The Borrowers by Mary Norton (Ed. Burlington Books)

Ed. Burlington Books

In the second term, we are going to read this book about a small family of three little people who live in a big house which doesn't belong to them and they take what they need from it, that is, they "borrow" things.

At Burlington Books Online, you can find a set of activities and games to review what you have read and also the complete listenings of the chapters in the book. You have to download and execute the link in Activities.

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

I wanted to wish you a Merry Christmas and a very happy New Year!!!

I'm going to leave you the video of one of my favourite Christmas carols sung by the great artist MARIAH CAREY:

I hope you enjoy it!! Please leave your comments and tell me if you liked it or what you want.

SEE YOU NEXT YEAR!!!

We are having a "chocolate cakes and cookies contest" at Tartessos High School next Friday to say good-bye to the first term and hello to Christmas Holidays!!


You should bring your cakes to high school on the morning of Friday 23rd of December and we will have a nice tasting row, probably accompanied by a cup of tea. As you have already finished all your exams, you will have time to cook a little bit at home and show your mates that you are a great cook and have hidden talents. Of course, there will be a prize for the best and, even if you do not win, we will have a great time!!!

In order to help you a little,  I am going to leave you a link to a chip cookies' recipe and another to a brownie's recipe.

If you want to, you can tells us what you are going to cook so that we can wait expectantly to see how you did it. LEAVE A COMMENT!!

Dear students,

DO YOU KNOW WHAT A TONGUETWISTER IS?

http://mcargobe.wordpress.com

A tonguetwister may be a sentence or a poem which puts together similar sounds so that they are difficult to say and your tongue moves strangely!!

We are now starting to revise countable and uncountable nouns and so on. I have been looking for tonguetwisters that have items related with this grammatical point.
 I give you two examples:

Thirty-three thousand people think that Thursday is their thirtieth birthday.

                                                           by Julia Dicum

How many cuckoos could a good cook cook, if a good cook could cook cuckoos?

A good cook could cook as many cuckoos as a good cook could cook, if a good cook could cook cuckoos.

                                                              by Ramón Mas

I want you to help me in this task. Leave your comments with tonguetwisters related to these. You can look for them in internet or invent them!

You can also do a little test here

PARTS OF THE HEAD.

(For my students of 1st of ESO, this wonderful song to review the parts of the head)

I hope you like it. I like the video very much for its originality and also because the woman is not a traditional beauty.

FRIDA KAHLO

For my students of 1st of Bachillerato and 4th of ESO,



 WHO WAS SHE?
 She was a Mexican painter and artist, born in Coyocoán in 1907. Born in a multicultural big family, her father was a jewish German and her mother was Mexican; she suffered polio and then a strong accident that caused her great pain and over 30 surgeries throughout her life, she represented all this suffering in her paintings. She died very young, at the age of 47.

 WHY IS SHE IMPORTANT?
She was a revolutionary for her time, not leading the life girls were supposed to live then. She married very young to a Mexican muralist called Diego Rivera - 20 years her senior, and had several other relationships both with other men and women; she was also part of the communist party and she had a special view of what feminine beauty was. She is now considered a representative of the surrealist trend.

 WHY IS SHE IMPORTANT FOR ME?
In my opinion, getting over all the pain she suffered and being able to do what she needed to do, such as painting, travelling or having a social life makes her a singular woman, apart from her artistic value which is now recognised worldwide.

 You can find a portrait of her here among other places

 You can have a tour at her house here  

Thanksgiving and Black Friday.

As you know, this weekend is Thanksgiving, a long weekend in the USA. There used to be a celebration of the harvest before the colonists came. After their coming, the Pilgrims -arriving from Europe in the Mayflower- didn't have enough food and the Native Americans helped them. Nowadays, the celebration remembers and gives thanks to the Native Americans.
They celebrate it with a feast, a banquet celebrated in family and a legal holiday which usually becomes a long weekend (Thanksgiving is always held the fourth Thursday of November). In these days, the Friday after Thanksgiving is called Black Friday because shops open and start selling for Christmas and they turn "red numbers" into "black numbers" because of the amount of things they sell.
We have passed from not having enough to eat when the first Pilgrims arrived to the consumism of today's society. What do you think about this? Does this happen in Spain somehow? Please leave your comments and let me know!!