Face Britain

What do you think of this self-portrait?  Who do you think painted it?

If you like the singer, Adele's self-portait, unfortunately, you missed the chance to buy it for   £5,000.00!


Adele painted this picture as part of the FaceBritain project:

Children aged 4- 16 were invited to create their own special self portraits in aid of the project, entitled Face Britain, in the hope that they would be able to explore their creativity and cement their place in history as the 2012 generation. Portraits at all levels of skill, and in any medium were acceptable, including drawing, textiles, 3D, painting, graphics, and photography.

Over 200,000 of the portraits were then used to form a giant portrait of the Queen which was then projected onto Buckingham Palace.

www.telegraph.co.uk

You can watch a video of the projection here.

And what do you think of these two portraits of the Queen?  What do you think they are made of?

Find out! (and see more portraits of the Queen) here.

My guest post on take a photo and ........

In a previous post, I wrote about an impressive blog:  http://takeaphotoand.wordpress.com/

A while ago, Fiona Mauchline, manager of that blog, contacted me after I left a comment on one of the posts.  She asked me if I'd be interested in writing a guest post for the takeaphoto blog.  I replied that it would be a pleasure and finally, 4 months later, this became a reality!

So, here is a link to the post.  I think that you'll find it relevant, especially if you're preparing student for the Cambridge English: Preliminary or Preliminary for Schools exam.
http://takeaphotoand.wordpress.com/2012/05/24/buddha-and-oral-exams/

Hope it's useful!

Anne

Google Lab's Ngram Viewer

Sorry not to have been with you for a week but my week has been a bit busier than usual!  (= awesomely busy!!!)

'Awesome' is not a word I normally use regularly.  How long has the word 'awesome' been around?  10 years?  100 years?  How can I find out?

One very quick way of checking is to visit the Google Ngram Viewer:  http://books.google.com/ngrams/

If you feed in the word 'awesome' like I did, you get a graph like this:

From this we can see that the word 'awesome' does not appear to have been widely in use before 1870, and became very popular and frequent around 1980. The graph shows how a word which has existed for hundreds of years but has always been very rare can suddenly acquire a much more general meaning and become a part of the everyday language when it gets picked up by teenagers. 

So what exactly is the Google Ngram Viewer?  Well, around 5.20 million books written in English, French, Spanish, German, Chinese and Russian were digitalised.  This produced a database containing 500 billion words which had appeared in these books (published between 1500 and 2008).  

On the Ngram Viewer website, you can feed in a string of up to 5 words, click and within seconds, a graph charting the frequency of use of the word or string of words appears. 

For more information (and some fascinating examples of how world events and trends can influence the use of words), I thoroughly recommend the following TED talk. You'll see why I chose to use the word 'awesome' at the start of this blog post!!!

http://www.ted.com/talks/what_we_learned_from_5_million_books.html

Using news with younger learners

When you watch the news on television, although some of the stories shown might be suitable to use with children and young teenagers, others are definitely NOT.

One great source of news items for students of these age groups is CBBC (BBC Children)'s Newsround. 

 

The home of news and fun facts for kids.

I remember watching this programme myself when I was growing up (so it's been around for a long time!)

The start-up page for the website is divided into 5 sections: home, news, sport, entertainment and animals.


I clicked on two news stories that I had watched yesterday morning on Sky News.  I chose them because they were thematically related (both talking about sport).

The first showed the actor Will Smith trying out some sports with athletes, boxers and basketball players from the GB Olympic team.

In class, you could show your students these pictures and then they could be asked to find them within the video clip.


The second story is to do with swimming.

Too many children can't swim properly, says news report

I thought this would be great to use in class when talking about 'can' and 'can't'.  

After the news report, CBBC have published comments from kids on the subject, like this one from 

Lilion, London, England

"I want to be a Olympic swimmer... but our school doesn't teach us!"

Your students could be asked to write their own comment on the subject.
And then, they could take the Olympic Games Quiz.

And don't forget to use materials from the Olympics sports page I wrote about last month!

404

What does the number 'four 0 four' mean to you?  Four minutes past four?  Four hundred and four?  A room?

If you're on the computer, 404 is bad news!  It's an error page, where you get to when your search is unsuccessful, if you've mistyped an address or the webpage has a broken link.

