Inventions

Tuesday 20^th January, 2015

Hello everybody!

Here we are again.

What did we do last Tuesday?

First, you told me about your bikes.

What they are like. What colour they are. How often you ride them. Why you like them and some other details.

Then we watched the videos that I had posted on the blog. I would like you to upload videos or other material you think is interesting or related to our topics. (In English, of course)

 The first video ‘How to mount a Penny-farthing’ was interesting. We wondered how the rider was going to get off it, but we couldn’t find out because it didn’t appear on the video…

The second video was about ‘Stephenson’s Rocket’, not the original one. The very first one is in a museum. We learnt that when Stephenson invented the ‘Rocket’, nobody had invented the brakes (pedals or handles you use to stop a vehicle) yet. So, how did the train brake? Going into reverse (backwards!) Amazing, (surprising) isn’t it?

You worked in teams and prepared quiz questions for the other teams. The game was very competitive!

Ten, we revised comparatives with a game. You had to complete some sentences. One team had to guess the comparative the other teams had written.

We learnt how to make a passive sentence.

This is how we make passive sentences:

Farmers	grow	bananas	in the Canary Islands.
Subject	V	Object
Bananas	Are grown	In the Canary Islands
Subject	Passive V
Shakespeare	wrote	Hamlet.
Subject	V	Object
Hamlet	Was written	by Shakespeare.
Subject	Passive V	Agent

The object becomes the subject of the passive sentence. The subject becomes the agent. When the agent isn’t important or it’s a pronoun, it isn’t necessary to write it.

The verb changes into passive voice by writing the verb “to be” in the same tense as in the active sentence + the participle of the verb used in the active sentence.

Like this:

Present simple	produce		Present simple of “to be”	Am / is/are	+	participle	Is produced
They produce coffee in Brazil.			Coffee is produced in Brazil
Past simple	invented		Past simple of “to be”	Was/were	+	participle	Was invented
Stephenson invented ‘The Rocket’			‘The Rocket was invented by Stephenson.

What do you think of these inventions?

We finished the class playing ‘movies’. Next week we’re going to talk about films. So, this is your homework, write a film review.

·            First paragraph: title, main actor and actress. When and where the action takes place (happens).

·            Second paragraph: a short summary of the story.

·            Third paragraph: opinion.

Alicia is going to tell us about ‘Maleficent’; Sara, ‘Divergent’; Lucía, ‘The club of the misunderstood’; Gonzalo, ‘The Hobbit’; Marcos, ‘Avatar’ and Guille, ‘Eight Basque Surnames’. Alex, if you have a look at the blog prepare a film to talk about, OK?

MARCOS, COULD YOU PLEASE WRITE THE END OF OUR STORY? WE ARE WAITING FOR YOU! …WITING FOR ONE MONTH!!!!!!

GAME 2

Player 1	6
Player 2	4
Player 3	8
Player 4	8
Player 5	---
Player 6	8
Player 7	5
Player 8	9

See you next Tuesday!

Have a nice week!!!

Welcome Back Guys!

Tuesday 13^th January,

Hello and welcome to everybody!

Where’s Alex? I hope the zombies of your story didn’t get him!

Talking about the story, Marcos, could you please finish the story? We need an end!

We were a bit lost, so we started making questions and answers about frequency.

How often do you go to the hairdresser’s? I usually go once a month.

How often does your mum cook? She cooks every day.

How often does Sara have a holiday? She has a holiday twice a year. At Christmas and in summer.

Remember the position of adverbs of frequency:

Before the main verb	Danny hardly ever does housework.	George never goes to the dentist.	Mary usually does sport or exercise.
After the verb “to be”	Christine is never at home in the morning.
In questions, after the subject.	Is Liza often late for work?	Do you often buy flowers?
Expressions of frequency, at the end of the sentence.	Steve goes to the hairdresser’s twice a year.	Christian goes on holiday three times a year.	Miranda sees her best friend every weekend.

Then, we played ‘Bingo’ to revise the infinitive and past forms of irregular verbs.

Gonzalo said the verbs. He said the past form but on your bingo cards you had the infinitive. Marcos was very lucky! He first sang ‘Line? And then he had a ‘bingo’. He made a total of €700! As he is very generous, he gave his money away (donate/ give as a present)… to the teacher!

After this, we read about two transport inventions. A group read (pronunciation /red/ because it’s the past) about the ‘Penny-farthing’ and the other group read about ‘Stephenson’s Rocket’. 

While one of the groups was reading aloud, the other took notes and they later told us (reported) about what they understood. We, then compared these two inventions with the modern versions of them. Of course, we had to use comparative adjectives or adverbs.

   We remembered how to compare things.

		ADJECTIVE	COMPARATIVE	SUPERLATIVE
1-Syllable		hot long	hotter longer	the hottest  the longest
2 -syllable ended in “y”		dirty	dirtier	the dirtiest
	REST OF ADJECTIVES
1-syllable not ended in “y”		violent	more violent	the most violent
More than  2- syllable adj.		expensive	more expensive	the most expensive
		IRREGULAR
		good	better	the best
		bad	worse	the worst

And the same rule applies to adverbs.

		ADVERB	COMPARATIVE	SUPERLATIVE
1-Syllable		fast near	faster nearer	the fastest  the nearest
	REST OF ADVERBS
More than  2- syllable		slowly	more slowly	the most slowly
		IRREGULAR
		much / many	more	the most
		little/few	less	the least
		far	further/farther	the furthest /the farthest

Don’t forget to do homework!!!

 v   Write a paragraph talking about transport. You can use these questions to help you but DO NOT WRITE THE ANSWERS, WRITE A WHOLE PARAGRAPH!

·         Have you got a bike?

·         How often do you ride it?

·         Have you ever been on a long bike/car journey?

·         How do people usually travel to school?

·         Have you ever travelled by plane/ship/high-speed train?

·         When/ where/ who with/ did you enjoy the journey?

 v   And also, write five words related to two different means of transport.

Our first game

GAME 1

Player 1	6
Player 2	5
Player 3	9
Player 4	11
Player 5	---
Player 6	12
Player 7	7
Player 8	8

See you next Tuesday!

Bye!

Have a nice week!!!