Christmas Countdowns

MERRY CHRISTMAS

I just want to wish you a very MERRY CHRISTMAS to each and everyone! I hope this new year 2011 will be full of fun and new challenges to achive both at school and in our lives!


CHRISTMAS VOCABULARY: Practise some Christmas words with this activity:

ECARDS: Now that you have learnt some new words, send your friends a Christmas ecard in English!

CHRISTMAS JOKES: Here you have some Christmas jokes to have some fun during these holidays. Did you understand them?

Happy holidays!!

Click here for your Christmas postcard.

Landmarks

Hi everyone. Remember 2ºESO students have to prepare a presentation on a Landmark in any English speaking country. Your presentations should include the following information:

*Why you chose it
*Location: country, state/county, city/town...
*Background History: building process, engineers, anecdotes...
*Description

You need to send me your presentations before Sunday 12 December.

Enjoy the long weekend.

Learning Chocolate

Learning Chocolate

Do you want to improve your English Vocabulary? Then visit this new website, there are a lot of different words! It is a website that provides free learning materials for students to learn English vocabulary online. I think the website might be useful to you. Have fun!

Animated Macbeth

Hi everyone,

Look what I found! This is an animated version of Shakespeare's Macbeth in three parts. I hope you enjoy it.
Have a great weekend.

Thanksgiving

Best Practices!

Hi everyone! Some of you are making an extra effort to improve your English marks and you are giving me your writing. GREAT! Look what some classmates from 2nd ESO did to improve their English. They earned extra credit! Well done, CONGRATULATIONS!

The witch is making Turtle soup
to transform people in ugly toads;
They put some dogs in the cauldron,
the potion will be ready 1st of June.
They will need some cow blood
and a fake part of a vampire tooth,
when the potion starts making bubbles,
you can think you are in trouble.
(A.G.)

Tomorrow we have exams
I don't like them so much;
I go to school
but I want to disco too;

Ha, ha, ha; ho, ho, ho
I don't like Santa Claus

In winter it's very cold
but I feel the weather's hot;
On holidays I see the Pope
but he only says Ho, ho, ho.
(R.G)

The Bad Cat

I once had a cat that was good
and he swam in the swimming pool
He decided to be bad
and he started to enjoy blood.
He broke all my things
including the cartoons of milk;
I decided to cook it with a bird
and also with a pig.
(A.T.)


A Strange Change

I got many lizards tails,
and I'll give you some details:
I need the most strange
and horrible things to change
an animal's face
But, what a horrible result!
I made a poison to make a big,
pink, fat and dirty pig!
(J.P.)

Scale of dragon
tail of snake
these are the things that I do
without making a mistake

Hair of lion
tooth of a wolf
these are the things that I do
when I'm bored
(P.L.)

English Central

Hello everyone,

Here's an awesome way to improve your pronunciation while having fun and competing with other learners of English. Watch the videos, record your voice and check for results. That simple!

Click here to start today!

Have a great weekend!

Halloween Countdowns

Text and Mobile Language

Here are some links you might find interesting:


*SMS Text Dictionary

*Pages from the BBC Newsround Website (2005) that offer to summarise famous pieces of literature into text language.

*Examples of famous stories reduced to a couple of lines of text speak.

*An article about the rise of text language and the way in which traditional greetings are being replaced.

Hope you like them!

Phonics Song

Time for a snack

Long Weekend

Hello everyone,

It is windy and wet outside and I have a challenge for you: What would you do on a rainy day like this? Write your comments, suggestions, crazy ideas or recommendations for rainy days. Here's mine:

I would put on my raincoat and rubber boots. Then, I would call my friends and meet them in a park. Wouldn't it be fun?

WELCOME BACK!

1st DAY RULES


EVALUATION CRITERIA:

40% Speaking / Listening
40% Writing / Reading
20% Daily work/ Class work / Homework/ Attitude
Exams include Vocabulary, Grammar, Reading, Writing, Listening and Speaking. So they are the 80% of your mark. Then we add a 20% from your Homework and Attitude marks.
Extra Points: +0,25 points for Speaking. At the end of each term I will add these extra points to your final mark if you always try to talk to me in English, inside and outside the classroom. And yes, I will ALWAYS talk in English, of course!

ENGLISH MATERIAL:

- 1 Student's Book and 1 Workbook (1st ESO); Launch into Literacy 4 (2nd ESO)
- 1 Notebook. At the end of each Term you will have to create an English Portfolio including all the notes you have got in your Notebook, all the photocopies and other activities we have done in class.
- 1 English dictionary.
- 1 English reader. (You will know the title of the book in a few weeks)
- 1 blue pen, 1 black pen, 1 red pen , 1 green pen and a pencil.
- 1 email (better from Gmail) to enter your coursebook website, blog and to email me.
- MY WEB SITE: http://www.mrscarrasco.es
- MY BLOG: http://mrscarrasco.blogspot.com/
- COURSEBOOK WEBSITE: www.voices.mac-english.com (ONLY for 1st ESO)

EXAMS AND TESTS:

1st ESO: You will take an exam after every unit.
1st ESO and 2nd ESO: You will also take Mid-terms (Reading, Writing and Listening Exams) and Term Exams (Reading, Writing, Listening + Speaking Exams) in each term. They include EVERYTHING we have done in class, so YES, they are difficult and you have to study.
Once they are corrected, I will give them back to you so your parents can look at them and sign them. If you don't bring your exams back in one week, you will have a negative. At the end of each term, I will give out a report including all your grades so you can include it in your English portfolio and you can keep it.
You will also have to prepare a Power Point Presentation in small groups and some individual presentations and projects as well.
There will be tests about the Readers after Christmas and after Easter Holidays.

