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