TAKE IT FURTHER

Moving in

2010-04-08T22:24:00.001-03:00

Just moved here.

On Holidays

2007-12-02T13:50:00.000-03:00

Well... it's my students that are on holidays. I still have to wait a little bit.

Listen

2007-11-13T14:02:00.000-03:00

As all my students have exams today and tomorrow I don't have to prepare classes.I have some things to do, though. For example I should be reading a play for the oral exam at school tomorrow. I don't feel like reading. I've been playing instead.

From now on you'll be able to listen to the posts in Take it Further.

Listen to this article

Image: by littlepixer

Moonlit Knight

2007-11-12T19:19:00.000-03:00

I know you should be studying, preparing your exams. However, I'm here to interrupt you. I have been playing with quizzes.
A private student asked me to work with a song by Genesis, a group I used to love when I was a teen. Here's a video, Dancing with the Moonlit Knight, Peter Gabriel is singing.

Dancing with the Moonlit Knight

Choose

Scored Quiz by Quibblo

It's a song full of metaphors. Here you can read an interesting analysis and you can tell me in your own words what you think, does it sound too old?

From Spain

2007-10-24T15:07:00.001-03:00

Ana Concejero is a teacher of English from Malaga, Spain. I met her in Edublogger World.

Have a look at what she has written about this blog and about Taking it Further. I'd really like you to visit her and write your comments, you can write in Spanish. If you feel like practising your English, have a look at this other post; it's worth reading it and watching the video. Write down your thoughts there too; this time in English.

Download Google Earth location

Active Student

2007-09-16T11:38:00.001-03:00

Last week somebody wanted to know who the designer of "Puente de la Mujer" in Puerto Madero (BA, Argentina) was. Some of the students in the group assumed Leo had that information; well, he didn't. However, the following day he sent us an email enlightening our limited knowledge.

This is his email:

As I promised you, the designer of Puente de la Mujer in Puerto Madero
is Santiago Calatrava. He also has some paintings, sculptures and
ceramics...
more information at: www.calatrava.com

Regards,
Leo

Thanks a lot Leo, we know you keep your promises. (I guess nobody but me has thanked him.)

Another active student (much younger, but with a blogger profile) posted two short articles on Puerto Madero. You can have a look here and here.

I didn't download this picture from Flickr this time. It's also there, though. I'm the artist this time. The boy on the run is my husband's grandson happily crossing the bridge on a wonderful spring day last year.

What about...
You: Thanks, Leo.
Leo: You're welcome.
...?

Powered by ScribeFire.

Three stories, one story

2007-09-09T22:27:00.001-03:00

We read two stories by Edgar Allan Poe; but we didn't read the real stories, they were simplified versions. You had also read them in Spanish, that time they were complete versions, but not the real ones.
You can read the real The Black Cat and the real The Tell-Tale Heart. The ones that Poe wrote.

I don't want you to read all the stories, just read some parts of them. Find an interesting word, a word that you don't understand and look it up in the dictionary (in English). Find another interesting word, don't look it up; guess its meaning.
Now that you have an idea of three different versions of the same stories, can you compare them?

Photo by crowolf

Heavens

2007-08-23T15:16:00.001-03:00

Just have a look at this! It's fascinating!

You can download this new Google Earth version here.

30-08-07 I should have said I first got to now about this in Cool Cat Teacher's blog. Well, I didn't. I'm thanking her now.

Students are writing

2007-08-21T12:29:00.001-03:00

Some of my students are writing their own posts. Go visit them! Write comments!

Eating Habits

2007-08-10T15:12:00.000-03:00

Students from two different groups decided to make their childhood eating habits public.

Believe it or not.

MA assured us she once ate a dragonfly and admitted that she can still eat all kinds of bugs.

Not only MZ but all her brothers and sisters would eat the ants they found around the pool. She assured us they were tasteless.

FS would eat those bugs that roll themselves into a ball. I don't remember whether he claimed they were tasty or not.

LF and his friends chewed tar when they were out of chewing gum. He regarded tar as tasty and tried to convince us to try some.

LM loved eating paper. Surprisingly, everybody agreed that paper-eating was a common habit.

And last, but not least, LM (just mentioned above) used to eat…the wall. Yes, no typing mistake here. He ate the wall.His classmates even discussed what the better way to eat a wall was; the nose seemed to be a problem. My experienced student gave us some advice on how to eat walls comfortably.

Did you use to eat special food when you were a child? And what about now?

Dragonfly on top of Shuttle Originally uploaded by Irish Typepad
Ants eating pollen Originally uploaded by Bill Hails
Cochinillas comiendo Originally uploaded by ogal
Paper airplane Uploaded by davekellam

Holidays are over...

2007-08-09T15:48:00.001-03:00

I'm really sorry, but we still have to work for almost four months.I know the second part of the year is difficult. We are more tired than we were in March.
I hope we all have a good restart and a great end.