HOMEWORK:

There is always homework to do, so it's your duty to bring your homework and English material every day that we have got class. If you don't show me your homework or you don't bring your books, you have got a negative. I will only give you a positive for extra activities (presentations, news, projects, celebrations...)

Back to school!

Hello everyone!

Old students, new ones, it's time to start school, getting up earlier, writing endless tasks and activities, studying hard and also meeting good old friends, learning a bit more about all the world around us, having fun...We all know you DO have fun at school, don't you?

The chameleon who was colour-blind

An interesting short story for a short weekend.

THE CHAMELEON WHO WAS COLOUR-BLIND





The colour-blind Chameleon simply couldn’t change colour properly. If he was sitting on a bush of green privet, he went a bright, blistering red and when he was basking on the yellow sandstone rocks, he turned sky blue.

Everyone warned him to start doing things in the proper chameleon way so as to blend in with his surroundings rather than stand out.

"If you don’t conform, you’re done for!” said one old chameleon who had spent her life changing colour in the regulation fashion. "Don’t you realise that there are enemies of chameleonkind just waiting for you to show up?!”

But the colour-blind Chameleon just smiled and went on changing colour in his own highly individual way. Climbing up the rough black bark of a tree, he gleamed as yellow as the sun; silhouetted on a branch against the cobalt blue sky, he sported a vivid shade of green.

All the other chameleons waited for the day when a jackal or a buzzard would spot and make short work of their non-colour-coordinated friend.

But that day never came.

It wasn’t that he didn’t get noticed, because he did. However, it wasn’t a jackal or a buzzard that spotted him, but a famous TV naturalist who was so fascinated by the Chameleon’s radical determination to stand out from the crowd and to be seen that he took him off to the Big City and offered him an exclusive television contract which, in turn, led to personal appearances, a lucrative publishing deal and international celebrity.

Even in the unrelenting glare of media attention and public notoriety, he somehow managed to avoid the jaws of jackals and the claws of buzzards and became the wealthiest, longest-lived chameleon in the history of zoology.

© Brian Sibley 2007

Demolition Call

Teachers, beware of Becky!

Cow Challenge

My son's favourite animal seems to be the cow. Is it the colours? Is it the "moo"? Who knows...Lucas loves cows! So, the challenge is cows. Tell me about your favourite cow, where you saw it, what makes it special.

Post real cows, sculptures, pictures, cartoons...Draw it yourself or just describe it.

Here's one of my favourite ones, from the Cows Parade I saw in Brussels, then in Chicago and then in Madrid.

Bye,

What is Geocaching?

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Geocaching is an outdoor activity in which the participants use a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver or other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers (called "geocaches" or "caches") anywhere in the world. A typical cache is a small waterproof container (usually a tupperware container or ammo box) containing a logbook. Larger containers can also contain items for trading, usually toys or trinkets of little value. Geocaching is most often described as a "game of high-tech hide and seek," sharing many aspects with benchmarking, trigpointing, orienteering, treasure-hunting, and waymarking.

Geocaches are currently placed in over 100 countries around the world and on all seven continents, including Antarctica. As of April 25, 2010, there are over 1,047,069 active geocaches around the world.

Click here to watch a video about Geocaching.

Let's Call the Whole Thing Off

Hi everyone! It's been a while...

Here's one of the many videos you can find if you browse for the song "Let's call the whole thing off". A classic!

Interjections

Hi guys,

Here's the interjections video I told you about. Enjoy!



I am looking forward to hearing your presentations next week.
Have a great weekend.

Stratosphere Hotel

Would you go on a ride???? Big Show, Insanity -the Ride and X-Scream... just three rides would be tempting to visit Las Vegas? Check the Stratosphere Hotel to find out more...

Classes

Classes

Here's the last Voicethread activity for 2A and 2B classes.

Which class would you like to attend? Why? Describe each picturre and don't decide too quickly!

Don't forget to practice before you record your voice! Friday, 5 March would be the last day available.

Thanks

Avatar

This is for my film-lover students.


This is Avatar's official website. You can see the interactive trailer of the most succesful film in history.



Have you seen the film yet? If you have, you may want to share your opinion with us or just have a look at some reviews from top US movie critics on the Rotten Tomatoes website.

Lacrosse

Most of your American friends play a sport called Lacrosse. Would you like to try?

Cohasset School District

It was fantastic to see you all so excited about the mail exchange with the American students. Here is a link to their school webpage, Cohasset School District, so, have a look.
Remember you have to send me your answers before Sunday 14 February -St. Valentine's Day!- Write: Hola or Querido/a .......(the name of your American friend), at the top of the letter so that it gets to the correct student. Write about yourselves and your interests, you can write both in English and Spanish.

The American students can't wait to read your mails so please, don't be late!

Interesting Idioms

Welcome everyone,

Try these links to have some fun with on-line games. Enjoy!

Interesting idioms, animal idioms, colour idioms, body parts idioms

I Have a Dream Project

Hello everyone,

This is part of Dr Martin Luther King's famous speech. My question is, what are your dreams? Listen and feel free to write a comment yourselves.

Enjoy the video!

Back to school

Hi everyone,

It seems we'll have to wait one more day to talk about Christmas holidays...
I hope you all enjoyed the snow. I did!

See you in class tomorrow!