. It is part of what makes us human. It is one of the most complicated and important things our brains do, but we know little about it. Here is a video from the BBC, narrated by Stephen Fry, that talks about what we know and what we only wonder about.

Have a great vacation! Get some rest, and we'll start classes as usual after the break.

The Little Red Hen and Donald Duck

You may have grown up reading Donald Duck comic books. (Maybe you still do - many adults in Norway do....) But did you know he was first introduced in a cartoon? The cartoon was called "The Wise Little Hen" and was a retelling of "The Little Red Hen", one of the first stories in the Tracks 1 book. This cartoon is from the 1930s - the animation and even the music look very strange to us today.

50 State Stereotypes (in 2 minutes)

Samoa skips a day

The tiny island nation of Samoa(which used to be called Western Samoa) sits very close to the International Date Line, the imaginary line that divides Monday on the western side from Sunday on the east. Samoa currently sits on the eastern side of the line. Now the government has decided that Samoa will move to the western side of the line. This is because Samoa mostly does business with Australia and New Zealand to the west, and not so much with the countries to the east. The islands, of course, will not move, just the imaginary line on the map.

It's Star Wars Day!

May the Fourth be with you!

(It's a very bad pun, I know.)

Dara O'Briain on Anglo-Irish relations

Irish comedian Dara O'Briain is an Irishman living in London. Here he talks about the relationship between Ireland and Great Britain. He has a very very Irish accent!

School lunches a good idea?

Well, maybe not... (Click on the picture to make it bigger.)

More Kipling

Music/Art Class: What did you think of Kipling? Had you read "The Jungle Book" before, or played Kim's Game? If you were a Scout, you probably have.

Kipling also wrote novels and poems for adults. One of his most famous poems is called "If --", and gives advice about mastering the world. You may have seen one of the many parodies of it.

Good luck on Friday's test!

When did the first Americans arrive?

When I introduce Native Americans, I say that their history begins with at least one group (and probably at least three), crossing from Asia to North America at least twelve thousand years ago. There is a reason I say "at least"! That is particularly important for the date. Some archaeologists (people who study ancient peoples and places) and many Native Americans believe the first groups arrived much earlier.
A dig in northern Texas turned up some stone tools that appear to be much older than 12,000 years old. The tools are also simpler than the ones found at Clovis, New Mexico, that gave their name to the "Clovis culture", long assumed to be among the first Native Americans.
Maybe soon the date for the arrival of the first people in the Americas will be re-set to an earlier time?

For certain members of my Tuesday morning class:

As promised, the Death Metal Mix of "Friday". In return, you will never play that song in my class again. Do we have a deal?

Learn and Help at the Same Time!

FreeRice.com is a fun way to learn while doing good. For every answer you get right, sponsors (whose ads you will see on the site) donate money to the World Food Program to help fight hunger around the world. You can choose the subject you want to answer questions about. When you open the website, the default that comes up is English vocabulary. It's a fun way to learn a little more, and someone out there will have a little bit of a better day because of you.

Are you worried about events in Japan?

It's easy to get worried about the tragedy in Japan. Explosions at nuclear power plants are especially frightening!

Here are some things to remember:
1. The explosions were not nuclear explosions. These are not bombs. The reactors in Japan are well-designed and well-built, and they CANNOT turn into bombs. The explosions were caused by either steam or hydrogen gas. Some radiation escaped, but not much - only enough to be a danger for those living and working nearby.

2. Some people have been talking about the Chernobyl accident in 1986. That is wrong, and when the newspapers and television news talk about it, it is irresponsible! Chernobyl was caused by very different problems. What is happening at the Fukushima Daiichi plant is much more like what happened at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979. That is very close to where I grew up! I remember the day of the accident very clearly - I was nine years old and scared. Which brings us to....

3. KNOWLEDGE IS POWER. Learn about what is happening, but be careful where you get your information from. Some papers, like VG and Dagbladet, sell more papers when they scare people. If they scare you, stop reading them for a while. Don't assume everything you read is true. Don't believe that every "worst case scenario" will come true.

This blog post has a very good explanation (by a real scientist!) about what is happening. You can also trust the BBC's Newsround service for a simpler explanation.

4. If you are worried, TALK TO SOMEONE! If you have trouble falling asleep, concentrating on your schoolwork or on things you normally enjoy, or if you aren't eating the way you normally do, those are all warning signs. Find a friend, an adult you trust, or someone else you can talk to. High school is hard enough without worrying about things you can't do anything about.

Sometimes, you just need to believe in yourself

Pancake Day!

Today, Tuesday March 7th, is the day before the season of Lent begins in the Christian liturgical calendar. This day has many names, such as Shrove Tuesday, but for many people in English-speaking countries it is PANCAKE DAY! People did not want to eat rich foods like eggs and butter during Lent, so they made pancakes the day before to use them all up.

