#english board

[academic-vampire]

𝔅𝔞𝔟𝔶 𝔟𝔩𝔲𝔢 𝔞𝔠𝔞𝔡𝔢𝔪𝔦𝔠

[kizzer55555]

DP x DC: The Most Dangerous Card Game

Ok so Danny has essentially claimed earth as his. And he is fully aware that there are constant threats to the planet. Now he can’t stop a threat that originates on earth (that’s something he’ll leave to the Justice league) but he can do something about outside threats. Doing some research on ancient spells, rituals, and artifacts, he cast a world wide barrier on the planet to protect it from hostile threats so they cannot enter. This will prevent another Pariah Dark incident. However, barriers like this come at a price. You see, there are two ways to make a barrier. Either make one powered up by your own energy and power (which would be constantly draining) or set up a barrier with rules. The way magic works is that nothing can be absolutely indestructible. It must have a weakness. The most powerful barriers weren’t the ones reinforced with layer after layer of protective charms and buffed up with power. Those could eventually be destroyed either by being overpowered, wearing them down, or by cutting off the original power source. No, the most powerful barriers were the ones with a deliberate weakness. A barrier indestructible except for one spot. A cage that can only be opened from the outside. Or that can only be passed with a key or by solving a riddle. So Danny chooses this type of barrier and does the necessary ritual and pours in enough power to make it. And he adds his condition for anyone to enter. 

Now the Justice league? Find out about the barrier when Trigon attempts to attack, they were preparing after he threatened what he would do once he got to earth. How he would destroy them. The Justice league tried to take the fight to him first but were utterly destroyed, so they retreated home to tend to their injuries, and fortify earth for one. Last. Stand. Only when Trigon makes his big entrance…he’s stopped.

The Justice league watch in awe as this thin see-through barrier with beautiful green swirls and speckled white lights like stars apears blocking Trigon and his army’s advance. The barrier looks so thin and fragile yet no matter how hard the warlord hits, none of his attacks can get through and neither can he damage said barrier. That’s when Constantine and Zatanna recognizes what this barrier is. Something only a powerful entity could create. For a moment, the league is filled with hope that Trigon can’t get through yet Constantine also explains that it’s not impenetrable. And clearly Trigon knows this too for he calls out a challenge. 

And that’s when, in a flash of light, a tiny glowing teenager appears. He looked absolutly minuscule compared to Trigon and yet practically glowed with power (this isn’t a King Danny AU though).

And that is when the conditions for passing the barrier are revealed. And the Justice realize that the only thing stopping Trigon and his army from decimating earth. The only way he can get through….is by beating this glowing teenager in a card game. 

Not just any card game though. The most convoluted game Sam, Danny, and Tucker invented themselves. It’s like the infinite realms version of magic the gathering, combined with Pokémon, and chess. And Danny is the master. So sit down Trigon and let’s play.

(The most intense card game of the Justice league’s life).

After Danny wins, this happens a few more times with outer word beings and possibly even demons attempting to invade earth, yet none have been able to beat the mysterious teenager in a card game. Constantine might even take a crack at it and try to figure out how to play. He’s really bad though. Every time this happens, the Justice league worry that this might be the time the teenager looses. Yet every time, he wins (even if only barely). 

Meanwhile, Danny, Sam, and Tucker have gotten addicted to the game and play it almost daily. Some teachers might seem them playing the game are are like ‘awww how cute’ not realizing this game is literally saving the world. Jazz is just happy they aren’t spending as much time on their screens playing Doomed.

[trinh24]

ALT English Boards for Junior High School

Here’s a guide on how I conceptualize and create my English boards for the junior high school I work at!

1. Come up with a theme

This can be something simple and seasonal or very specific. I focused on holidays a lot, but I wish I had more time and leeway in my classes to teach the kids more about Lunar New Year, which is a holiday I miss celebrating and that they aren’t familiar with! Other good ideas would be less popular holidays that aren’t talked about in Japan like Hanukkah, Ramadan, or MLK day. If you can’t think of anything, you can incorporate the school events like a prediction for the sports festival weather, messages to teachers, or even messages from teachers to students. Don’t be afraid to do a non-seasonal theme for December if you’ve had enough of Christmas or don’t feel passionate about it.

My students tend to be very lazy when they read the board, so I don’t bother teaching grammar or anything about English on the board (unless that was part of the theme). They only look at it from far away for a short time, so I need to make things large and focused on one activity. Teaching a culture is also more interesting than grammar or spelling. English in the classroom is already boring enough for them.

