English is FUNtastic: 02/01/2015

28.2.15

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26.2.15

Present Simple - Affirmative

Click on the picture above and... have fun!!

25.2.15

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21.2.15

Artist Dianna Cohen shares some tough truths about plastic pollution in the ocean and in our lives — and some thoughts on how to free ourselves from the plastic gyre

I'm a visual artist, and I'm also one of the co-founders of the Plastic Pollution Coalition. I've been working with plastic bags, which I cut up and sew back together as my primary material for my artworkfor the last 20 years. I turn them into two and three-dimensional pieces and sculptures and installations.Upon working with the plastic, after about the first eight years, some of my work started to fissure and break down into smaller little bits of plastic. And I thought, "Great. It's ephemeral just like us."

0:44Upon educating myself a little further about plastics, I actually realized this was a bad thing. It's a bad thing that plastic breaks down into smaller little bits, because it's always still plastic. And what we're finding is that a lot of it is in the marine environment. I then, in the last few years, learned about the Pacific garbage patch and the gyre. And my initial reaction -- and I think this is a lot of people's first reaction to learning about it -- is, "Oh my God! We've got to go out there and clean this thing up." So I actually developed a proposal to go out with a cargo ship and two decommissioned fishing trawlers, a crane, a chipping machine and a cold-molding machine. And my intention was to go out to the gyre,raise awareness about this issue and begin to pick up the plastic, chip it into little bits and cold mold it into bricks that could potentially be used as building materials in underdeveloped communities.

1:41I began talking with people who actually had been out to the gyre and were studying the plastic problem in the marine environment and upon doing so, I realized actually that cleaning it up would be a very small drop in the bucket relative to how much is being generated every day around the world, and that actually I needed to back up and look at the bigger picture. And the bigger picture is: we need to find a way to turn off the faucet. We need to cut the spigot of single-use and disposable plastics, which are entering the marine environment every day on a global scale.

2:17So in looking at that, I also realized that I was really angry. I wasn't just concerned about plastic that you're trying to imagine out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean -- of which I have learned there are now11 gyres, potentially, of plastic in five major oceans in the world. It's not just that gyre of plastic that I'm concerned about -- it's the gyre of plastic in the supermarket. I'd go to the supermarket and all of my food is packaged in plastic. All of my beverages are packaged in plastic, even at the health food market. I'm also concerned about the plastic in the refrigerator, and I'm concerned about the plastic and the toxins that leach from plastic into us and into our bodies.

2:54So I came together with a group of other people who were all looking at this issue, and we created the Plastic Pollution Coalition. We have many initiatives that we're working on, but some of them are very basic. One is: if 80 to 90 percent of what we're finding in the ocean -- of the marine debris that we're finding in the ocean -- is plastic, then why don't we call it what it is. It's plastic pollution. Recycling -- everybody kind of ends their books about being sustainable and greening with the idea of recycling.You put something in a bin and you don't have to think about it again. What is the reality of that? In the United States, less than seven percent of our plastics are recycled. And if you really look into it,particularly when it comes to plastic bottles, most of it is only down-cycled, or incinerated, or shipped to China. It is down-cycled and turned into lesser things, while a glass bottle can be a glass bottle again or can be used again -- a plastic bottle can never be a plastic bottle again.

3:51So this is a big issue for us. Another thing that we're looking at and asking people to think about is we've added a fourth R onto the front of the "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle," three R's, and that is refuse.Whenever possible, refuse single-use and disposable plastics. Alternatives exist; some of them are very old-school. I myself am now collecting these cool Pyrex containers and using those instead of Glad and Tupperware containers to store food in. And I know that I am doing a service to myself and my family.It's very easy to pick up a stainless-steel bottle or a glass bottle, if you're traveling and you've forgotten to bring your stainless-steel bottle and fill that up with water or filtered water, versus purchasing plastic bottled water.

4:35I guess what I want to say to everybody here -- and I know that you guys know a lot about this issue --is that this is a huge problem in the oceans, but this is a problem that we've created as consumers and we can solve. We can solve this by raising awareness of the issue and teaching people to choose alternatives. So whenever possible, to choose alternatives to single-use plastics. We can cut the stem -- tide the stem of this into our oceans and in doing so, save our oceans, save our planet, save ourselves.

5:06Thank you. (Applause)

19.2.15

Fill in all the gaps with the adjectives of nationality corresponding to each country

18.2.15

The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde - film

The importance of washing your hands: you eat what you touch

17.2.15

Colour Idioms

Vocabulary - Cold Weather

16.2.15

Egg Idioms

15.2.15

The Tortoise and the Hare

14.2.15

Happy valentine's day

Valentine's Day - "The flower" (words are the most precious gift) - animation video

13.2.15

A spot the difference interactive story for Valentine's day

11.2.15

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. - "This Time" (a Jubilee Project)

As Manny has second thoughts about getting married, he is visited by an unexpected guest. And he is forced to ask himself an important question: what is he willing to endure to hold on to the woman he loves?

10 Idioms about Love [infographic]

1: The love of my life

The person one wants to spend the rest of their life with and cannot imagine being without.
“George and Gracie Burns were completely devoted to each other. Gracie was the love of George’s life, and he eternally missed her.”

