Hello! Here are some of our interviews. I hope you like them:

Hello!

I am glad to see that you are making progress with the interviews. You need to practice them at home so you are very sure of your questions and answers and don't get nervous when I record you with the camera. All actors and actresses get nervous, all they can do is practice and practice so when the time comes they don't forget their lines.

I copy 2 of the interviews we practiced yesterday:

In the first one Sergio plays the interviewer in yellow and Gonzalo answers the questions:

I / What´s your name?

I am Luke Ross

I /How old are you?

I am 31.

I / Where do you live?

I live in New York.

I / What do you do?

I am a police officer.

I / Are you married?

No, I´m single.

I / Have you got a pet?

Yes, I have a dog and a hamster.

I / What´s your favorite color?

Green.

I / What´s your favorite food?

Pizza.

I / What do you do in your free time?

I do sports.

I / Thank you very much,

You´re welcome, bye.

In this interview Olivia plays the interviewer in yellow and Nuria and Irene are the twin sisters.

I / What´s your name?

 My name is Emma Prescott

I / What´s your name?

I´m Jessy Prescott.

I / How old are you?

I´m 15.

I´m 15 too.

I / Are you twin sisters?

Yes, we are.

I / Where do you live?

We live in New York.

I / Have you got a pet?

I have a hamster

I / What´s your hamster´s name?

Blanca.

I / Have you got a boyfriend?

No, we haven´t.

I / Are you students?

Yes, we are.

I / What´s your school´s name?

East High.

I / Do you do after school activities?

Yes, I do judo.

And I take dancing lessons.

I / Thank you very much, bye bye.

Besides practicing the interviews we did some more work on school subjects. We practiced pronunciation: biology, geography, history, computer science, chemistry.
We studied  some adjectives to talk about the classes and subjects: interesting, boring, amazing. 
Then we listened to 6 students talk about the subjects they were taking and had to match each conversation with a sentence saying something about it.It was a difficult listening but most students did quite well.

HOMEWORK

Next day we'll spend the whole lesson rehearsing and recording interviews so your homework this time is studying and practicing your lines.


 

Hello again!

Yesterday we continued studying about school subjects.We mentioned a new subject: IT (only Sergio has IT in school).

We said what we study in each subject. Students wrote it sown in their notebooks, so I don't need to write it here.
Remember to study it: in English we study nouns and verbs. In Maths, we study multiplication and division. Etc.

In the second part of the lesson we rehearsed the interviews. Here is one of the interviews. Gonzalo interviews Luis and Sergio. Luis is the father and Sergio is his son. The 3 of you can study it and practice your part.

Interviewer What´s your name?

Son My name is Peter

Interviewer Can you introduce me to your friend?

Son He is not my friend, he is my father.

Interviewer So what´s your father´s name?

His name is Mike

Interviewer Hi Mike, how old are you?

Father I´m 55.

Interviewer How old is your son?

Father He is 26.

Interviewer Are you married?

Father Yes, to his mother.

Interviewer What´s her name?

Father Her name is Cathy.

Interviewer What do you do?

Father I am a doctor.

Interviewer What about your son?

He is lazy.

Interview with university students: Gonzalo is the interviewer. Student 1 is Olivia, Student 2 is Nuria, Student 3 is Irene, Student 4 is Sergio.

Interviewer: Hi! What´s your name? 

Student 1 (Olivia): I'm Jennifer.

Interviewer: Jennifer what?

Student 1: Jennifer ___________ (surname)

Interviewer: What's your name?

Students: My name is______. My name is ________. My name is _______.

Interviewer:How old are you?

Student 1: I am...

Student 2: I am...

Student 3: I am... 

Student 4: I am... 

Interviewer:What do you do?

Student 2: We are university students.

Interviewer:What university do you go to?

Students We go to Westminster.

Interviewer:What are you studying?

Student 1 I am studying to  be a doctor.

Interviewer:What are you studying?

Students 2 : I am studying to  be a doctor too.

Interviewer:What are you studying?

Students 3: I also study medicine.

Interviewer:What about you?

Students 4:I am studying History.

Interviewer:Where do you live?

Students: We live in London.

