Weekly report

August 12th - August 16th

We started with getting to know each other. We got a lot of information about the theme of the course, the new homepage and about Mr Fritz´s expectations.

We did some teamwork on the question: "What troubles young people, when they look at the world and its people." Will be continued.

On Thursday we got all our schoolbooks, so there was no English lesson on this day.

August 19th - August 23rd
Rebecca Raberg and Lukas Czapla

Class Report of week 21

Tuesday, August 23, 2002
At the beginning of the lesson we listened to a devotion by Rebecca Raberg, then we discussed the main sentence of the story Rebecca read, which was

"Do what you can where you are with what you have".

Afterwards we completed the answers to the question "What troubles young people", and read a short text about aggressions from "Human destructiveness" by Anthony Storr, Sussex University Press, Brighton 1972

Wednesday, August 24, 2002
Basically we discussed the text we got the previous lesson. We also talked about the word "aggression" in depth and pointed out the different meanings. Furthermore, we distinguished between the definition of "aggressions" in the antique, in the 18th century and the modern use of the word by psychologists.

Thursday, August 25, 2002
We reviewed the vocabulary we learned the day before and continued analyzing the text about different forms of aggressions again. We talked about aggressive drive, why there is aggressive drive, aggression as destructive hostility, aggression with animals, and human aggression.

August 26th - August 30th
Christoph, Sören

Tuesday:

First of all, we started out with the morning worship with the bottom line:

"There is a longing in every heart that only Christ can satisfy".

In order to enhance the comprehension of the devotional text, we listed the following words:

distinguished person = a person that positively sticks out and is very special
a liar = someone who doesn't tell the truth
a cheat = someone who uses illegitimate methods to achieve/get something
shame = condition or impression of having lost one's dignity
suicide = act of killing oneself
sob = crying bitterly
stumble = almost falling over an object while you're strolling, walking or running carelessly
abundant = plentiful, ample, bountiful, being available in a vast quantity

We also discovered the crucial difference between the words "sensible" which means reasonable or wise and "sensitive" that is to say being easily influenced or offended.

Beyond this Mr. Fritz gave the first instructions regarding our book "Lord of the Flies" and distributed each chapter of it to the individual students except Soeren and Luke who were assigned to create special reports about the author and the background of the book.

Subsequently, our class started to work with the help of the Oxford Advanced Learner´s Dictionary on the text "Nature and Human Nature" by Alex Comfort.

Moreover, our teacher decided to postpone our test about the words we had to learn (from 28th August to 4th September) as there were many students being unprepared (especially the boarders who did not have access to the internet) and didn't get/know that we were going to take this test.

At the end of the period we finally obtained two questions as homework:
- According to Alex Comfort, what are possible reasons of aggression?
- What forms of aggression does Comfort mention?

Wednesday + Thursday:

We talked about human nature or to be precise about: Signs of the "self-destructive capacity in Man", things that produce stress, in whom stress causes aggression, modern societies, what stress may result in, forms of aggression and last but not least we received the assignment to briefly explain everyday forms of aggression e.g. biting one´s fingernails, cheering on a football team, a pupil hurling textbooks into a corner, banging the door on leaving the room after an argument.

September 2nd - September 6th
Lucien Noé, Daniel Nowak

Tuesday: 03.09.2002

First, we listened to Sören Ade's devotion. The main sentence of the story was

"Time - use it or lose it!"

Then we wrote the new vocabulary down, that were given in the text. The new words were:
valuable = wertvoll
grief/to grieve for = Sorge/ Sorgen machen (um)
narrow minded = unwissend sein,engstirnig
to redeem/redeemer/redemtion = erlösen/Erlöser/Erlösung
disciples = Jünger
distress = Not

After that, we corrected our homework, that was given to us last Thursday. We had to explain every day forms of aggression, such as: Biting one's fingernails, cheering on a football team, a pupil hurling textbooks into a corner after school, banging on the door by leaving the room after an argument. ~~~End of lesson~~~ Homework: Learn the vocabulary for tomorrow's vocabulary test.

Wednesday: 04.09.2002

We wrote a vocabulary test.

Thursday: 05.09.2002

At the beginning of the lesson, Mr Fritz gave us a text by Dorothy Parker, which describes suicide and all its crucial ways. At the beginning of the text there is a poem which says:

"Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live."

According to the text, suicide was common in the past. The Japanese used " Harakiri" to slice up their stomach and die with dignity. In the past there have been more suicide activities than in the present. Christianity taught us, that our lives were given to us by God and only God can take it away. Most of the people committing suicide are poets, musicians and other artists. We talked about the fact. how people could do such a thing. These people see death as a way to leave the planet and die with sorrow.

