Speculation

Use the words in the box below to speculate about the following images.  How do you think the images are all connected?

Jade Room Class: An Idiomatic Love Story

In class today I read out an Idiomatic Love Story that I created a while ago. 

An Idiomatic Love Story from Janet Bianchini

Below is an animation of one of the 10 chapters of the book.  The hero Frederick, abandoned his girfriend and then turned up again a year later....

 An Idiomatic Story Part 4 by Janet Bianchini on GoAnimate

Animated Presentations - Powered by GoAnimate.

I pre-taught the idioms in the story by handing out a set of flashcards printed from Quizlet.  I asked the students to do a matching exercise and to try to work out the meaning of each idiom by checking with each other, and also looking up in their dictionaries or digital devices.  



I think the idioms were fairly difficult, but we were able to discuss the meanings before I actually read out the story.  The students were then easily able to identify the idioms I had pre-taught via the flashcards, and the context became clear.

Pink Room Class: Word Search Phrasal Verbs Lesson

Pair form. 

Students find new partner. They work out the meaning of the verb / look up on their digital devices.

Matching Activity

Use Quizlet to play various games for students to memorize the new verbs and their meanings:



Shouting Game: Fill in the gap

Create a set of sentences using the phrasal verbs.  Cut them up.  Divide the class into teams.  You read out the sentences (on strips of paper) and students have to quickly write the missing phrasal verb on a piece of paper.  The team member who is the 'secretary' has to hold up the paper and  gets a point if the verb is correct.  The team with the most slips of paper is the winner.

Wordsearch Phrasals Fill in the Gap by janetbianchini

Create a Story
Choose any five verbs and create a short story to read out to your classmates.

Note:
All these activities have been created to supplement a lesson from Test Your Phrasal Verbs by Jake Allsop, Penguin.

What Does It Mean? Phrasal Verbs

 
Play with Quizlet to practise the meaning of these verbs!

Play this Os & Xs game with your partner to see if you can remember the meaning of these verbs.

Answer the following questions:

 

Audio Weekend Questions

Reviewing some weekend expressions using my Smartphone to record questions to ask my students. They had to reply as soon as they heard the question.

 I have used Vocaroo to upload the audio.


Voice Recorder >>

Death of 'The Iron Lady'

 The following news item is taken from today's BBC.News Politics:

'Lady Thatcher was Conservative prime minister from 1979 to 1990. She was the first woman to hold the role.
She will not have a state funeral but will be accorded the same status as Princess Diana and the Queen Mother.
The ceremony, with full military honours, will take place at London's St Paul's Cathedral.
The union jack above Number 10 Downing Street has been lowered to half-mast while Parliament will be recalled from its Easter recess on Wednesday to enable MPs to pay tributes to the former prime minister.' 

What can you say about Margaret Thatcher using some of the words from the wordle above?
What do you know about Margaret Thatcher?
Why do you think she was known as 'The Iron Lady'?
Do you think she was a good Prime Minister?
How was she viewed in your country?
How do you think British people have reacted to news of her passing away?
What's your personal impression of the 'Iron Lady'?
Can you think of adjectives to describe her using each of her initials?

Have a look at this synopsis of today's headlines regarding Lady Thatcher in the papers.

Thanks to Rob for pointing out Sands Media Services to me!

You produced lots of adjectives!  I have added them to the Great Britain-shaped word cloud below.

Breaking News English Lessons!
Click on the Breaking News English link below to view a 26-page lesson on Margaret Thatcher's life.  You can do the exercises for extra homework, if you like, and then you can correct your answers at the end.

http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/1304/130410-margaret_thatcher.html

You can view a video obituary of Margaret Thatcher found via the English Blog here.

OPAL ROOM CLASS - Jackie Chan Lesson

Image source & attribution from Wikipedia here.

Here is a link to a complete lesson on Jackie Chan for you to read and review!  It comes from the Famous People Lessons.com written by Sean Banville.

See if you can find the words connected to the legendary actor and incredible stuntman in the wordsearch puzzle below.

Make Your Own Word Search

Prepositional Phrases

We brainstormed a lot of prespositional phrases in class today.  The result is on the board below.

You can play a game with Quizlet to review what we studied.

Phrasal Verbs from the Pink Room!

Today the Pink Room class studied 30 phrasal verbs. We created some comics to practise using them as seen below.

Yoshi created this one:

Carolijne created this one:

 The whole class created this one:

Janet created this one!

About Mars

Image source from here.
 
What do you know about Mars?

Try to make some sentences about Mars using some of the words below in the word cloud.   Click on the image to enlarge it.

These words all come from an article about Mars, taken from the BBC Science website.

Life on Mars

You can listen to this YouTube video of Life on Mars by David Bowie.

Political Correctness Article

Can you remember what the words above mean?
Remember the verbs to 'single out' and 'poke fun' are not joined together!

Word cloud created with ABCYa

April Weekend Phrases

QUIZLET 

Use Quizlet to test yourself on Weekend Phrases!

Did you do the folllowing over the weekend?

Can you match some of the phrases below?

Are the following phrases used correctly?

1. I HIT THE TOWN on Saturday.  I stayed in all night. 
2. Isabella PICKED UP some slang expressions such as 'bloke' and 'broke'.
3. I GOT THROUGH all my homework tasks. I've still got one exercise to do.
4. Joe SPENT A BOMB at the weekend. He got through a thousand quid!!
5. I was AT A LOOSE END last night.  I was really busy.
6. Sofia RAN INTO some friends in town yesterday.  She had arranged to meet them.
7. Fluffy PUT OFF doing the housework. He did it straightaway.
8. Kelly POPPED IN to see a mate last night.  He stayed for half an hour.
9. Tigger BURNED THE MIDNIGHT OIL last night.  He studied for five minutes.
10. Bobby GOT LEGLESS last night.  He drank two glasses of orange juice.  

 Answer these questions;

If you like, you can make your own cartoons at ToonDoo to describe your weekend.  If you want to keep them all in one place, you can easily register for free.  Send it / them to Janet so she can add them to this blog for all the class to see!

Lesson One

Introductions

Can you guess how the following words in the ABCYa word cloud are connected to Janet?
 

Go to ABCYa for kids and create your own word cloud!

 

  TRUE OR FALSE?

 

Janet's met David Beckham and has got his autograph!
Janet's got a tattoo of a hen on her left arm!
Janet's received two letters from a princess!

A Piece of Abruzzo 

 

This image below is a reference to something which is produced in Abruzzo, where Janet currently lives. 
 
What can you guess about this product, and why is it famous all around the world?  Can you work out what the name of the product is?

Try to draw something which is iconic about your city / area or country.  Think about how you can describe it, and the reasons why it is so well-known. 

Write at least 60 words in approximately 5 minutes.  Then show / describe what it is to your partner. Think of a few questions to find out more about what your partner has described to you.