News:
Some of my students are going to start blogging. I'll let you know as soon as it comes true.

Free Time!

2007-07-19T13:50:00.001-03:00

Holidays are coming. I guess we are all eagerly waiting for the last minute of the last class.

I haven’t made many plans yet. I already know I’m not going away, perhaps a couple of days to visit my mother in San Nicolas. I’m going to meet some friends I haven’t seen for a long time, I’ve already arranged to meet for lunch with of them. And I know I will have to tidy up the mess which is around me right now, as well as the mess in my computer (the one in my hard disk and even the virtual mess).

I’m aware some of you are not having holidays at work, but a couple of hours off a week will make some kind of difference.

Tell me, what are your plans?

Will, will, will

2007-06-27T23:23:00.000-03:00

My students don’t believe will can be used to talk about the present: typical behaviour, annoying habits. They will accuse me of having made this up just to prevent them from being happy. They will complain about the English language being so economical. They will state this is misleading. They will claim this is impossible to understand. They will refuse to use it. They will declare they have been taught will is used to talk about the future.

The burden of proof is on me. You can read this post about annoying habits at work and, above all, read the comments; (especially what Debbie, Sam and anomanuss wrote). You’ll (this time: future) see will IS used for the present. Accept the reality.

Overwhelmed by tenses in English? Study Hopi. According to Whorf (The Sapir-Worph hypothesis: language shapes thought), the Hopi language does not distinguish between past, present or future!!!

Will (What’s this "will"?) you use will in the comments?

Warning: If you are an intermediate or pre-intermediate student, please forget this post right now.

Chocoholics

2007-06-19T15:25:00.000-03:00

And above all... Think Chocolate!
Betty Crocker

Rumour has it that one of my students is a chocoholic (you know, addicted to chocolate) I will not reveal her or his name, but I’m sure some of you are thinking right now: it’s me!

I’ve done a quick research and found out the web is full of chocolate lovers.

Here you can find recipes.
This is club which offers you a chocoholic certificate saying that people should understand if you are not ready to share your chocolate.
Unbelievable! A chocoholic tour in Melbourne, Australia.
Confessions of a chocoholic, a very funny story

How much chocolate do you eat? Are you a chocoholic?

Which question would you ask to know if a person can be considered a chocoholic?

PHOTO: Eating chocolate
Originally uploaded by evilibby

Nosferatu. Coffin Discovery and Castle Escape

2007-06-09T14:51:00.001-03:00

Click here to watch a scene from Nosferatu, a silent film based on Bram Stoker's Dracula. It was made in 1922 by Murnau, a German director. This is the scene when Jonathan discovers the boxes in Dracula's castle.
You can watch the full version here.
It's very old but it's worth watching it.

To my T4 students: don't panic, we ARE going to watch some scenes from the newest version.

Dr Frankenstein's Creature

2007-05-23T15:46:00.000-03:00

Frankenstein was written by Mary Shelly in 1818 . The fact that it was a woman who wrote this story is not surprising in the 21st century, but at that time it was not very common for women to publish books.

Do you want to know why she wrote it? Her husband was a poet and they had travelled to Switzerland to spend their holidays together with another English poet called Byron. The weather was awfully cold, it snowed a lot and there were frequent storms. It was impossible to go hiking and, you know, it was the early nineteenth century: no TV, no internet, no phones, no radio, no CD players; they had to find some amusement. Byron came up with this idea: a scary story contest. That's how Dr Frankenstein' creature was born.

Lots of films based on Mary Shelly's story have been made. I've seen these ones:

1931 Boris Karloff as the creature (Don't think I was alive in 1931!)

1994 Robert De Niro as the monster

A comedy, Young Frankenstein directed by Mel Brooks, 1974

What do you think? What's the most frightening story you have ever read or seen?

Images by: TimmyGUNZ and Neato Coolville on flickr

People on the move

2007-05-16T14:47:00.000-03:00

We've been talking about means of transport. You can find and exhaustive list if you have a look at this article.

It even lists the "jetpack". Do you know what it is? So, look at the photo. Would you like to come to school by jetpack?

How about this to come to school? The cycleskate.
You can see it in the Multimedia Fair of Inventions, there you can find some new inventions related to transport, (By the way, this is an Italian website, and some of you speak Italian, don’t you?) Anyway, there you can read and see a photo of the clycleskate, a mixture of a scooter and a skate.

And for those who love taxis. Would you try the “rickshaw”? It’s also called the "bugbug", pedicab, velotaxi, or trishaw and it’s very common in Asia.

Speaking about Asia, have a look at two photos below, they were taken in China. The first one could be a typical night image of Buenos Aires (two-wheeled version here). Notice the contrast with the magnetic train (not here in BA). Both means of transport coexist in the same place.

