From a different angle

As you will probably know already from several of my previous posts, I love photos and pictures.

So when I was reading the Telegraph online, I was attracted by the link to a collection of photos :

The London 2012 Olympic Games from a different angle

Photos like these are amongst the collection.  

I think they could be very useful for classes - students could discuss which sport they show, what might have happened just before the photograph was taken, what competitors have to do in this particular sport.  

A well guarded secret

Last Friday, I wrote about the Olympic Opening Ceremony.  I, like many other people around the world, was wondering who would be given the honour of lighting the Olympic flame to burn in the stadium for the duration of the London Olympics.

The people chosen to do the honour were not on anyone's list.  Even Steve Redgrave did not seem to know the exact procedure that was to be used or the names of the people who would take over the torch from him.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19024475

• Rower Cameron MacRitchie, 19
• Sailor Callum Airlie, 17
• London 2012 Young Ambassador Jordan Duckitt, 18
• Runner Desiree Henry, 16
• Runner Katie Kirk, 18
• Javelin thrower Aidan Reynolds, 18
• Runner Adelle Tracey, 19

The Olympic torch was brought to the stadium along the Thames in a speedboat by David Beckham,

who then passed it to five-time Olympic gold medallist rower Sir Steve Redgrave.

He was met by the nominated young athletes, who ran along the stadium track before being joined by the six other Olympic winners who had selected them.
Sir Steve himself chose rower Cameron MacRitchie - the 19-year-old finished fifth with partner James Edwards in the men's pair at the 2012 GB rowing team under-23 trials in April.

Inspiring young people like these often feature in the reading and listening texts on the Cambridge English: Key for Schools and Cambridge English: Preliminary for Schools, so I thought I'd check them out on the internet and find if they had pages.  I suggest they would be good to use in class or for your students to read about.

Here are the pages I found:
Adelle Tracey:  http://www.adelletracey.co.uk/
Callum Airlie: http://www.bankofscotlandlondon2012.co.uk/en/In-your-community/Local-Heroes/Callum-Airlie/
Cameron Macritchie:   Cameron kept lighting of stadium torch secret from his family
Desiree Henry:  A video with an interview with Desiree outside Leicester Square before the premiere of the film Fast Girls.
Katie Kirk:  An interview with the runner the day after the ceremony.

For the article about Aidan Reynolds, students could be asked to read the article and to match the people in the story to the actions:


Who ...
1  - lit the Olympic flame?                                                         Aidan
2  - went to bed before the ceremony finished?                      Aidan's mother
3  - plays basketball for Wales?                                               Aidan's sister
4  - throws the javelin?                                                             Aidan's grandparents
5  - nominated Aidan for the Olympic ceremony?                 Aidan's neighbours
6  - brought some champagne to celebrate?                           Lynn Davies
7  - went to London to the Olympic Ceremony?


Key
1  Aidan   2  Aidan's grandparents     3  Aidan's sister     4  Aidan    5  Lynn Davies    6  Aidan's neighbours    7  Aidan and Aidan's sister


And there is a great article about Callum Airlie and the fact that the ceremony coincided with his 17th birthday: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-19037304.
I suggest that you could use this article in class to practise sequencing and past tenses.
Procedure
1  Identify the events that Callum mentions.
2  Put them into chronological order.
3  Write a narrative (students write a diary or letter as if they were Callum) using the events.

 I hope these links and suggestions are useful! Let me know!

From one useful link to another ....

As so often happens, I clicked on the link in one of the emails I received last week and ended up discovering another useful site.

I received an email from the takeaphotoand blog about a new post on the blog:

Wave your flag

In this post, Sue Lyon Jones outlines a lesson plan to discuss patriotism and whether it is a positive or negative thing.  A slideshow with discussion questions and quotes is provided.  

Among the suggestions for follow-up activities for students to do at the end of the discussion is the idea of them creating a word cloud about patriotism.  Sue suggested a website that I was not familiar with, tagxedo) so I visited it and created the word cloud below by typing in the Teaching Together Blog address.  

At the end of Sue's post, there was a paragraph about Sue.

 Sue Lyon-Jones is a freelance ELT materials developer, ESOL tutor and teaching with ICT consultant based in the UK. She publishes and writes the content for the free English lessons and ELT resources site, ESOL Courses. Her current areas of interest include teaching with web based technologies, interactive materials development, educational games, mobile learning, and Dogme ELT.

I clicked on the link to ESOL Courses and was very impressed by the materials on the site.  Simple picture and word matches to work on lexical areas.  I liked the Listening activities that I took a quick look at: for example, butlering at Buckingham Palace or New York Tourist Attractions.

 

Check the website out for yourself and you're bound to find something to recommend or use.