2: Love is blind
Love can give a person the ability to overlook another’s faults.
“Frankie’s eyes were crossed and she had bowed legs, but Bubba never saw it; love is blind.”

3: All’s fair in love and war
Supposedly, in war and matters of the heart, the ends justify the means. There are few rules.
“Bob sent Betty flowers even though she is dating Bill. All’s fair in love and war.”

4: A face only a mother could love
A mother’s love does not care if the face of the child is beautiful or hideous.
“My favorite boxer has a face only a mother could love.”

5: Love-hate relationship
This can refer to a relationship where emotion is gone, yet the pair remains together. It can also speak of a non-romantic relationship where two people butt heads, but it generally shows a relationship with a pair who can fight like cats and dogs but genuinely care for each other.
“Wow, that Laurrie and Joe, they can sure go at it. I sometimes wonder if that’s a love-hate relationship.”

6: Love makes the world go round
Life is so much better when we are all nice to each other.
“I wish the nations would stop fighting; it’s love that makes the world go round.”

7: Make love not war
This means precisely what it says.
“Stop fighting, you three! Make love not war!”

8: Love will find a way
This refers to the indomitable spirit of love and is similar to the idiom “love conquers all.”
“Bob is moving to Florida but Betty isn’t. If they were meant to be together, love will find a way.”

9: Puppy love
Love between young people, usually teenagers, and not usually taken seriously.
“Oh, how cute, look at those two; could this be puppy love?”

10: Absence makes the heart grow fonder
Our last example may sound sweet, but it has a streak of irony to it. It states that when two are parted from each other, their feelings toward each other may grow. This might also hint that negative aspects may fade from the lovers’ minds, a line of thought that has fathered other idioms that are increasingly less endearing, such as “familiarity breeds contempt” and “if you promise to go away, I promise to miss you.”

- See more at: http://www.grammar.net/idiomslove#sthash.UVpmaXO5.dpuf

9.2.15

Fun and Educational St. Valentine's Day Stories (and videos)

Valentine's Day Read Alouds from Scholastic

Arthur's Valentine

Punny Valentine Story from Mighty Books

These are precious and so fun!!

http://www.mightybook.com/MightyBook_free/new_month/february_fun/punny_valentine.html

Somebody Loves You, Mr. Hatch

http://www.storylineonline.net/hatch/fullscreen_yt.html

Valentine's Day History

Valentine's Day History from the History Channel

Happy Valentines Day in different languages

A fabulous slideshow of hearts found in nature can be found here.

Computing Valentine's Day with Wolfram Alpha

https://sites.google.com/a/csisd.org/valentine-fun/home/valentine-s-games-stories/heart_2.gif

ABC words: filll up the crosswords and have fun

Idioms - "be /feel under the weather"

8.2.15

12 Most Misunderstood English Words: You Will Know Their Meanings Now!

Resource

1. historical

connected with the past or with the study of history

- I expect to see lots of historical artifacts in this museum.

- My sister is a landscape architect specialised in historical gardens.

2. novel

a long story which usually fills a complete book, with usually imaginary characters and events

- Oliver Twist and David Copperfield are very famous novels by Dickens.

- I prefer reading short stories to novels before going to sleep.

3. less

a smaller amount of something (used with uncountable nouns)

- If I were you, I would spend less time on computer games.

- I think grandfather should smoke fewer cigarettes and drink less wine.

4. continual

continuing without interruption; repeated a lot of times (often in an annoying way)

- The tramps were in continual fear of being discovered in the tool shed where they usually went to sleep.

- Mother dried and kept the flowers as a continual reminder of her daughter’s happy wedding.

5. infamous

having a very bad reputation, well known for being bad or evil

- The sergeant was infamous for his brutality, many young soldiers feared his cruel actions.

- The film industry is infamous for stealing money from actors.

6. systematic

done involving a system or plan, in a thorough and efficient way

- The professor says we should think in a more systematic way if we want success in this research.

- Scripting languages are so systematic that no syntax errors can be tolerated.

7. proscribe

denounce, banish, state that something is banned

- Quite many organizations involved in terrorism have been proscribed this year.

- I don’t think it’s a good idea to proscribe girls entering the dormitory.

8. penultimate

immediately before the last one

- The race got very exciting in the penultimate lap when three drivers tried to overtake the leader at the same time.

- In a good crime story you can’t tell who the murderer is until the penultimate or last chapter of the book.

9. precocious

unusually advanced in development, with particular abilities and behaviour at a much younger age than usual

- Mozart displayed a precocious talent for music from a very early age.

- My younger sister was a very precocious child who could read and write before she went to school.

10. alternate

follow one after the other in a repeated pattern, change from one thing to another and back

- The poem alternates between happiness and despair.

- Their new song alternates fast percussion rolls with slower string parts.

11. moot

unlikely to happen and not worth considering; debatable, open to question; an assembly of authoritative persons; argument, discussion

- The jury found the issue moot because all the people involved had left the country.

- The chairman’s concerns became moot when some of the applicants withdrew their proposals.

12. nauseous

feeling like vomiting, causing nausea, affected with nausea or disgust

- The smell of the dead fish by the sea made her nauseous.

- As he felt nauseous and dizzy, he left the podium before the end of the show.