Kids with attitude don’t! or do they?

In my last article I wrote about a logbook written by a student who would perhaps be described as a “good” student. The definition of a “good student” might be the sort of kid who does what teacher wants. The kid who is polite, always well prepared and eager to learn at the beginning of each and every lesson. But that is not perhaps a description that harmonises with the reality of an average 15-16 year old boy in the 8^th lesson of the day on a Friday afternoon.

When I talk about logbooks in English lessons people are skeptical. Do teenage boys with lots of testosterone pulsing through their bodies write logbooks?

No, unless the teacher demands it. But even so many colleagues believe the result will not be very impressive.  So before writing this article I talked to Marco and Toby, two 15 year old kids with lots of attitude 😊. The two boys are known by all teachers in the school. They are the sort of kids who get noticed by teachers who don’t even teach them. But it is important to remember that they are just very ordinary teenage boys and they too just like the nice girls write logbooks full of learning and reflection. We as teachers just have to “not give up on them”, we have to expect the best from them. XXXXX in her book Reaching Higher argues along similar lines.

In my last article I discussed Annas Logbook. She had written between 7 August and 10 December 5764 words in her logbook!

In comparison Marco wrote 2620 words, so yes that is about half the amount, but honestly in how many classrooms would you find any student who wrote that much English, while learning English. It is worth pointing out that in the same time frame he delivered 7 written assignments and presented three project-presentation.

Toby managed to write 5296 words so he writes almost as much as Anna.

So here are some excerpts from first Marco’s and then Toby’s logbooks. My comments are in purple and I have highlighted sections that I think are interesting

Marco

04-11-2017

Today is the first day here in Lanzarote and we´ve been in city Puerto del Carmen looking an after a bar where my father and I can watch the derby tomorrow and we didn't find a place to watch the game. Later will we go down at the beach looking after place to eat and then go home and have fun. The weather here is good but today has bit very weird first the sun is shining the it was rain and now it's a bit cloudy.

07-11-2017

Today is this weather not so good so I´ve decided to spend the whole day making my English and German project. Tonight is BBQ night here at the hotel so we´ll stay here tonight and have some good food. Right now am making to last part of my project so I can send all my work to my partners Mathilde and Cecilie today. …..

………

I think it is good that you wrote in Lanzarote, BUT there is ABSOLUTELY NO FREE READING Marco!

08-12-2017

Today we start doing 20 minutes of the lesson printing our summary´s. Now Frank wants to show us 3 television adds because every year a new Christmas add coming to English televison. The first add was a love story (Cinderella) the second one was a song made by normal people was actually quite good. The last one was about a little boy and the monster under his bed who he´s scared of and then they become friends and I think that was the best of the three commercials.

We are seeing the first projects now, Chris, Veronica and Julia are presenting about  surrogate mothers and sperm donors. I think that was a really good project they was talking very free and was not addicted to a paper they had to read from. I like the way they were including us.I think that I am ready to present now, I just want Frank to see my power point . When we´re off from school I´ll go home and take a shower maybe take a power-nap and then I´m going to Brøndby because a friend of mine holding a party tonight

11-12-2017

Today we made correcting our essays that we had made for today. Today we do a new thing. Everyone went to the b class and watch Sarah show us a project about sibling sex. The funny thing here is that Sarah has write the same thing as me when she was talking about incest. The power point made is very good I really like the pictures she picked. Her presentation was fantastic she was talking very loud and very clear and free, her English is also very good and that is one of the reasons why she have such a good project. I just presented my project about  incest and I think that it was okay but I need to read more free reading so I can talk more clearly, when I´m presenting my projects. Right now we´re watching Sarah, Dani and Amalie´s project about Cannibalism which was very good

Free reading:

“Behind the door”:

Jamal and his friends like to hang out in the basement of an old warehouse .

Chapter 1.

Jamal´s friend Amos are telling a spooky story. They are making fun with each others faces and saying that no girls will go after there faces.

15-12-2017

Today we´ll see the last English and German projects and we´ll start seeing Carmen´s German project about ´´Kinderheim´´ and then we´ll see Niko, Åmu and Simons project about Pornography which I look forward to see because that is not a Frank-Project-Topic we´re used to see. I think that Carmen´s project was a good project. We just saw a good project from Niko, Åmu and Simon about Pornography which I think was really good and I like the Ted talk they bring in to the project.

There are some good days here Marco and there is some reading too… it would be wonderful if there were more… :-)

8-01-2018

First English lesson in 2018 and we´ll start the lesson out doing some free reading and I´ve forgot my book at home and I told Frank for a month or two that he should be looking for the Zlatan Ibrahimović biography and he told me that he got it but a student from his classes was reading it. I haven't got the book yet so I think I´ll ask him again if he know where the book is. After we´ve done the free reading we´ll talk about Human rights, I think that will be very interesting. The holidays was very good. I spend my Christmas with my mother, father, sister, brother-in-law and my two nieces and it was very good, new year was even better me and my friends rented a big function room and was having a big party over there. We was 60 people and there was no problems everyone was happy and all was good 

I've ordered the Zlatan book

The logbook gives a great insight into Marco, his life, family and what he thinks is important. Marco shares this information with me the boring old teacher and allows me into his life. I read about his holidays

Toby

Marco has another teacher who uses extensive testing every 3 months.. and fails