Here are the final videos. They are pretty nice.

Hi students!

I watched the trial videos we took in our last class. As you will see in the one I attach some of you got a little nervous and hesitated when asking the questions or forgot your answers. Next week we'll do the final versions, so please practice. The more you practice the less nervous you'll get when you are being recorded. Here is the video, check it out and try to correct your mistakes.

Well, I'm not sure this is going to work. I'll check it after publishing the entry.

Anyway, this week your only homework is studying your lines for the interviews.

By the way, the video does not seem to work here. I'll need to find out how to do it to make it work. Sorry.

I hope Laura and Mario show up next week. Please, be ready for the recording. If you want, ALL OF YOU may dress up as your characters for more fun.

Little by little the interviews are taking shape. Don't forget to practice at home so you don't forget the questions and the answers.

Yesterday we learned some new verbs we can use when talking about holidays or vacations. We studied the past forms:

Verb                          Past

Arrive                       Arrived

Take (photos)           Took

Come                        Came
          
Rent                          Rented

Visit                          Visited

Stay                           Stayed


Which verbs are irregular?

We practiced the question in the past What did they do then? and students answered with sentences in the past: they arrived... , they rented a car or they ate in a restaurant. 

We listened to 4 people talked about their holidays and completed and exercise.

Later we rehearsed the interviews.

HOMEWORK

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Da1FN3Br2k4

Watch the video and say:

5 boring  things people did on vacation.
5 fun things people did on vacation.
3 sentences you can use to say that you liked your vacation.

Yesterday we started a new unit about holidays.

First we talked about holiday places: we can have a holiday at the beach, in the mountains, in a city, at a ski resort, in the countryside, in a village, etc.

Then, we talked about the activities we can do in those places.

At the beach or at the seaside:

We can swim
We can sunbathe
We can make sandcastles
We can play
We can fish (in the sea)
We can walk
We can surf
We can practice other water sports
We can relax

In the mountains:

We can climb
We can hike
We can enjoy nature

In the countryside:

We can walk and hike.
We can swim or swim in a river.
We can go for a picnic.
We can look at birds and other animals.
We can enjoy nature.

In the city:

We can go sightseeing.
We can take photos.
We can go to museums.
We can go to an amusement park.
We can eat in restaurants.

During the second part of the class we were rehearsing the interviews. Students had done a good job making up their characters so things went quite well. We have some high school students, a police woman, 2 beggars, a mother and a daughter, some university students, we are going to have a married couple, but they are not ready yet. Let's hope they are for next week.

HOMEWORK

Write a paragraph about your last holiday. Use the Simple Past.

Ex:

Last summer I went to my grandparents' house. They live at the seaside. Every morning, my brother and I went to the beach with my grandmother. My grandmother sunbathed and my brother and I swam and made sandcastles. 
In the evenings we went walking with my grandfather. He likes to walk around the beach and the port and talk to everybody. Then, my grandfather sat at a cafe to drink a beer with some friends and my brother and I played with other children. 
We enjoyed our holidays a lot.

Last Thursday we started working on our project. Where were you, Laura? I hope you read the blog and keep up to date.

First we watched one of those Real English videos that we are going to try to imitate in our project. This one was about astrological signs. It was fun. The main questions were:

What's your astrological sign?
And
What are Capricorns (or Taurus, or Aries, or any other sign)  like?

Students wrote down questions to ask in the interviews. They wrote a bunch of them:

What's your name?

What's your surname?

Aye you married?

Do yo have children?

What's your astrological sign?

Etc.

We also planned the characters students will play in the interviews. We are going to have some high school students, a mother and a daughter, a mother and a baby, some university students, 2 beggars ( that is very original, etc.

HOMEWORK

1/This time homework is very easy. You only have to invent your character's biography.

Imagine you are a high school student. You have to think of:

Your name.
Your last name.
Your age.
City where you live.
Name of your school.
Your astrological sign.
Your favorite subject.
What you like to do in your free time.
Your best friend's name.
Etc.