2. Plan the assets

On my boards I put:

The name of the month

A paragraph or so of English explaining the theme, split into individual sentences

An activity that involves the students reading and touching the board in some way. Things that work well for the JHS level are polls where they vote for 2+ options, sticky note prompts to write or draw something, or freebies where they can grab notes or cards you made for them. My co-ALT also had Halloween masquerade masks that they left by their board for the kids to try on, and that seemed like a great idea too if you have a big budget to splurge at the 100 yen store every month. Polls are by far the best thing I’ve tried so far on my boards!

Themed pictures and stock images to decorate

Some other JETs or ALTs I noticed put whole calendar sheets on their boards and have a word/song/etc of the month corner, but those take up too much space for me. (If you had a giant amount of space then go crazy.) If there’s too much clutter or I haven’t outlined the activities to be punchy and bold enough, my students won’t be interested.

3. Create the assets in Canva.com + Hand-draw assets

I use Canva to create my typed and printed materials for my boards. If you like another site then use that. For my style, it’s good to mix both hand-written/drawn and typed/printed materials so that the boards look cute and friendly but also legible and clean.  I recommend rotating your document to landscape to fit more printed text on one sheet. If you want to use things for multiple boards or again the next year, you can laminate stuff too.

The assets I choose to be printed are: - English sentences (because I have bad handwriting). Please choose a font that has handwritten lowercase “a”s and “g”s. Comic sans MS is actually perfect for this. (If you want to print Japanese text, type in Japanese into the search bar to find cute rounded fonts that are compatible with Japanese characters) - Pictures and images (Canva has a good selection of graphics and stock photos.)

The handmade assets are: - the letters for the month (usually too wide or big to comfortably print on A4 sizes without wasting a ton of paper) made on construction paper - the Japanese text (written under my printed English). I choose to write the Japanese because I know how to and it occasionally impresses other teachers. It also forces my students to walk up close to the board if they want to rely on the Japanese.

4. Assemble the board!

For my boards, I put the month at the top, the English text to one side, and the activity to the other. I separate the English text into smaller sentences and caption with Japanese. This helps when maybe your 3rd years know the grammar but 1st years don’t.

Having distinct sections helps the board flow better. Drawing a line with a marker connecting all of the sentences in the order they should be read in helps. Also, visually distinguishing important sentences or words with underlines, borders, and colors can also help.

For activities, use a clear action verb so the students know what the activity is. I recommend saying: “Let’s vote!”, “Let’s write!”, “Let’s make Valentine’s Day cards!”, etc.

5. Show it off!

When you’re done, you can hang it up and be the first to participate in the activity! Asking the other JTEs, faculty and staff, or your favorite students to participate next can help avoid an empty, sad void. Walking out during lunch break and after school to stand by the board to explain it also works to lure the students over.

At the end of the day, this is my personal style of English boards. I’ve thought about making more unique, stylistic ones for every month like my predecessor, but this simple formula works for me and the current students. Be sure to adapt boards to suit the English level of students and try only translating a few words if they can read well.

I’m really proud of my October and March boards; they got a ton of participation, and I feel like they were fun. :) Some other months were kind of boring or just straight up ugly, so you can guess what those are. If I could go back and fix them, I’d make them nicer since the I think the board’s visual aesthetic is really important. There’s plenty of time for desk-warming as an ALT so use that time to plan for the months in advance!

Here are some of my boards!

(Graduation theme! All the students ended up writing notes to their friends. Not a single teacher thanked, even though I tried to convince them they should write to teachers. The “learning new things with my friends” option also has too many votes since the boys stuck extra on that one. I stopped them from trying to make a sticker smiley face.)

(Halloween theme! The students drew the ghosts themselves! The English text lifts up with the flap to reveal Japanese translations underneath. My students don’t like touching the board unless they really need to, so I don’t think they used them. Maybe the flaps would work better at eye level for small elementary-school students.)

(Thanksgiving theme! I should have made this interactive or made the students write something.)

(Valentine’s theme! I wish I had better cards, I didn’t like the gift tag templates on Canva and should’ve made my own. A section to show off cards students wrote would’ve been good too.)

[joytri]

boarding school aesthetic

[ivory-ice]

Justice sign face chibis!

