The Fourth Thursday in November

Thursday 27^th November

Hello again!

 How’s your weekend going? I hope it’s Ok.

I’m glad you did your homework. Most of you, at least. Andrea, what happened to your homework? And Alejandro, what about yours?

It was clearly stated on the blog!! In case you didn’t listen to me in class!

We started the class listening to your proposals about what you can do in your area to protect the environment. The best essay was Pilar’s – all of you agreed with me. But the most persuasive speech was Jorge’s. –have you thought about getting into politics (becoming a politician)?

Your essays were OK but they sounded rather (a bit) repetitive. And not many solutions were given. Everything sounded rather ‘abstract’ to me. You should have given more practical solutions.

Anyway, it’s a beginning.

See! It’s not so difficult to enjoy a class and not make the teacher angry!

As it was the fourth Thursday in November, we watch a video about the story and history of Thanksgiving Day.

After watching the video you wrote some questions, in pairs, related to the story and we had a quiz in teams.

You can watch the video again here. And also the version for kids, that tells the story of Plymouth’s rock.

 

    






Homework: read the text on the photocopy and answer the questions all of them. In writing, please!!!

   
And finally, you continued polishing your pieces of information for the         news programme. I hope we can finish it next week!

And talking about news, this is a piece of information that may interest our weatherperson!

Click in here   Weather features 

         
         GAME 9

Player 1	4
Player 2	8
Player 3	10
Player 4	11
Player 5	4
Player 6	10
Player 7	10

Have fun!

See you on Thursday!

"A Black Thursday"

Thursday 20^th November

Hello everybody!

Yesterday was a ‘black Thursday’ I know you ended up upset (a little angry) with me because I gave you detention,(you had to remain in class longer than the usual time). Yes, you were upset with me but I was very cross, really angry with you!

I overheard player 3 saying that you are ‘at that awkward age’ (difficult teenager stage). Come on! That isn’t an excuse!

I know why you are angry with me but this is why I was angry with you:

·         Except Óscar & Pilar, nobody else did homework. The video you were supposed to watch was on the blog from the previous week, 6^th November. I told you if you couldn’t find it, you could write about any other disaster, AS PILAR DID. That showed me that you didn’t listen to me!

·         You spent the whole class speaking and most of the times in Spanish.

It’s REALLY RUDE speaking when another classmate or the teacher is speaking. Be polite and ask for permission to speak.

·         And finally, the end of term project isn’t an excuse for you to use your mobile phones in class without doing anything productive.

I’m sorry for players 4, 6 & 8 who behaved a bit better than the rest. (But just a bit).You are tired, stressed and looking forward to the holidays, (me, too!).So, come on! Let’s make a last effort and prepare a good News Programme. It’s what you chose to do!

You could watch this video. It may help!

Ok, end of this issue. We are going to work hard and behave better next week and I’m sure you are going to make a gorgeous News Programme. Get your pieces of information ready because we are going to shape it up next Thursday.

Definitely!!!

In class, we started an audition (casting is a ‘false friend’ we use it wrongly in Spanish), for A TV show called “Explorer”.

This gave us the opportunity of practising the second conditional for hypothetical situations.

The show consisted in sending people to a remote place. These people had to do different tasks. Every three days a member of the group is voted off (leaves) the show.

The possible contestants had to fill in (complete) a questionnaire.

These were some of the questions:

·         What would you do if your car broke down in a snow storm in the middle of nowhere?

·         What would  you do if you were alone in a big city in another country with no money and nowhere to stay?

·         What wouldn’t  you miss if you had to spend two months in a remote place?

·         What would you do if you were lost in a forest? Etc.

The possible candidates were given points for the following:

o   Not being afraid of wild animals or insects.

o   Like adventure

o   Being independent but also  team workers.

o   Would be able to kill an animal for food if they had to.

o   Wouldn’t panic in different situations.

o   Can live without luxury items.

After some discussion we got to the conclusion that the teams made up of Jorge & Paco and Óscar & Pilar could go to the show. Alex, David & Andrea, on the other hand, (on the contrary) are not so suitable (appropriate). They aren’t as adventurous or independent. Besides, they wouldn’t be able to live without luxury items, let alone (specially) their mobile phones!

After that, we went through exam strategies for the topic phase. We gave opinions and listened to examples.

For homework, do exercise d on the photocopy page 53. And write a composition from the section “Factual Writing” on the same page.

You have to write a report so as to persuade people to protect the environment.

·         Introduction: explain what environmental problems there are in your area and their possible consequences.

·         Central paragraphs: make suggestions: we could…, we should… why don’t we / council/ people …? etc.Speculate about what will happen if people continue to damage the environment. If we continue using our cars more than necessary, the pollution will greatly increase. (For example)

·         In the last paragraph, sum up the ideas in a couple of short sentences so as to make a conclusion.

GAME 8

Player 1	4
Player 2	4
Player 3	4
Player 4	5
Player 5	4
Player 6	10
Player 7	10

Have a nice weekend and enjoy yourselves!

