Class 7 Resources
Bill The Boy - High School
Contents
Grammar & Practice Use
Bill The Boy, Cree language teacher at Box Elder HS, talks about the importance of teaching students how to use language in practical ways and touches on his use of humor in the classroom to help students feel comfortable.
Verb Conjugation
This clip demonstrates how Mr. The Boy asks students to practice verb endings, to conjugate verbs. First they write them in chart form, and then they practice with a verb they already know. Mr. The Boy emphasizes that he does not focus on writing in his classroom, that this is the only time he has students write.
Noun Affixes
An important feature of Cree language is affixes to pluralize, show possession, dimunitize, and locatize nouns. In this clip he reviews this with students and they practice.
Preverbs
To show “I want to (verb)” or “I’m going to (verb)” Cree uses preverbs. Mr. The Boy has students practice the preverbs they’ve already learned and culminate in creating a complete sentence with correct verb combinations.
Advanced Student
In this video, an advanced student combines all of the components from the previous videos:
- sentence construction with verb conjugation
- noun recall (with dimunitizing marker)
- adding complex possessive markers
plus: past tense, pronunciation irregularity and a question word