Sydney Corners

Welcome back!

I hope you've all had a great holiday and are ready to tackle work for the last few weeks of term.


Today I'm going to ask you to finish up a bit of work from level 3 and then we'll get right into level 4 work.





Level3 work:

• Check your email. I have sent you a message about the holidays and I would like you to answer it today. This is the last assessment for level 3. You can use your dictionary to compose your email.
• Write a report about Bundeena.

Level 4 work:

• There are some things to be finished from last semester, but they are already level 4 work:
• Write an article about Melinda, after having listened to her podcast
• Finish the webquest and write a report on it

Other bits and pieces:

• Check emails from Liverpool and answer them
• Complete your wiki page, if you haven't done it yet
  

So you went to Bundeena...Report wiriting

Can you guess what this photo is?

Hi everyone!

Sorry I can't be with you f2f, but Andrew will help you with your work today. To make his job very EASY, please read my instructions carefully. Don't rush!

First of all, congratulations to Marta for another great podcast! She interviews a childcare worker this time. It's very interesting and very clear: Marta: The Rainbow.


First do some catching up work, if you need to*:

Listen to Emile's podcast

Publish your writing about the sleeping girl in your blog

Answer any Liverpool emails

Write on your wiki page.

Write your opinion about gender roles on the forum (only one person did it last week!)

NEW WORK
You went on an excursion to Bundeena with AMEP classes. Complete the following activities:

• Publish a recount about the excursion in your blog.


• Read the article that Sally links to in her post, Bundeena excursion and do this worksheet, which includes writing a report. By now you know the structure of a report (information text). Write a draft and let me check it (you can email it to me).
• Listen to Melinda's podcast. Read the post carefully before you listen. You should print the listening worksheet to get help with the listening. Do all the exercises and writing on the worksheet.

* Remember that you've got one week to do all this work, but that it becomes too much if you leave it undone and then you have to catch up.

Lifestyle choices: Travelling around the world (Week 9)

Lisa and Marta receiving their prize (a yummy technological prize: a chocolate mobile phone!) for their achievements with wiki & podcasting.

• Listen to your introductory podcast in Let's Talk or in our wiki (in Kogarah students). Write a commnet in Let's Talk about it.
  
• Write your opinion about the article I gave you last week with the photo of a little school girl sleeping in the middle of a busy street. Publish it in your blog.
• Go to our forum and answer Marion's question about gender roles.
• If you have received emails from Liverpool, answer them.
• Type your comment in our wiki map (in Kogarah & Liverpool wiki, Kogarah students)
• Continuing with our lifestyle topic, listen to Emile's podcast and do the worksheets. When you finsih, show them to me, please. I want to keep track of your work in our blog assessment grid.
  
• For those of you who know Spanish, this is a good place to practise your questions
  
• Have a look at this bubbleshare*. You can subscribe and create your own! Just follow the steps or ask Eva and Summer, they learnt how to do it last week!

*bubbleshare ceased to funciton in 2009. You can use slide.com,, photobucket, flickr,animoto, etc to create slideshows or mini videos

Week 8

Two weeks ago there was a total lunar eclipse. Did you have a look at it? It was spectacular, especially when the moon was totally covered by the earth and you could see it like a dark red ball.

These are some photos we took from our house back verandah.
Congratulations to Marta for her podcast. She recorded it and edited by herself! You can listen to it in Let's Talk.

Congratulations to Lisa too for her page in our Kogarah & Liverpool wiki. She was the first student to create her ownpage in the wiki without any assistance! Summer has also published her own page and told us about your excusion to Bundeena. Well done!

Today you can continue working on your wiki pages and the world map.

Other work to be completed:

• Forum: old forum: Marion's topic on gender roles & ESOLforum: quickly add a topic or two to talk about.

Check this vodcast (videos) site out: Living English . It's like a TV series and there are about 4o episodes. The level of language is not very high. Every episode has some listening exercises and grammar explanations. The best thing of all: it's Australian!

Listen to Lois talking about her earliest memories

Now listen to Aaron about growing up as a kid in Australia

Think of your own memories and childhood. Prepare a talk about it. We will record it in class.

Visit this website and do the punctuation exercises on commas. They will help you with your writing.

Check your Webquest answers with me and publish them in you in your blogs if you want.

APEC week (7)

Welcome back!

Here is a view of the Sydney we want the rest of the world to see this week. It's going to be a bit hard to get close to it during the APEC week, so I thought you may like a reminder of the beauty of our city while you work away on your assignments.

I hope everyone is working on your webquest and final report. We will do more work on report writing in the afternoon, but keep checking the previous posts for ideas on structure and language.

Today I would like to work on our exchange with Liverpool. We will work on email writing and our wiki. Most of you should have received mail from one of the Liverpool students.

• Check your emails if we haven't done it yet and start preparing an answer. This is part of your unit of work Developing literacy using technology. Write a draft and feel free to ask me for help if you need it. When it's ready, send your reply.
  
• Some of the students from Liverpool have already written about the type of topics they would like to discuss in our forum. Go to ESOLforum and give us your ideas. Read everyone else's first and agree or disagree.
• Go to our Kogarah & Liverpool wiki. By now you know what a wiki is (basically a collaborative website). Today you are going to create your own page and write in it. There are two things I would like you to do:
• First go to the voicethread world map (it's in the page Kogarah Contributors in a link called Kogarah Students). You can listen to my recording as an example of what to do. To be able to write, you have to register with voicethread. Most of you have already done it. Type your name and where you come from. You can draw a circle or a cross to tell us where your hometown is. Tell us something interesting about your hometown. If we have time, we'll try to record again, although I haven't heard from our IT person who was working on it last week.
  
• Then ask me for the wiki password. You need it to be able to create a page and write on the wiki. First read the suggestions on what to write as an introduction. You will find them below the big picture of the Sydney Opera House. Click on the tab called New Page. Give it your name and link it to your name on the student list. Write an introduction about yourself. Add a couple of links to an interesting website about your country and hometown or anything that intersts you (hobbies, music, etc). At home you will be able to add a photo, etc. I'll be around to assist you if you need help, but you'll see how easy it is!