HOMEWORK

Go to this link:http://www.englishexercises.org/makeagame/viewgame.asp?id=2080

Do Exercise 2: LOOK AT THE CHART AND COMPLETE THE SENTENCES

We are wondering what' s happening to Luis, it's the second class he misses. It's his turn to take PJ home too.

Yesterday we started a new unit. It is about school subjects. In this unit we study the names of the school subjects:

Art, PE, Maths, Science, Spanish, English, Science, Social Science, Geography, History, Music.

There are a few more but we haven't learned them yet.

Students also study how to talk about their school timetable. Ex:

What do you study on Monday?

First I have English, then I have Art, then Music. After the break, I have PE, next Maths and 

finally I have Science.

The words I underlined are sequence adverbs. We use them to say the order of our classes.

We are also studying how to tell the time. Yesterday, the teacher explained how to do it and then, students got a worksheet with pictures of clocks showing different times and they had to write the time on each clock. Some students are still a bit confused. Here is a picture that can help you understand:

We started rehearsing the interviews. Gonzalo was the interviewer and he interviewed Ruben, who was a grandfather. Then he interviewed a group of university students: Olivia, Nuria, Sergio and Irene. He did not have time to interview Olivia and Irene, who are a married couple.

HOMEWORK

Go to this link and complete EX. 1. http://www.englishexercises.org/makeagame/viewgame.asp?id=3352

Write your school timetable for every day of the week.

We missed PJ yesterday - and Irene too. And Luis, even though he didn't have PJ with him.

I enjoy the lesson and I hope students did too.

We started to plan our project for the group and students got together in groups and wrote questions for the interviews. Then we were thinking about different roles students can play when being interviewed. So far we have 3 university students, a married couple, a policeman, Anything else? Was it a grandfather? I am sure students remember the roles they are going to play.

After that, we completed the worksheet about the weather. This time students had to ask a classmate about the temperature in various cities from Europe.

Students learned the words degree, and below. We say: It is 25 degrees. or 25º Only in Iceland the temperature was  - 10  or 10 below.

We also practiced dates and the past of the verb to be. Students still find it difficult to say What was the weather like last Sunday? instead of  What is the weather like last Sunday?

We also practiced was/were with other kind of questions, like: Where were you last summer? Where was brother yesterday? Were you in the park yesterday?

Remember! The short answer to the last question is: Yes, I was, or No, I wasn't.

HOMEWORK

Students who came to class need to prepare their character.

You have to choose:

A name, 
a surname, 
Age
Where they live.
If they are married.
Students: what they are studying, name of their university, where (city) is their university.
Where they are from.
What is their favorite color.
Have they got a pet? What's its name and how old is it?
Have they got brothers or sisters?
Married people:  Have they got children? What are their names and how old are they?

Irene and Luis must decide what they want to be for the interviews: Children? Young people? Old people? Brother and sister?  Then you can plan your character too.

Check this video: it is the kind o video we are planning to make.
.
http://www.real-english.com/reo/8-c/unit8c.asp

I hope you create interesting characters.

Hello, boys and girls!

Last Tuesday Olivia told us about her adventures with PJ and his brother, Rocky, who happened to spend the week in the same house. Lucky them!

In our last lesson students answered some questions as usual. Then they had to write some dates and dictate them to a classmate. It was a good practice and I am sure now most students know that when telling the date they need to use ordinal numbers: 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, etc.

 We continued studying the weather. Some students got extra points because they remember words nobody else did like: freezing, boiling, foggy. 

We studied the Past Simple of the verb to be. It was not the first time students heard it but now we are studying it in a formal way. We use it when we talk about yesterday, last week, last Monday, etc...

Remember:

I was
You were
He/She/It was
We were
You were
They were

When we ask questions we need to change the order of the words and say: was it sunny yesterday? or Were you at home yesterday evening?

Students completed an exercise from the book: they had to rearrange some words to make a sentence: a positive sentence or a question. When we ask about the weather sometime in the past (yesterday, last Sunday, etc.) we say What was the weather like yesterday? So the only thing that changes from our usual way to ask about the weather is the word was instead of is:
What is the weather like today?
What was the weather like yesterday?

Finally students got a worksheet with some gaps and they had to find the missing information by asking a classmate questions like: What is the weather like in Oslo?

HOMEWORK

1/Write the dates when your parents, brothers, sisters and yourself were born.

Ex: My sister was born on September 23rd, 1972.