There are also people who stop people from committing suicide by helping them in a therapy or simply by talking to them. These people are called "the Samaritans". As we finished reading, the lesson had come to an end. Homework: revision of the text

September 9th - September 13th
Sabine Rommel, Usha Verma

Tuesday, 09/10/02

At the beginning of class on Tuesday, Tinu Vellapallil held a morning worship about discouragement. Its bottom line was:

"Discouragement is one of the devil's most effective weapons."

Then Mr. Fritz told us his schedule for the week. He gave us some general information about the class and some dates when he planned on having the exams and the vocabulary tests. Our graded vocabulary tests were returned.

He issued us a text, to be exact a speech, by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, held on December 9, 1941. It was called " A message to the Nation in Time of War."

First, we read the text and wrote down some vocabulary which we didn't know. Then we talked about its content and about the historic background. Roosevelt held this speech two days after the incident at Pearl Harbor which initiated the involvement of the United States in World War II.

Wednesday, 09/11/02

We again talked about Roosevelt's speech, but this time we looked at another aspect of it. We found many words and phrases addressing the people of the USA.

Line 10 freedom, decency
Line 13 pride in our patience
Line 14 achieving a peace in the Pacific
Line 19 to21 the hole sentence
Line 35 obligation
Line 45 We don't like it.
Line 51 to 52 " We Americans are not destroyers - we are builders."
Line 53 "…, not for conquest, not for vengeance,.."
Line 56 "We are going to win the war and we are going to win the peace that follows."
Line 58 to 59 " - we will know…

We carefully read the text and highlighted all stylistic devices that appeared.

Thursday, 09/12/02

Rebecca had some questions about doing a summary. Mr. Fritz gave us some useful tips how to present a good speech.

His advice:
-use index cards
-look at your students
-present your speech on foil or by Powerpoint (for each point one click) -writing on foil, use 14 pt
-don't describe persons, just mention facts
-summary signifies summarizing of the main points
-speak loud and slowly and give the gist of emphasize
After pointing out the summary, we talked about our homework . We were told to find every phrase used for the enemies of America (the Japanese) that Roosevelt used in his speech. Here are the lines and sentences or words which we marked as concerning America´s enemy:
Line 1 The sudden attacks perpetrated by…
2 …immorality..
3 …gangsters have banded together …
4 …challenge..
5 …treacherously violated…
39 …gangsterism..
40 …aggression who sneak up…
42 …feat of deception…
43 …dishonourable…
45 …Nazi manner is a dirty business…
48 …perpetrators of these crimes.
51 …immediate evil.

Mr. Fritz continued his lesson talking about the stylistic devises giving us examples from the text by Roosevelt. He mentioned :

The contrast (antithesis)

We worked out some more stylistic devices.

Contrast or Antithesis (continued)
line 42 brilliant feat - dirty business
51 ultimate good - immediate evil
52 destroyer - builder
56 war -peace

Parallelism (Repetition)
line 6 - 7 American soldiers… - American ships… - American airplanes
28 - 29 It is not… - It is not…
29 and 32 Rather… - Rather…
56 We are going… we are going

Hyperbole ( Exaggeration)
line 4 to make war upon the whole human race…
12 today or a thousand years
19 the hole future
22 day and night, every hour and every minute

Figurative speech
line 17 …the very shadow of the flag of peace…
22 On the road ahead…
41 …sneak up in the dark…
49 …true goal…ugly field
57 …dark days…

I hope this chart gives you some idea of stylistic devices and helps you to work it out a little easier next time.

September 16th - September 20th

Stella, Luke

Tuesday

We started our first lesson in this week with morning worship. The main meaning of the story was:

Some troubles come from wanting our own way

The unknown vocabulary written on the blackboard was:
Figurative speech = bildliche Sprache
Envy = der Neid
Self-seeking = selbstsüchtig
To hurl = werfen
To reveal = etwas offenbaren
Stubbornness = dickköpfig
Evasive action = vermeiden
To advert a collision = zusammenstoß vermeiden
To yield = aufgeben
Havoc = durcheinander
Innocence = unschuldig

Wednesday
In this lesson we wrote a vocabulary test. The themes of this test were suicide, message to a nation in a time of war and the speech of President Bush. After the test we were allowed to go home.

Thursday
On Thursday we started reading the book "Lord of the Flies" .
After we read parts of the book we wrote out the characters of Ralph and Piggy.
Ralph = good-looking , a leader, no devil in his eyes, mildness in his face, strong.

Piggy = fat, glasses, asthma.