Heavy transport:

Originally uploaded by spectergeneral.

Magnetic Levitation Transport or Maglev (500 to 580 km/h):

Originally uploaded by bridgepix.

Is your vote your own voice?

2007-05-06T10:56:00.000-03:00

According to an article written by Allyn Jackson published in the American Mathematical Society website, voting is not the fairest way to come to decisions.
The mathematician Donald Saari proved that it is possible to make voters approve of one option over the other until they choose the desired one.

Read the article, it is not difficult to read; just use the logical side of your brain.

Your Vote IS Your Voice
Originally uploaded by D.James.

Acknowledgement: I first read this article in Adrian Paenza's book "Mathemática, ¿estás ahí?" (Siglo XXI Editores Argentina S.A., 2005), a book I highly recommend, especially to those (like me) who have always hated Maths because you have always thought that it was only about numbers.

Even though mathematics can prove our decisions may be biased, I still think voting is a tool to make our voice heard. Not the only one, though.
What do you think?

Students write 2!

2007-04-29T20:32:00.000-03:00

Fran has written another post. This time on Hugh Grant.
Visit her photolog. She's a big fan of him.

What about you? Do you like Hugh Grant? Do you have a favourite actor? Tell Frann.

Hugh Grant, The english man

2007-04-29T20:10:00.000-03:00

My favorite actor is Hugh Grant. I like him, and his englad pronunciation. He is considerate the king of romantic comedies. Generaly I like the english actors, because I love their pronunciation. I saw all of his films. Love actually 14 times and Music and lyrics 3 times in the cinema. I recommend Notting Hill, Two weeks notice, Nine months, Love actually and Music and lyrics.

Originally photo uploaded
by sassyjan

Some videos and trhillers:
Don't Write me off - Music and lyrics
Pop! Goes my heart - Music and lyrics
The Prime minister - Love actually
Interview: Hugh Grant, Emma thompson and Alan Rickman - Love actually
Hugh Grant and Sandra Bullock - Interviw Two weeks notice

My personal log of he:
Fotolog.com/hughgrant_af

Tarot

2007-04-29T15:33:00.001-03:00

I don’t believe cards have the ability to foretell future, but I like the drawings in tarot cards.

I particularly like the card decks designed by Xul Solar, an Argentine painter I admire. I couldn’t find his cards online, but I found an article from The New York Times about an exhibition here at the MALBA a couple of years ago. I saw it and it was great. Xul Solar worked mostly with watercolour, he was a master. He used very bright and he created a whole universe. Here you can read an article about his work written by a Canadian blogger.

Have you ever seen his paintings? If you haven't, you can visit an online collection .

You can also visit an amazing Tarot Garden in Italy. Click on the arrows to see all the scuptures. Do you like them?

Have a look at this card, The Hanged man, what do you think?

arot: the hanged man
Originally uploaded by Stacibar98.

Absence

2007-04-29T14:56:00.001-03:00

Sorry I couldn’t make it last Thursday. I had a personal problem which was eventually solved. Too late to come to class, but early enough to go to Rada and Malosetti’s concert.

Most of you are music lovers and concert goers so you know about the healing power of live music. The concert was a gift at the end of a hard day.

In the sidebar you can watch a short video from another concert.

JM
Originally uploaded by GUSTAVOSERONELLO.

Vote!

2007-04-27T15:27:00.001-03:00

Read this post.

Zephaniah in Blogs

2007-04-21T15:01:00.001-03:00

Here are some posts on Benjamin Zephaniah which I find worth reading:

A review of one of Zephaniah’s novels in a site which aims at encouraging people to read.

A British teacher of creative writing living in Malaysia who used to work in the school Benjamin went to. She gives an interesting account of her experience as white middleclass teacher working with Jamaican descent students. You can also read what she thinks about his show in Kuala Lumpur. (You should also follow her links.)

A student from Malaysia writing about BZ performance in her school.

An enthusiastic account of BZ performance in Calcutta.

An interesting article about BZ.

White Comedy: glossary

This foto was taken in a performance in Palestine. OneGroove_012.JPG
Originally uploaded by cactusbones.

Students write!

2007-04-21T10:44:00.000-03:00

Frann is one of my 2nd year students. She has written lots of comments and she has just published her first post.

Read what Frann wrote about her and the museums.

	Can you tell me where my country lies?,Said the unifaun to his true love's eyes. It lies with me, cried the Queen of Maybe. For her merchandise, he traded in his prize
	Can you tell me where my country lies?, Said the Queen of Maybe to the unifaun It lies with me, cried his true love's eyes For her merchandise, he traded in his prize
	Can you tell me where my country lies?,Said the unifaun to the Queen of Maybe. It lies with me, cried his true love's eyes For her merchandise, he traded in his prize