I'm subscribed to TED talks (I've mentioned these before in my post about listening sites for Advanced students) and when I have time, I try and watch one or two (obviously depending on how long they last).  This morning, I clicked on the link in the email with the weekly update, and watched a short, amusing video (4.08 minutes!) of a talk by Renny Gleeson.

Renny Gleeson: 404, the story of a page not found

This led me to run a quick search on google images for some 404 pages.  Here is a small selection of the results. (Most taken from stunningmesh.com)

Preparing teenagers for the PET exam

I have met Emma Heyderman several times in San Sebastian and in Bilbao.

Photo:  http://ylandtsig.ning.com/profile/EmmaHeyderman

I have never been in the live audience at her seminars, but she has been part of my audiences at seminars, and I hold a lot of respect for her and her publications.

As so often happens these days, I was looking up something else (well, actually - I think I was preparing the previous post for this blog come to think of it!), when I came across a selection of videos featuring Emma on the Cambridge University Press ELT Youtube channel.

Take for example this one:
Preparing teenagers for the PET exam: Listening.

Emma demonstrates just how important it is for students to listen carefully to the whole of the listening texts and not to choose an answer too quickly.

As well as this video, you can find other clips looking at the other skills tested on Cambridge English: Preliminary.

So now, running up to the main examining period of the year and for us Cambridge ESOL presenters, coming to the end of our live sessions for 2011-2012, watch Emma's tips to gain some advice and ideas for your candidates.

A quick post to share some fun!!!!

Just had a quick check of my emails.  This was in one of them a (teacher) friend sent me, along with some other good ones.  I thought I'd share my giggles with you!

The children were lined up in the cafeteria of a Catholic elementary school for lunch. At the head of the table was a large pile of apples. The nun made a note, and posted on the apple tray:
'Take only ONE . God is watching.'

Moving further along the lunch line, at the other end of the table was a large pile of chocolate chip cookies.

A child had written a note, 'Take all you want. God is watching the apples.' 

Photo:  http://blog.lib.umn.edu/meyer769/psy_1001/giggle.jpg

Take a picture in Oviedo

Just back from Oviedo.  I thoroughly enjoyed my trip along the coast on Saturday morning.

My session was the last one of the morning, so I had the chance to pick up some very useful tips and ideas from Karen Elliot and Borja Uruñuela who were 'on' before me.

Karen shared some great story and story telling techniques with us.  We were treated to her 6 'voices' when she entertained us with some stories.  Another important number in stories is 3 apparently.  I learnt some very useful and simple tips for choosing and using stories for class.  Great!

Next on was Borja.

 I had heard a lot about Borja before I first attended his session in Bilbao at this year's TESOL Convention.  I was not disappointed there nor last Saturday, where, like Karen, he was sharing the Magic Ingredients for the Primary Classroom.


Again, I was impressed by the way he demonstrated simple, effective techniques and suggestions for really involving students in classroom activities and the learning process.

And then it was my turn.  I was talking about one of my favourite topics - using pictures to stimulate language practice.  I wanted to show how the same picture can be used at different levels to practise different language.

Most of the activities and pictures (such as the ones above) that I shared with teachers in Oviedo are available to download from the Cambridge ELT website.

The teachers in the audience were GREAT!  They participated, laughed and smiled.  Thanks if you were one of them!!!

Saturday in Oviedo

If you've read the previous posts on this blog, you might have guessed that pictures are an important part of my teaching tools.


I thought I'd write a quick post about the session I'll be giving in Oviedo on Saturday.

I'll be giving a very practical session called Take a Picture.

Pictures are used in the coursebooks we use and feature prominently in the Cambridge ESOL Young Learners English Tests.  In the classroom, we can use pictures for a huge number of activities and games, and, at the same time, develop our students’ language skills and range.

In the session, participants will try out some picture activities and we will discuss how to help our students notice and think about the contents of pictures.  


My session follows a seminar by Karen Elliot called Storytelling: tips and techniques for Primary and a session by Borja Uruñuela taking the magic ingredients for young learners.  Should be fun!!!

For the  programme, follow this link

If you live near Oviedo and would like to come along - great!!!