2/ Go to this link and complete task 1. Then, write the sentences in your notebook. http://www.englishexercises.org/makeagame/viewgame.asp?id=5133

This is a special week. The students are getting together with students from other groups and the older children become teachers of the younger children for one day. It is also a special week because next Friday is Halloween, which is an important holiday in some of the English speaking countries, like the US.

Halloween is celebrated the Eve before the Christian holiday of All Saints and it begins a period of time in which people remember the dead.
Typical festive Halloween activities include trick-or-treating, attending costume parties,decorating, carving pumpkins into jack-o'-lanterns, lighting bonfires, apple bobbing, visiting haunted house attractions, playing pranks, telling scary stories, and watching horror films. (Taken from Wikipedia).

In our last lesson we spent the first hour preparing activities for the younger children we got together with after the break. Also students practiced how to be teachers. They did a very good job and the little children who came to our classroom learned a lot of things with them. They learned about Halloween and the strange creatures we may encounter on this holiday: witches, ghosts, werewolves, vampires, etc.

At the end of the class we went trick-or-treating and got some candy.

When the small children left, we reviewed the homework and some of the students had the chance to play a game about the weather.

HOMEWORK

Listen to the weather forecast, then, answer the questions: http://learnenglishteens.britishcouncil.org/skills/listening-skills-practice/weather-forecast

1.    

What´s the weather like in the north of the country?

2.    

Where is it rainy all day?

3.    

Where is the best weather?

Good job with your homework most of you! It is good to get used to real English. That way, when you go to an English speaking country you'll be ready for them.

Yesterday we started to learn how to talk about the weather in English. Not that you didn't know anything about it, most of you did, but we are studying it more in detail.

I think everybody knows the question we ask when we want to know about the weather:

What's the weather like? That's the name of our topic.

If we want to talk about the temperature, from very hot to very cold we can say in this order:


Absolutely boiling, very hot, quite warm, quite cool, very cold, 

absolutely freezing.

We listened to a recording and then practiced the pronunciation of those words.

Then we were learning countries in Europe: Spain, France, the UK, Germany, Norway, Italy, Iceland, Austria, Portugal, Russia. Am I leaving out any of the countries we outlined in the map?
Hey, students already knew most of their capital cities: Madrid, Paris, London, Berlin...

At the end of the lesson we played a game on the computer. Students had to listen to a weather forecast and then drag the weather symbols to the right country flags.

HOMEWORK

Write your own weather forecast for 6 countries in Europe. You can say things like:

Ex: In Spain it is sunny and quite warm.
.
To get ideas you can check this link. It's the game we played in our class. http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/es/fun-games/whats-the-weather

You can also play this game and learn the symbols for different types of weather:http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/es/fun-games/weather-maze
 Play the maze once and then draw the symbols you followed in your notebook.

Have a nice week!

Wonderful group! Absolutely everybody did their homework.

And Gonzalo had a very active week with PJ. They did all kinds of things together. We didn't know PJ could play the guitar, for instance, but according to Gonzalo, he can. We are not sure how old is PJ, he keeps it a secret, bu he is a very quick learner.

This week PJ is staying with Ruben and we wish them a great week together. Next Tuesday he will tell us all about it.

Yesterday in our lesson students answered the questions: When is your birthday? and What year were you born? Some students were born in 2004 and other students in 2005.

Later they talked about their aunts an uncles. They learned the words married and single. Remember: husband and wife are married. Usually, a student's father is married to his mother.
When a man has not got a wife, he is single. When a woman has not got a husband, she is single.

First, we listened to a conversation between two friends: a boy and a girl. They are looking at the boy's photograph of his brother. The girl asks questions about him:

Who is that? It's my brother.
What's his name? His name is ... (Sang Ho)
How old is he? He is ... (26)
Is he married? No, he isn't. He is single.

Then, all the students read the conversation with a partner. Finally they role played the conversation, first with a partner and then all the boys together said the boy's lines and all the girls together said .the girl's lines.  That was a lot of fun and students remember the conversation quite well.

For the Olympic Games, students had to answer 5 questions.
We finished the lesson playing a board game. Students had to answer many questions about their family.