Here's a recipe for American pancakes, the small, fluffy kind. They are meant to be eaten with butter and maple syrup on top, but you might also think they are good with your favorite jam or even a sweet spread like Nutella.

First, make sour milk. Put a tablespoon full of white vinegar in a measuring cup. Then add milk until you have 3 dl of liquid in all. Let it sit on the kitchen counter for five minutes.

Now mix all these things together in a bowl:

• 3 dl flour
• 4 tablespoons sugar
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda (natron)
• a dash of salt
• 3 dl sour milk
• 4 tablespoons cooking oil
• 1 egg

Mix with a wisp until there are no more lumps.

Let the batter sit for about 15 minutes. Then use a large spoon or a small ladle to pour small amounts of the batter into a hot frying pan. When the top is bubbly and dry, flip the pancake over and fry until it is brown on both sides.

Super Bowl weekend is over!

The one weekend a year when American football gets spammed all over sports pages around the world is over. My favorite team, the Pittsburgh Steelers, lost a close game to the Green Bay Packers, making the Packers the Super Bowl Champions for this year. NRK showed the game live, but it was in the middle of the night Norwegian time. Did you watch any of it? I know people who stayed up to watch the whole thing!

American football is different from what most of the world calls football (also known as association football, or soccer). It's more like rugby, another game that isn't too well-known in Scandinavia. I've been looking for an explanation of American football on the Internet, and believe it or not, the best one I have found has been from the BBC: A Guide to the Basics of American Football and a Guide to the Positions of American Football. The coach who presents both these guides speaks rather fast, so you may need to listen to it a few times before you understand him.

I will comfort myself by remembering that the Steelers have won six Super Bowls, and that is more than any other team!

Open Thread for Week 5

Here's a place to talk about anything that happened this week!

Need some help with your Northern Ireland / Terror on the Tube presentations?

The BBC's excellent Newsround service for younger readers and foreign-language English learners has useful information about The Troubles in Northern Ireland and about the July 7th, 2005, terror attacks on the London Underground. Here are the links:

Northern Ireland and The Troubles

The July 7th Attacks

Other links (check back, I will be updating these!):

The Omagh Massacre, the last major incident of The Troubles, carried out by the so-called "Real IRA" just weeks after the Good Friday Agreement was signed

A timeline of the 2005 London Tube bombings  from Wikipedia

And a few more...

Symbols used in murals in Northern Ireland, by both Loyalist (Protestant) and Republican (Catholic) groups

Photos of murals in Northern Ireland

And more...
A BBC presentation on the Tube Bombings,  including facts about the bombings and about the police investigation that followed.

The blog our "Terror on the Tube" sound file comes from.  This is the story of "Rachel", who we met through the sound file on the Tracks website. Here she adds more detail, and uses some words that aren't appropriate in a school textbook!

The Guardian's page on the attacks.  The Guardian is a large British newspaper. Here they have collected hundreds of articles about the attacks and the aftermath.

Wisconsin Dells and other resorts

This week the second-year students worked on an exercise about a lifeguard at a waterpark in Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin, USA. The Wisconsin Dells is a natural feature on the Wisconsin River, a canyon at the river narrows with beautiful rocks formations carved by millions of years of running water. Wisconsin Dells, WI, is a town near the Dells. Wisconsin Dells is a family resort town, full of people during the summer tourist season, and especially known for its water parks. I visited the Dells as a little girl in - eep - 1976. That was before water parks were invented!

Does spending your summer vacation visiting water parks sound like your idea of heaven? Or maybe you prefer seeing a new city, or travelling where most tourists fear to tread?

A Shooting in Arizona

On Saturday, eighteen people were shot outside a supermarket in Tucson, Arizona. Six were killed. One of the dead was a nine-year-old girl named Christina Green. The main target was Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who represents the southern part of Arizona in Congress. (You may also see her called Representative Giffords. Both are correct.) She had come to the supermarket to talk to voters.

There are many stories in the media about this tragedy. There are also many rumors! This article from the BBC lists what we know about what happened. If you find that difficult to read, there is a simpler version on Newsround, the BBC's news service for younger readers.

Please feel free to write your thoughts about this shooting in the comments.

Open Thread for Week One

Here's an open thread for the first week back to school! Here you can say anything you want about what happened in English class this week.

Wakko's 50 State Capitols

First-years, you made some great posters in class on Thursday! Would you like to learn more about what you would find in the fifty US states? This link takes you a map of the US, with clickable links to the tourist office for each state. Even North Dakota wants tourists to come visit!
Each state has a capital, of course. Children in US schools are often told to learn the names of all the states and their capitals. This is a song about them from a cartoon called the Animaniacs. (Wakko is right: Maryland clam chowder is wonderful! Though I miss their crabcakes more.)