Yesterday was a beautiful day in Sydney. You could already smell spring in the air. I went to one of the most iconic beaches this city offers, Balmoral Beach. There were people swimming, sunbathing and sitting under the huge fig trees that line the promenade along the beach. The cafes and restaurants were full and it was only Monday! If you have never been there, make sure you go and have a walk, a picnic or a swim. Every summer there is a performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream , Twelfth Night or The Taming of the Shrew at the Band Rotunda on The Esplanade opposite Balmoral Beach. Who wrote these very famous plays?

Congratulations to Svieta, Winnie, Cindy, Jin (I couldn't see the photo) on their voicethread slide shows. Check all your classmates' voicethreads:

Marta, Eva, Lisa, Summer, Svieta, Winnie, Cindy and Jin.

• Write a quiz for all the slide shows your classmates or Marion's classmates have created. Each one of you has to look at 2-3 slides shows by your classmates and write at least 2 questions for each one of them. You are also allowed to ask 1 or 2 questions from your own slides. For example: Who says ..... Where did ..... go last ...? Who took a photo of....? Email me your questions and we'll put them together in our wiki fro the Liverpool students.
  

• Continue working on your webquest and look at the notes I added on how t write a report or information text.
  

• Forum: Go to ESOL forum and quickly add a topic or two to talk about.

• Go to our other forum and read the latest topic that Marion set up for her class. It is very interesting, they discuss women's and men's roles and jobs. Read what her students wrote and add your opinion.

Webquest (Week 5)

Congratulations to Eva, Marta, Lisa and Summer on your own Voicethread slide shows! I'm so impressed that you created them by yourselves and added written comments and your voice. Well done!

Today you will only have a new piece of work to prepare and a webquest:

1. Write a short presentation about yourself to record it on our Voicethread for the wiki we share with Liverpool TAFE ESOL students. It doesn't have to be very long, but make it interesting. Tell us where you come from and something you love about your hometown/country or something that you think other people may find interesting.

2. Once you've done that you can start this Webquest about our blog. A webquest is an information searching activity, where all the info is found on the Internet. Today's webquest is based on Our Class 2007 blog. You will only have to find information contained in the posts published since the beginning of this term. It will help you catch up with the work done and get to know our blogs, wikis and podcasts a lot better. Then you can use them at home to practise your 4 skills (reading, writing, listening & speaking) and improve your English while connecting to lots of people here and in the wide world.

Week 4

Hi everyone,

Welcome to Fadwa and Zhi. You can visit their blogs on the student blog roll on the sidebar.

One of you, (sorry-one of Marion's students!) WeiYun, has seen where the koala in the slide show from last week is. Here is a link to a site that explains who the architect was and what the building is. You can have a look at it in 135-137 Macquarie Street.

• We've been reading and writing about twins, listen to this short podcast, Twins, and answer the questions. What's the difference between this set of twins and the ones we read about? Tell us in your blog.
  

• Today I would like you to give ideas about possible topics for our forum with Liverpool. Go to ESOLforum and start giving us ideas.
  


• Listen to Andrew's podcast. Answer the questions in your blog.
• You chose the topic of Health & Lifestyle. Read this advertisement for a Kogarah council fundraising event, Walk Run Swim. Answer these questions. You should answer them online. First click on the options and choose the correct one and then you can print the worksheet and write the rest of the answer with your own words. If you want to learn how to type the answers on the computer, ask me in class.
• Sydney through foreign eyes is waiting for you to add your comments in writing or recording your voice. Some of you have already done it in one photo. You can add more comments to other photos. Think of these questions before you do it:
  

Have I been there? What do I think of the place? What do I know about it? Would I take my overseas visitors there? Why? Why not? Would you like to go?
Have I seen this animal? Where? What do I know about it?

Week 3

Welcome back!

Well done to all the students who answered the questions on the Australian animals on the previous posts. You guessed their names (visit Summer, Marta, Eva, Jessica's blogs and the posts comments for the answers) and Summer guessed where the bat picture was taken, but she didn't know the exact name of the park. Does anyone know?

Well done too to the students who wrote their opinion about the twin sisters story. Those of you who haven't done it should try and publish it today.

• Today you can spend time creating your blogs if you didn't do it last week.
• This week we are going to start looking at the topic of travel, as leisure is one of the topics you chose for this semester. Sydney is a beautiful city for tourists and residents to explore. Leave a comment in this slide show of photos from different Sydney spots. Have you been there? Have you taken any overseas visitors there? What did they say? What do you think about the different places?
  

Listen to Patricia's (one of the librarians at St George college of TAFE) podcast and answer the questions.

Did you do the listening on arguments are linked to heart attacks? This week we'll start working on exercises related to travel and tourism. Go to Time4English and in Vacation English Course, TOPIC TWO - Australian Cities & Places to See do the exercises on Geography of Australia (V2.1) and the first text, Uluru (V2.2).

Write a post in your blogs about Uluru as a possible tourist destination for you and your family or friends. Use your own words! You can link to interesting websites a bout Uluru, but you must use your own words to tell us why you would /wouldn't chose Uluru as a place to visit .

• If you travel around Australia you may hear words and expressions that only Australian people use. Do you know the meanings of these Aussie words and expressions?

dunny, tucker, Waltzing Matilda, g'day, off one's face

You can find out in Aussie Slang.

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