HOMEWORK

Watch this video http://www.real-english.com/reo/11/unit11.asp and answer the questions:

Is Kitty married?
How old is Ed?
Amy is married. What's her husband's name?
What's Julie's favorite color?
Say the names of 3 single people. (For example: Howie)

See you next week!

Yesterday was our 3rd lesson. .We welcomed the school's mascot: an orange dragon. Very cute, our dragon, but he doesn't say much, it's a bit shy. Or maybe it is very young, a baby dragon, and it can't speak yet.

Students proposed names for our mascot and then voted for their favorite one. The winner name was PJ, which is pronounced Pidzei, but some of the students preferred Johnson, like Gonzalo, who has been the first student in the group to take the dragon home. Perhaps Gonzalo will teach PJ a few words.

Gonzalo, you should take a photo of you with PJ  and publish it in the blog, if possible.

We continued practicing the possessive and family members. We looked at a new picture of 2 related families. On one side of the picture we had our well known family: Bill and Nina (husband and wife), who are Peter's and Cindy's parents. On the other we had their relatives: Amy and her husband (I don't remember his name) and their children: Ted and Kim. There was also another uncle: David, who is Nina's brother. So we talked about uncles, aunts, cousins, nephews and nieces.

HOMEWORK

Say the name of an uncle and an aunt. Ex. Uncle Roberto and Aunt Isabel.

Then answer the questions:

How many nephews has Aunt Isabel got?
How many nieces has Aunt Isabel got?
How many nephews has Uncle Roberto got?
How many nieces has Uncle Roberto got?

Whose sister is Aunt Isabel?        (Ex. She is my father's sister).
Whose brother is Uncle Roberto?  (Ex. He is my my father's brother).

Everybody brought some pictures of their family yesterday. It was GREAT. Good job, boys and girls!

Every student showed us his or her photographs and said:

This is my cousin, his name is Pedro

or

This is my mother, her name is Yolanda.

So, have you noticed? When we talk about a boy or man we say his name.

When we talk about a girl or woman we say her name.

Some students, like Nuria, have a very large family: with uncles and aunts and many cousins.

Most students had not done their homework, so we did part of  it in class. We listened to a song several times and students answered some questions about the song.

The teacher explained how to say the possessive in English: how to say that something or somebody belongs to somebody. It's a bit difficult but not so much:

This is Bill's son.

Mary is James' sister.

Mary and James are Diana's children.

This is my father's car.

This is Ruben's pencil.

Remember: 1st, the name of the person ( or what we call that person, Ex: my brother, then the 's and then, something that belongs to that person: car, children, sister.
The order of the words is the opposite in the Spanish construction.

Spanish:  El hijo de Bill.
English:   Bill's son.

Then, things became complicated, because each one of us can be different things at the same time, like me:
A
I am Helen's mother
I am Sophie's sister.
I am Julian's aunt.

So, for the OlympicGames we made 2 teams, and students had to look at the pictures in a book and ask:

Who is Cindy?

The boy or girl in the other team had to answer:

Cindy is Nina's daughter or
Fred's granddaughter
etc.

Or they could ask for help from the Joker or their team.

Homework
1/Write 3 sentences  about yourself (Ex.: A) and about 2 more member of your family.

Ex: This is my aunt Lucy. 
       She is Jake's wife.
       She is my father's sister.
       Aunt Lucy is my cousin Amy's mother.

2/Look at the Simpsons family tree and ask 3 questions like this:

Who is Homer's mother?
And answer:
It's Mona.

Hello boys and girls! It was nice to meet you.

In our first lesson we studied the members of the family: father, mother,parents, sister, brother, grandfather, grandmother, grandparents, son, daughter, children, husband, wife, grandchildren, grandson, granddaughter, uncle, aunt, cousin. 

We looked at a picture of John's family  and students guessed who was who. We did a listening exercise. We heard about John's family first and then about Carol's family. It said:

Carol has got 2 sons and a daughter, she's got a husband...

What about you? Can you tell us about your family?

Homework

1/ Answer the question above. Example:  I've got 2 brothers and 1 sister, I've also got a daughter and an aunt.

2/ Go to this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dH5RTW0gh30 watch the video and listen to the song. Then answer the questions:

a. Who's got 12 cats?
b. What family members has the pinguin got?
c. Who's got an uncle named Jimmy?

3/ Remember to bring to photographs of your family, so you can talk about them.