2/ Last week's irregular verbs in the past.

eat - ate
write - wrote
read - read (/ri:d/ - /red/)
do - did
make - made
sleep - slept
say - said
go - went
have - had
buy - bought

This week's irregular verbs in the past.

sell - sold
come - came
see - saw
hear - heard
leave - left
speak - spoke
pay - paid
ride - rode
drive - drove
sing - sang

My homework:
My favorite hobby is ride a horse. I ride a horse in the Hippic Club of Leganes, on saturdays, With my friends.

I see Sara has not been in the blog. Or anybody else.

Come on, students, just give it a try! Maybe you'll be able to log on.

Last week we did some more talking about hobbies and free time activities. We listened to some young people talk about theirs and say what's their hobby or favorite free time activity, when and how often they spend time on it, who they share it with,  how they started, where they do it.

We also studied the Simple Past and how to make it and use it. We divided verbs into regular and irregular verbs.

Regular verbs: you make the past form by adding -ed or -d to the infinitive. The pronunciation depends on the ending sound of the infinitive. We have 3 groups:

Verbs ending with a voiced sound:

-ed is pronounced /d/

Ex: played, lived, cleaned.

Verbs ending with a voiceless sound 

-ed is pronounced  /t/

Ex: talked, liked, washed, danced.

Verbs ending with the sounds /d/ or /t/ 

-ed is pronounced /id/

Ex: wanted, decided, started.

We practiced the pronunciation of verbs from those 3 groups. If you want a little more practice go to the link:http://www.englishw.com/PastPronunciation.php  You must click on the Listen bubble next to each group of verbs.

Irregular verbs: we need to learn the past form for each individual verb.
Some past forms you must study:

eat - ate
write - wrote
read - read (/ri:d/ - /red/)
do - did
make - made
sleep - slept
say - said
go - went
have - had
buy - bought

I'll ask you next Thursday.

HOMEWORK
You already know what you have to do. Write about your hobby or one of your favorite free time activities. Answer all the questions above: what, when, how often, how, where, who... with. You don't need to write down the questions, only the answers as if you were talking to a friend about that topic. Illustrate it with a picture or two: it may be a photo from the Internet, a magazine or your own drawing if you want.

Do your best!

I hope I am still in time. It's been a hard week for me.

Anyway, last week was a bit different because it was Halloween. During the first hour we continued with our topic: free time activities. Students had to listen to a recording: several people  talked about what they did when they had free time. Students had to choose the right answer in their worksheet.

We practiced the following questions:

What do you like doing in your spare time?

What do you do in your free time?

How often do you ... (play basketball)?

To answer the last question we learned the words: once, twice, 3, 4, 5, 6 and so on times.  You can say once a day, or once a week, once a month, once a year. Twice a day, twice a week, etc.

Students had to fill in a chart about their free time activities naming the activity, how often they did it, and who they did it with. Then they had to interview a partner and answer the partner's questions.

HOMEWORK

Ask your family: parents and brother or sister if you have them:

What do you do in your free time?
How often do you...?  Ex: How often do you read books? Every weekend.
Who do you ... with?  Ex: Who do you go shopping with? With my sister.

Just write about 1 or 2 activities each person of your family does.

Thank you so much, Sara for your video. It's a nice song with nice cartoons.

Next Friday is Halloween and you guys are so lucky you don't have to go to school.

Last week we started a new unit and I think it's a bit easier than the one before. It's about free time activities. Most students already knew many of the words.

We practiced tow kinds of questions:

What do you like doing? Answer: I like playing the guitar.

What do you do in your free time? Answer In my free time I read books and I watch TV.

We studied things we can collect: stamps, trading cards, magnets, coins...

Things we can play: chess, cards, the piano, the guitar, the violin, basketball.

Things we can read: books, magazines, comics.

Homework

Ask 3 people those 2 questions and write down their answers in English.

Example: I ask my friend Jennifer:

What do you like doing? And she answers: I like going to concerts.
And what do you do in your free time? And she answers: I listen to music, I go running, I watch movies and I go to museums.

That is easy, isn't it?
See you Thur!sday

video halloween

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-W3og5AP0g&feature=player_embedded

Last Thursday we were working with the future: going to + verb, which students seem to find a little difficult. Here is a chart of how to use it in positive, negative and questions:

	positive	negative	question
I	I am going to speak.	I am not going to speak.	Am I going to speak?
you / we / they	You are going to speak.	You are not going to speak.	Are you going to speak?
he / she / it	He is going to speak.	He is not going to speak.	Is he going to speak?

