Week 22: February 27th, 2019- Large Hadron Collider

fermilabs news

- We revised vocabulary and structures we had seen in the previous day's videos.
- We listened to Alex's presentation on his experience living and working in Switzerland.
- We made questions about his presentation and saw:
- A video from The Big Bang Theory that mentions a visit to the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva and completed the five gapped questions. We also read its transcript.
- We did a pronunciation exercise on vowel sounds.

- We tried to work out the lyrics and overall meaning of the winner of this year's Academy Award to the best original song, Shallow.
- We tried to sing!!

Homework:
- Have a look at the Stress Monster, from English File and practise s little.
- You can also practise speculation and deduction with the same site.
- And future plans and arrangements.

Week 21: February 20th, 2019- Solar power!

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- We decided to stage a short theatre play for the anniversary party talent show!!
- We saw how to practise vocabulary and listening with BBC's 6 Minute English.
- We answered some questions on a video on solar power, Solar Is Growing Way Faster than Predicted.
- We also completed the gaps of a video on Smart Energy.
- We practised discussion language on controversial topics about animals.

Homework:
- Have another look at the two videos that we worked with in class and find:
     1. Ten words you know, you never use but would like to.
     2. Five structures, groups of words, ways of saying things that, again, you understand, you never use but would like to start using.
- If you want to practise more language, you can have a look at English File Advanced website, which is the textbook I'm using a lot when preparing your lessons.

Week 20: February 13th, 2019- Presentations

American Pest Control

- We saw the option to practise interactive speaking exercises in Talk English.
- I told you my positive piece of news about honeybees, butterflies and bumblebees (that's why the photo) that I took from Good News Network.
- Some classmates told us about good news that they had read about.
- We did a listening comprehension about becoming a vegetarian.
- We saw the structure of a presentation for us to do our presentations.
- We saw how we cut up chunks of language when practising pronunciation, just as Phoebe does with Joey in a hilarious video we saw at the end of the class.

Homework:
- We have a card and instructions to record a short presentation of your ideas on the hypothesis around the card.
- You can also prepare your ideas for a presentation on a hobby or something you like or know a lot about. Tell me when you'd like to do the presentation, so that we don't have some together on the same day.

Week 19: February 6th, 2019- Plastic waste

New York Times

- We revised the pronunciation of animal vocabulary.
- We exchanged some classmates' exercises on the video I had given you. Explained them and saw the video together to try to answer your classmates' questions.
- You were given some mid-year feedback and an anonymous questionnaire about the course.
- We saw another example of ellipsis and did an exercise on that.
- We talked about people's eating options.
- I gave you a card and some instructions to prepare a recorded presentation making hypothesis and deductions using modals. This is homework we are not doing yet because we didn't have the time to see a couple of examples I wanted to see with you.
Vocabulary appendix: the Spanish word to talk about bottom feeder animals was: bentónico.
The English word for altas capacidades (antes superdotados) is talented/gifted/with high learning potential. (these are words that we didn't clarify in class, so that I don't forget to tell you).
Homework:
- As we are dealing with the environment/animals/pollution/the climate crisis, I would like you to try to look for a piece of news on this topic (environment/ animal kingdom/ pollution/climate crisis) that's actually positive so that we can feel a bit optimistic. Read about it, take some notes and be prepared to explain what it is about to your classmates at the beginning of next day's class.
A few years ago some of my students and I did a virtual wall with good news, you may find ideas there if you want to have a look.