September 23rd - September 27th

Nadine

September 24th

At first, I (Nadine) gave some vocabularies from the prayer book to the class so that everybody was able to understand the text "CHOOSING JOY"

joy - Freude
response - Antwort
inevitable unvermeidlich
depleted - erschöpft
depressed mood - depressive Laune
to engulf - verschlingen
to retort - (scharf) entgegnen
duty - Pflicht p
erseverance - Ausdauer, Beharrlichkeit
circumstance - Umstand! (Sach)lage
trial- Prozess y
to ield - überlassen
tribulation - Trübsal

Then I held the morning worship about joy. After that, we talked about the main sentence of the text: "FOR THE CHRISTIAN, JOY IS A CHOICE."

Afterwards, I gave a summary of "Lord of the Flies" about the second chapter ("Fire on the mountain").

In order to make the chapter understandable I outlined the main points.

Chapter 2: Fire on the mountain

- second nightly meeting => everybody respects the conch
- Ralph: declares that they are on a deserted island
- Jack: create an army
- Piggy light a signal fire
- Ralph: agrees with Piggy's idea
- Boy with a mulberry-coloured birthmark: tells the group his fears about the "beastie" which allegedly looks like a snake > older kids don't believe it
- the boys start to light the signal fire with Piggy's glasses
- confrontation on the mountain between Piggy and Jack
- Jack and his hunters make fun of his looks
- don't give Piggy any respect
- Piggy realizes that the boy with the birthmark disappeared => the others are worried about him

After my report Mr. Fritz asked me (Nadine) some understanding question about this chapter.

Wednesday, September 25th

First of all, we shortly talked again about the second chapter. Then Christoph gave us a summary about the third chapter ("Huts on the Beach").

The third chapter talks about how Jack tries to find a pig and that Ralph and Simon are the only ones who are building houses. This chapter also mentions that the attendant of the fire didn't look after the fire, so that the people on a nearby the ship weren't able to see the boys.

Christoph presented a very long overhead transparency, so I think those who are interested in the summary are able to read it in the internet.

After the presentation a student asked Mr. Fritz how we should create our
presentation of the novels from the reading list.

Mr. Fritz gave us some hints:

- author´s biography
- summary of the novel
- characterization of the main persons
- talking about the author: why he wrote the book (main message)
- history => background information on the time of the novel
- personal evaluation: Did you like the book? => Why?! Why not?

Thursday, September 26th

We wrote our first test. lt was about nature and human aggression.

Vacation: September 30th - October 11th

October 14th - October 18th

Friedrich and Sina

Tuesday, October 15th

The main sentence of this week´s devotion is:
Believers stand strong when they don't stay alone!!!

After the devotion, we heard a summary of chapter four ("Painted Faces and Long Hair").

• The rhythm and pleasures of the days are described
• The older children are the leaders and they have to look after the little ones
• The "littluns" have to look out for food and they have to follow the older ones
• Jack makes a second group after he has painted his face
• There are aggressions between Jack and Ralph because of the fire. At the end, Ralph calls an assembly.

Wednesday, October 16th

In this lesson, we had a summary of chapter five ("Beast from Water").

Some points are listed:

• Ralph is thinking about, how the uncertain situation develops
• Ralph's position as a leader needs to become clear again
• He tells the group about a new rule, not to take fire anymore from the mountain
• They want to talk about their fears, but Jack takes advantage of the opportunity to scare the "littluns"
• They go crazy and run away with Jack
• Only Piggy, Simon and Ralph sit there staying back
• Ralph decides to retreat from his leadership, but Piggy says he has to hold on.

Thursday, October 17th

That day, we talked about heroic and sick human beings:

heroic qualities e.g.: bravery, noble qualities, person rescues somebody by risking his own life, Gandhi, Mutter Theresa, M. L. King, Nelson Mandela, to save lives, helping, parents - guarding and educating their children, soldiers(??!)

sick qualities e.g.: waging a war, destroying others or oneself, environmental destruction, egoism, terrorism, rape, crime, despotism, sin (mankind's essential illness). !!!

All points written down in this weekly report are drawn from the handpapers!!! Written by: Sina & Friedrich

October 21nd - October 25th

Tuesday October 22nd

First of all, we had our morning worship in which we learned the following words:

* to dedicate sth.(one's life etc.) to sth.= to give a lot of your time and effort to a particular activity or purpose because you think it is important.
* New Guinea (country- self-explanatory)
* be astounded = highly amazed
* 10 commandments = God's law given two Moses at mount Sinai (see Exodus 20)
* underscore = stress, emphasize, accentuate
* bondage = slavery
* forgiveness = the act of forgiving s.b.(sin, crime, evil etc.); willingness to forgive s.b.(synonym-pardon)
* remedy = a medecine or treatment that heals you of a disease or reduce pain that is not very serious ( adage: sometimes the remedy is wrose than the disease-because of the harmful side-effects of the remedy)
* to be enslaved = to be the slave or servant of s.o. else
* grace = the kindness that God shows towards the human race
* remarkable = unusual or surprising in a way that causes people to take notice
* verification = to prove that sth. is true (opposite - falsification)
* account = report, tale, saga
* to be aware of sth. = knowin, realizing or perceiving sth.
* penalty = punsihment for breaking a law, rule or contact ( see also soccer ore ice hockey- a chance to kick the ball into the goal without any defending players, except the goaly/goalkeeper
* requirement = sth. that is necessary for sth.else to work or be possible (synonym - prerequisite)

In the end we still wrote out the memory verse of the devotional text:

God's law shows us a need that only God's grace can supply.

We, then, moved on with a discussion of the "structure of Ralph's speech pp.77-80":

Introduction - topic: Necessity of the assembly - to put things straight
Golding employs two stylistic devices in this passage of the book: parallelism and repetition ( see at the top of p.77, line 1-9 )

Main part
-water
-shelters
-lavatory/sanitation
-Fire-only one fire-rescue
-Summary ( p.79-19-21)
-Climax: the fear - the beast

End/conclusion "And be happy" ( p.80, l.6) (maybe even an abrupt end)

Wednesday October 23rd + Thursday October 24th

On Wednesday and Thursday we listened to Lucien's, Usha's and Sina's presentations/summaries (chapter7-9).
Subsequently, we analyzed the three chapters by underlining/marking important passages and Mr. Fritz gave us some hints/explanations on them.

Concerning chapter 8, we extensively discussed the characteristics of the Lord of the Flies (the beast)-pp.138+139:

-you can't escape from evil (omnipresent/ubiquitous)
-you can't hunt or kill it (immortal)
-self-confident
-part of human beings
-reason why it's no go
-taking up more and more space in the minds of people
-tempatation
-threatening

Additionally, I figured out where the Bible makes mention of the Lord of the Flies(Beelzebub): Matthew 12+10: 12:24 But when the Pharisees heard it, they said, This fellow doth not cast out devils, but by Beelzebub the prince of the devils. 12:27 And if I by Beelzebub cast out devils, by whom do your children cast them out? therefore they shall be your judges. 10:25 It is enough for the disciple that he be as his master, and the servant as his lord. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebub, how much more shall they call them of his household? Mark3: 3:22 And the scribes which came down from Jerusalem said, He hath Beelzebub, and by the prince of the devils casteth he out devils. Luke 11: 11:15 But some of them said, He casteth out devils through Beelzebub the chief of the devils.

Additional remark by Mr Fritz:
Beelzebub, the Hebrew word Ba´al-Zebub means "Lord of the Flies"

October 28th - November 1st

This week Mr Fritz had been on a training course for drug prevention.
There was only one lesson on Thursday in which he talked about the demands in next week´s paper.

November 4th - November 9th

We are waiting for Tinu and Sören

November 11th - November 15th

This week we watched the film "Lord of the Flies", evaluation of the film
difference: film - novel

We also wrote our second test paper with the following task:

Topic: William Golding, Lord of the Flies

1. Ralph, Jack, Piggy, Simon. Pick out two of them. Why did you choose them? What do you know about them (outer appearance, character)?
2. What is described at the beginning of chapter three (pp 46, 47)? Then concentrate on the stylistic presentation. What impression do you get?
3. At the end of chapter 5 (p 91) Ralph and Piggy are talking about the grown up world. In what respect can this conversation be taken ironically?
4. In chapter 6 on page 100 Simon saw the picture of a human at once heroic and sick. What picture of human beings is presented here? Which side have you personally experienced more?
5. On page 148 and on page 177 Simon´s and Piggy´s death are described. Talk about the style of these two passages and possible reasons of this difference.

Specimen paper by Christoph Raida

November 18th - November 23rd

We are waiting for Usha and Sabine

November 25th - November 29th

There were no lessons this week. Mister Fritz was away on a class outing.

December 2nd - December 6th

We discussed the last chapters of "Lord of the Flies", especially the irony of the end of the story.

December 9th - December 13th

This week we watched the film "Gandhi" and started reading a text dealing with myths about Gandhi and how ge practised non-violence. This will be continued next year.

December 16th - December 20th

Tuesday, December 17th

We celebrated Christmas with candles,tea, rolls and honey (donation of Mr Fritz). We watched the film: A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.

Wednesday, December 18th

Mr Fritz read H. G. Bates, The Goat and the Stars (a Christmas story).

Thursday December 19th

No lesson because of a students´ meeting concerning the Abitur preparations.

Christmas holidays!!!!!!