Students had to read a plan for next weekend and then had to get together with a partner who had a different plan and they had to ask each other questions about it. It was a good practice.

Later we listened to a conversation between a boy and a girl who were looking at photos of their families. We read the conversation a few times and students role played it. They did a very good job.

We are looking for a project for the term so we listened to a song. Unfortunately, apart from the chorus, the rest of the lyrics were very difficult to understand so we'll have to look for something else.

By now, most students know how to talk about their family members, including aunts, uncles, nephews, nieces and cousins, so next week we are going to start a new unit.

Homework

 Go to the following link and complete the exercises: 1,4,6,7 and 8.http://www.ego4u.com/en/cram-up/tests/future-1-going-to-1. Do it in your notebook.

Hello,

I hope everybody is able to log on.

In our last lesson, besides practicing a little more what we had done in the previous classes, family members and the possessive, we studied the verb form I am going to + verb. We use this form of the verb when wor e talk about our plans for the the future.

Students got together with a partner and ask each other questions like this:

What is your brother going to do next weekend?

Their partner answered for instance:

My brother is going to take his driving test next weekend.

Later we worked all together as a group asking somebody's partner this type of question:

What's Mario's brother going to do next weekend?

Answer:

Mario's brother is going to take his driving test.

This was a difficult exercise because the questions are complicated and very long, but students did an excellent job.

I must say that some of the students had difficulty knowing what to say after going to. Not always, sometime it was clear as in sentences like I am going to cook They find it confusing  when, after I am going to, they have to use the verb go or do as in I am going to go to Paris or I am going to do my homework.

At the end of the lesson we played a board game on the topic Family.

Homework

Ask 5 people you know (family, friends, classmates).

What are you going to do tomorrow afternoon? And Friday morning?

Then, write sentences for each one:
Ex. My classmate Elena is going to go swimming tomorrow afternoon and Friday morning she is going to go to school.

Hello!

In our last lesson we had a new student, Laura. Laura is not  new to the school, but she is new to the group. She was introduced to the other students and the other students were introduced to her. They all said nice to meet you.

It was nice to see the pictures of your families and meet your brothers, sisters, parents, grandparents and other family members.

Most students had done their homework and read their sentences about their family members using the possessive. Good job!

And that is what we were practicing for the most part of the class: the possessive. We were looking at some pictures of a family and answering questions like: Who is Nina? Ex. Nina is Bill's wife, or She is Peter's mother.  For the Olympic games we made two teams and students had to ask the other team the same type of questions.

Later we listened to a recording and students had to complete an exercise choosing the correct answer to match what they had heard.

Finally students worked on their family tree ( which was difficult to fit in the page).

HOMEWORK

Watch the following video.http://www.manythings.org/b/e/3804/ Then, draw their family tree.

And just 1 question. Who does Sarah play with?

Hi everybody!

It's a smaller group this year, but a good one.

In our first lesson we talked about the summer and where we went. Most students had been at the beach. Then we started the first unit. It's about the family and we learned the names in English of lots of family members: father, mother, parents, son, daughter, children, sister, brother, grandfather, grandmother, grandparents, aunt, uncle, cousin, nephew and niece. Am I forgetting anyone? Maybe: grandson, granddaughter and grandchildren; husband and wife. We practiced the pronunciation of the words.

We were also using the possessive: This is my mother's brother. By the way, who is your mother's brother?

We did the first 2 exercises in the book. Then we listened to a song and answered some questions. And students had to write some questions themselves. We used the verb have got: Ex.: I've got many cousins. And practiced using it in a question: have they got an uncle? When we ask a question we need to change the order of the words: have or has + subject + got?

Homework

1/ Remember to bring 2 photographs of your family so you can tell us about them. The may be old photographs, that's quite OK.

2/ Say how many people are in your close family. Ex:: I've got a mother and a father, 2 brothers and a grandmother.

3/Write about 2 membesr of your family. Make 3 sentences about each one of them. 
Ex: This is my father Joe. 
He is my mother's husband.
He is my uncle John's brother.


Have a great week and see you next Thursday!