[moonagedaydreamsofrhiannon]

my 79 year old english teacher just came out to me as bisexual and i am so aghast i can’t tell anyone bc i don’t wanna out him but i NEED TO TALK ABOUT THIS

i was talking about dead poets society and walt whitman and then he just says “you know i had a gay lover when i was younger and we drove across europe together on the back of a motorcycle” EXCUSE ME??????????

[belle-keys]

the age-old discussion as to whether or not ben barnes was poor casting for dorian gray is incredibly funny to me like yes we know that dorian is supposed to look like an innocent blond cherub instead of a dark luciferian daddy long leg prince of sin because literature but it all comes down nitpicking in the end because i’m just sure that oscar wilde the man himself would have been salivating over ben every waking minute of his damn life if he were here

[draculaswidow]

[chicafinal]

stephen: lol the british suck

mclean: yeah the british suck

stephen: shut up. some of my best friends are englishmen. how dare you

[mehreenkhan]

Five times a day, I make tea.

I do this because I like the warmth in my hands, like the feeling of self-directed kindness.

(from Leila Chatti's poem, Tea)

Some may call me a pessimist, but I am not. There is nothing gained from loss.

I drink tea in the shade and believe in poetry. I am a zealot for optimism.

(from Chris Abani's piece, Pilgrimage)

When tea becomes ritual, it takes its place at the heart of our ability to see greatness in small things.

- Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog

What else is beautiful:

Your hands, at the end of a long day, carrying a cup of tea.

(from Aria Aber's Rilke and I)

I had tea.

I then spent a long time in a bookshop. A quiet evening.

-Virginia Woolf, A Passionate Apprentice

[they-didnt-last]

anyone interested in talking about the iconic 2000's middle-grade-bordering-on-ya book series gallagher girls??

[academic-vampire]

Cozy green.

[neo--queen--serenity]

I understand the choice to change the original use of the word “fag” to “drudge,” for obvious slur reasons. But, by doing that, you’re ensuring that viewers won’t know that fagging was an actual practice that’s been around for centuries in Great Britain.

It clearly wasn’t a humane or ethical system, and it’s deeply frowned upon in present day. But it was a huge part of British public/boarding school culture, and “fag” and “fagging” were the words exclusively used for this practice.

There’s even a possibility that the modern gay slur “faggot” was derived from this practice, since fagging frequently involved physical and sexual abuse between students. However, tellingly, fagging became less popular in some schools when homosexuality was more actively criminalized.

All that is to say that—though I get the reasoning—you’re still erasing a plot-relevant part of history by glossing over this very bad, very true thing that existed in England (and in some English colonies!) up through the 20th century. The truth is ugly, but it’s better context for the story you’re telling, and quite honestly makes Ciel’s situation at Weston make a lot more sense.

[foursaints]

was thinking about that voice hcs post & it really struck me that i have never once read anyone besides james as remotely british. whenever barty arrives in the fanfiction like "bloke" my eyes black out for a second... you can't be talking like that croatian baby

[burningvelvet]

At the bookstore today I saw this new Mary Shelley game. It may seem like a cash-grab but honestly I think Mary herself would LOVE this. Mary's father William Godwin owned a children's bookstore which sold games as well. When they weren't writing some of the most acclaimed 18th century philosophy, he and his first wife Mary Wollstonecraft also wrote some childrens literature, and both focused heavily on youth education in their belief system. Later, Mary and Percy Shelley (both inspired by her parents, whom they idolized) also worked on childrens stories together and bonded over their mutual love for children, games, education, and imaginative play all around.

The description reads thus: "Contained within these three volumes is a secret many have devated their entire lives to unearthing, and always in vain. It is a secret I would have taken with me to the grave, except that it is, in more ways than ane, our family's legacy, and thus rightfully belongs with you.

"You have just received 'The Shelley Volumes,' a collection of hollowed-out books left by Mary Shelley (author of Frankenstein) to her son, Florence. Inside you'll discover a trove of beautiful documents, 2D and 3D jigsaw puzzles, and other mysterious objects and artifacts. Solve Mary's puzzles and you'll be treated to a heartbreaking story that culminates in a shocking reimagining of the truth behind her famous novel."

From the website: "Mother of Frankenstein is a groundbreaking new game that combines the best of escape rooms, immersive theater, and prose fiction."

[lionofchaeronea]

Study of a Black Boy, William Etty, between 1827 and 1838