Siesta

Siesta is one of the Spanish words that have made it into English, together with fiesta. Anyway, it seems to me that Spaniards are not the only ones to give some thought to this habit.

Read the infographic below about the topic, and I hope you enjoy this scientific approach to this tradition.

You may need to zoom out the picture to be able to read the information clearly.

Pronunciation of regular past (-ed)

Another activity to practise the pronunciation of regular verbs in English. It comes from A clil to climb . It has no sound, though, but we can make it up by doing the activity slowly the first time and paying careful attention to the pronunciation of the past forms of the verbs.

Water

15th October (yesterday) was Blog Action Day. This year´s topic was about water.
 
To calculate your water footprint you can visit the National Geographic site and follow the instructions there.
 

British cuppa

From the Mail online comes this newspaper article about the typical British cup of tea (cuppa).

Present simple glogster

Another great example of glogster (interactive poster), this time coming from Italy and made by teacher Daniela Tomatis.

Do not forget that in order to see the videos and slideshows properly, you must double click on them.

Spot the differences

From Digital Play comes this game that can help us practise our oral English at home, either alone or with English-speaking company.

Self-study activity:
First identify the vocabulary: There's a pumpkin on the table, there's a cat on the sofa, there's a sofa on the right, etc. Look up any words you don't know.

Then spot the nine differences between the two pictures: The yellow dog is happy in the first picture, but it's sad in the second.

Finally you can test your memory by trying to remember the nine differences without looking at the pictures.

Key:
The yellow dog on the left isn’t happy/ smiling.
The blue dog’s collar is red (not yellow).
A square/ tile on the wall is yellow (not orange)
The candle has got lines.
The pumpkin is sad / scary (not happy/ friendly).
(part of) the curtain is green (not orange).
The table hasn’t got a leg.
The cat’s tail is yellow (not black),
The sofa hasn’t got a line (a line/ crease on the bottom right arm is missing).

Writing fun

Writing fun is a gem. This is an interactive site that helps students in the process of writing. It also offers text organisers to make the writing task easier and explains in detail some common composition tasks. Writing fun also allows users to see samples and download templates.

Although the site greatly focuses on story-writng techniques, it is a must for those students interested in improving their writing skills, as Writing fun emphasises the importance of text organisation, paragraph division, correct development of ideas and neat presentation.