Coping with cold weather

While I was checking my emails, I was listening to Sky News and in the review of the paper, they were discussing the impact of cold weather and snow.

Here in Cantabria, the temperature dropped by 10º(C) yesterday.  Brr!!!!  Many places both in Spain and the UK have had their first snow falls.

http://www.picturesofwinter.net/snow_pictures.html

(There are some great photos of winter on the website I downloaded the above photo)

This reminded me of an article I had saved to share with you via this blog.  I came across it back in September and thought it would make great classroom material.

How does the chef at the British Antarctic Station feed 90 people when the nearest supermarket is 4,000 miles away?


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-2195789/British-Antarctic-Station-How-does-chef-feed-90-people-nearest-supermarket-4-000-miles-away.html

I suggest that you could start off by showing students the following subheading:

Antony Dubber works in one of the most remote, dangerous and beautiful places on Earth

Ask them to suggest where Antony works.  
Which remote places can they think of?  
Why might this place be dangerous and beautiful?  
What job does Antony do there?

Then, show them this photo and discuss whether they guessed this place:

Next, they could read the article and find out what makes the South Pole beautiful and dangerous, and why Antony's work as a chef there is challenging.

To follow up and focus on language, I thought students could look at the combinations of adjectives and nouns in the text.  (You could give them a list of adjectives used in the text and  they look for which nouns they describe).

For example:
a varied  (menu)
leading (centre)
fresh (fruit and vegetables) (herbs)
spectacular (night sky)
the nearest (supermarket)
the closest (supermarket)
the most popular (treats)
huge (freezers)

Well, I'd better wrap up because I have to pop out now!  Have a great teaching week!




 

Spain seen from two sides

After watching the news yesterday evening, I switched on the computer to take a look at the photographs that have been submitted to Antena 3, the Spanish TV news channel's website, in response to the article and the pictures that appeared in the New York Times on September 24th:

Spain Recoils as Its Hungry Forage Trash Bins for a Next Meal

(See this and the other photos here)

One of the biggest criticism's of the photos is that they paint a very one-sided picture of Spain and they are all in black and white.

There are 150 photos on the antena3.com website.  They are all in colour - some of them are very colourful indeed.

After looking through all the photos, my teacher's brain began thinking about how I could use them in class.

One way would be to use a couple of them to illustrate ways of completing three different sentences about Spain:

1  Spain, the perfect place to ...

 (ride a bike)

2  In Spain, we still have ......

 (bubbles and smiles)

3  Visitors to Spain should see:

(Granada)

As a follow-up, students could be asked to find three images of Spain to submit to Antena 3 for the campaign (1 picture for each sentence).

And the pictures make great material for the speaking tests for Cambridge English: Preliminary, First, Advanced and Proficiency.  Either the teacher or each student/pair of students could choose a pair of related pictures and then be asked to write the intoductory rubric (and follow- up question) for the pair of photos.

For example:  (For Cambridge English: First Speaking Practice)

I'm going to give you two photographs.  Both your photos show people from different generations spending time together.  I'd like you to compare your photos and to say what things the two people in each picture can learn from each other.   You have about a minute for this.

I hope you enjoy looking at the (Antena 3) photos as much as I did, as well as reflecting on the photos from the NYT.

  

Just one thing

If you could only eat one food for the rest of your life, which one would it be?

If you could choose only one place to live for the rest of your life, where would you choose?

If you could only listen to one song for the rest of your life, what would it be?

If you could only kiss just one person for the rest of your life, who would it be?

If you could only support one team for the rest of your life, which team would you support?

If you could watch just one film for the rest of your life, what film would you choose?

If you could look at just one piece of art for the rest of your life, which one would you select?


These seven questions appear in an interactive campaign for Volkswagen Golf VII.  onething.com

All onething.com users can create their own profile and share their answers with their friends via the Facebook, Twitter and Google+ social networks

I thought these questions would be great for use in class.

I suggest you could start with a bit of grammar practice (very useful for Part 2 of the Cambridge English: First and Advanced exams), by showing students the questions with the relative pronouns deleted then they have to supply who, which, where, what.  

To stimulate discussion, students could watch the video below and see the different answers given to three of the questions:

Then, students could choose their answers individually before sharing and discussing them with their classmates.

Finally, they could compare their choices with the most popular answers to each question.

In Spain, the most popular song is Imagine.

The most popular food is pizza.

61% said they would prefer to live abroad.

Women are quicker then men at saying who they would prefer to kiss.  (Average time taken = 2 seconds!)

Pulp Fiction, Titanic, Forrest Gump are among the most cited films.

And Mona Lisa is by far the most popular work of art.