See you on Thursday!

Environmental Disasters

Thursday 13^th November, 2014

Hi! How’s your week going?

In our last class we listened, talked and wrote about an accident that took place in Australia and cause an important environmental disaster.

The person telling the story said that he was on holiday in Australia. He was on a cruise with his wife. Then, a terrible storm started and it turned into a cyclone. The strong wind made the cargo on the deck move and crash into the oil tanks. As a result, there was an oil spill that spilt tonnes of fuel into the ocean.

If the cyclone hadn’t hit, the accident wouldn’t have happened.

If the containers hadn’t moved, they wouldn’t have hit the other cargo and made the spill.

The area wouldn’t have recovered so quickly if the clean-up groups hadn’t worked so hard.

The coast wouldn’t have been polluted if less fuel had poured into the ocean.

We saw examples of 3^rd conditional sentences in songs. In this video you can see examples of different types of conditionals in songs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxJ_HqOPtcs

So, we have reviewed the three types of conditionals. We've learnt (at least I hope you have learnt) how to pronounce contractions in third conditional sentences in a colloquial way. We have learnt vocabulary related to natural disasters and related to accidents that caused environmental disasters. Now, you can write about it. That’s what we will talk about in our next class.

Apart from this topic, you listen to somebody explaining what ‘Pantomime’ – ‘Panto’ – is and you took notes. Some of you took notes.

Learnt more in here:

Pantomime

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For other uses, see Pantomime (disambiguation).

Not to be confused with mime.

The Christmas Pantomime colourlithograph bookcover, 1890, showing the harlequinade characters

Pantomime (informally panto), is a type of musical comedy stage production, designed for family entertainment. It was developed in England and is generally performed during the Christmas and New Year season. Modern pantomime includes songs, slapstick comedy and dancing, employs gender-crossing actors, and combines topical humour with a story loosely based on a well-known fairy tale.^[1] It is a participatory form of theatre, in which the audience is expected to sing along with certain parts of the music and shout out phrases to the performers.

Pantomime has a long theatrical history in Western culture dating back to classical theatre, and it developed partly from the 16th-centurycommedia dell'arte tradition of Italy, as well as other European and British stage traditions, such as 17th-century masques.^[1] An important part of the pantomime, until the late 19th century, was the harlequinade. The pantomime is performed today throughout Britain and, to a lesser extent, in other English-speaking countries.

And we finished the class looking for information so as to start our ‘News programme’. You are supposed to get most of the information ready for this week because we have to start recording it!

GAME 7

Player 1	7
Player 2	5
Player 3	7
Player 4	9
Player 5	5
Player 6	5
Player 7	6

See you on Thursday!

National Environmental Concerns

Thursday 6^th November, 2014

Hello everybody! How did you get on with your exams?

I hope you are having a nice Saturday despite the weather (although the weather is bad).

Andrea, Paco, this is what you missed last week:

We corrected the exercises on the third conditional exercises.

 We read the text about Australia’s environmental concerns.

The environmental concerns in Australia are radiation, introduced species, oil spills, litter and soil salinity.

We read about the problems that these environmental issues bring about (cause to happen). They are basically the same concerns that affect to most of the countries. I distinctly remember the oil spill that took place (happened) in Galicia in 2002. I often forget that you are very young and you didn’t live this disaster. Here is a documentary where you can learn about it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7-gEJU0PRE

Linked to this, we studied the different forms of some words from the text.

Remember that you can check the pronunciation of words you don’t know how to pronounce on this pronunciation dictionary on the web, http://www.howjsay.com/

NOUN	VERB	ADJECTIVE
extinction	to become extinct	extinct
survival	to survive	surviving
invasion	to invade	Invading
population	to populate	populated
threat	to threaten	threatened, threatening
prevention	to prevent	preventative
recovery	to recover	recovered, recovering

Remember the different meaning of adjectives ending in ‘–ing’ and ‘ –ed’

Most of the times we use adjectives ending in “-ed” to describe feelings. These adjectives usually have another form with “-ing” but the later don’t describe feelings. They refer to the reason or the cause of those feelings.

Look at the examples:

I’m bored (feeling). This book is so boring! (The book is the reason why you are bored)

I’m bored because my friends are boring. (My friends are the reason. They make me feel bored)

                                         

How did you feel yesterday? Yesterday I was excited waiting to see the football match. But in the end, I was annoyed because my team lost and the result was disappointing!

What about you?

And we finished the class talking about our TV News Programme. You must start looking for pieces of news for the programme. We’re going to record it.

These are our journalists:

Paco / Jorge	Current affairs
Andrea / Pilar	Music
Alex / David	Sports
Óscar	The weatherman

Points for interest and participation in class.

 GAME 6

Player 1	---
Player 2	---
Player 3	7
Player 4	7
Player 5	6
Player 6	6
Player 7	7

Have a nice week!

See you on Thursday!