Review: Akeelah and The Bee Movie (13 January 2011)

Movie review: Akeelah and the Bee (13 of January 2011)

Today, we were watching Akeelah and the Bee during class.

Akeelah and the bee is a story about Akeelah Anderson, an 11 years old girl and went to Crenshaw Middle School, who is a bright girl in school and find her interest in words but lives a poor life with a widowed mother and three siblings. She were asked by her principal to enter the spelling bee contest but refused to do so; afraid of being called as a nerd in school. Akeelah who is being isolated in school felt it more after winning the Sricpps National Spelling Bee in her school. After met a new friend, Javier Mendez, and new rival, Dylan, during state competition, Akeelah realized that she needed a coach as everyone who enter the spelling bee came from a rich family and they have their own coach and seek a help from Dr. Joshua Larabee, Professor in UCLA. Akeelah faced a lot of obstacles in order to win for the spelling be; from her mother, who refuse to let her enter the competition in the first place, her friend who thought she had abandoned her, from the society who put too much hope on her and her own coach who has his own dark secret and also from her rival, Dylan. But towards at the end of the story, she managed to dodge all the problems and won the competition and became friend with Dylan.

In my opinion, this story is quite good and it is very suitable to watch during free time. The storyline is so easy to understand and direct although the way they talk are quite hard to understand for me. Other than that, the movie is suitable to watch for every different kind of age.

What attract me to this story is on how Akeelah shows her passion while spelling the word. She was fast and full of passion. How fantastic! In this movie, the way Dr. Larabee is teaching Akeelah on the words is also interesting. At first, he lowered her anxiety by asking her to read the words on the wall. I realized that it was as a method for him in order to lift her spirit towards the competition and by doing this, it is related to what I am learning now where we, as teachers, need to aware of our student’s surrounding. By doing this, I can see through the movie that Akeelah is becoming eager to learn and full of spirit during her exercise. Other than that, I can see that Dr. Larabee had used Akeelah’s potential in spelling the words by using own her specialty in remembering which mean that he has used Akeelah’s ability and specialty as her strength. This remind me that, in order to gain student’s attention and to make the student’s success in her study, I must find and know their weakness and strength and use the ability to enhance their performance in their study.

There is a different of Dr. Larabee's way of teaching and my teacher's way. One of the differences is that, my teacher used to teach us according to the syllabus and text. there are times where we did not use the text at all, instead, we were using own our creativity and thinking during the lesson. these took place when the teacher askes us to rewrite the story that we think it is better to be have the storyline the way we imagine rather than the normal, happy ending one.

My favourite childhood story...~

The Lion and The Mouse

Once, as a lion lay sleeping in his den, a naughty little mouse ran up his tail, and onto his back and up his mane and danced and jumped on his head ...

...so that the lion woke up.
The lion grabbed the mouse and, holding him in his large claws, roared in anger. 'How dare you wake me up! Don't you know that I am King of the Beasts? Anyone who disturbs my rest deserves to die! I shall kill you and eat you!'

The terrified mouse, shaking and trembling, begged the lion to let him go. 'Please don't eat me Your Majesty! I did not mean to wake you, it was a mistake. I was only playing. Please let me go - and I promise I will be your friend forever. Who knows but one day I could save your life?'

The lion looked at the tiny mouse and laughed. 'You save my life? What an absurd idea!' he said scornfully. 'But you have made me laugh, and put me into a good mood again, so I shall let you go.' And the lion opened his claws and let the mouse go free.

'Oh thank you, your majesty,' squeaked the mouse, and scurried away as fast as he could.

A few days later the lion was caught in a hunter's snare. Struggle as he might, he couldn't break free and became even more entangled in the net of ropes. He let out a roar of anger that shook the forest. Every animal heard it, including the tiny mouse. 'My friend the lion is in trouble,' cried the mouse. He ran as fast as he could in the direction of the lion's roar, and soon found the lion trapped in the hunter's snare. 'Hold still, Your Majesty,' squeaked the mouse. 'I'll have you out of there in a jiffy!' And without further delay, the mouse began nibbling through the ropes with his sharp little teeth. Very soon the lion was free. 'I did not believe that you could be of use to me, little mouse, but today you saved my life,' said the lion humbly. 'It was my turn to help you, Sire,' answered the mouse. Even the weak and small may be of help to those much mightier than themselves. Review: For this activity, we were asked about our favourite childhood story. First story that crossed my mind at that time was this story. The lion and the mouse is my old time favourite story because, this is the first story that I read during my childhood. I still remember on why I choose this story at that time. not being able to buy the story book on my own, my friends and i went to the nearest library in our village. there were lots of storybook in either in Malay and English. most of my friends took Malay for their own reading but i was attracted to the English story shelf and then i grabbed one of the book randomly. With a little English vocabulary that i learn in school, i read the tittle and it says, "The Lion and The Mouse". The cover of the book is so beautiful with a picture of a mouse on the back of a lion and it attracted me; the seven years old girl, to take and read it. At that moment, I thought of how the mouse is so bold and brave to sit at the lion’s back. While reading the story, I can imagine the event of the story in my mind. After reading it, I gained a lot of moral values that I remembered up to this day. One of the moral values is, although you are small, it does not mean that you can do a big thing and being small does not mean that you can do impossible thing. Other than that, I realize that being big does not make you strong and being small does not make you weak.

Review: Edwina the Emu and The Gruffalo

Edwina the Emu and The Gruffalo

Edwina the Emu told about how a female emu trying to find the job to support her family after she laid 10 eggs while Edward, Edwina’s partner, are asked to stay and to take care of the eggs. She went to town and her hunt for a job begun. She was asked and did every kind of jobs in the town and they did not suit her at all since she is an Emu and on top of that, she is a female. Tired and disappointed, she went to her house and surprised to see the Edward’s tired expression. After that, Edward started looking for the job and Edwina stayed at home to take care of the eggs.

This story is actually short and come with rhyming lines. It is suitable for the children since the writer use a lot of repetitions in the lines and the words are easy to understand because they are simple. Other than that, the illustration also plays an important role in the story. In this story, Edwina and Edward are beautifully illustrated by the illustrator and it is so attractive with a lot of combination of colours on the characters. This book attract a lot reader not only because of the easy words or wonderful rhyming but it also has a lot of colourful characters.

The Gruffalo told about an adventurous journey of a mouse. In his journey, he met a fox, an owl and a snake. Each and every one of the animal has hidden agenda where all of them want to eat him. But, he is a very smart animal whereby he come up with a different answer to each animal, saying that he want to meet his friend Gruffalo who is so big and scary. After each of then hear the explanation, they went off and afraid to see him. During his journey, he really meet his imagination creature; the Gruffalo. The Gruffalo see him and immediately wants to eat him but stop after being told by the mouse that the mouse is a very scary animal and to prove it, the mouse asks the Gruffalo to walk behind him. During the journey, they meet the snake, owl and fox and the entire animal run after see the mouse and Gruffalo. Seeing all the animal runs after see the mouse, the Gruffalo become scared and run to save his life.

This children story comes with very simple words and sentences where like Edwina the Emu, this story also come has rhyming lines. The writer uses the rhyming lines to attract the children and by using these rhyming lines together with a lot of repetition, the children manage to remember the words that have been used in the story. Not only that, the storyline is very easy and children may find it interesting to read. The colourful background and characters in the story also helps to attract the children’s attention to the story. With these colourful and wonderful illustrations, children will not hesitate to grab it and read it.