Blog de Cristina

 I don’t like this idiom , the only reason being the rodent in it… yes, I am that girlie!! 

Now and then, and as part of the continuous asssessment, I ask my students to write something at home to be marked later  and very often and mainly when it is writing about a celebrity, a book or a film they nick from the Internet. Setting this task when I know pretty well they won’t be able to resist the temptation of copy-pasting from the Internet is a bit of a wicked of me ,to put it midly ,but life is hard , isn’t it?

To smell  a rat= you know instinctively that something is wrong or that someone is lying to you.

So when I start reading essays and some words trigger all my sirens  , then this is the tool I use to catch you red-handed.

It’s called Plagium

I sometimes wonder how I can get so involved in something I’ve never liked. And I’m talking about football. I’ve gone a long way from not knowing how many players you needed to play a match to watching , if nothing else appeals to me on TV, the match between South Africa and USA national teams ,to name just one.

It must be love! This is what I’ve done to celebrate the promotion of  Villa de Pravia football team ,where my son plays, to the second division . I hope you like it !!

Related Links

• Playing with images: Bookr
• Warhol
• Wordle: creating “word clouds”
• Food and cooking

My son Lucas, who is 9, was watching TV (I’m afraid he’s sort of becoming a couch potato if I do nothing about it) when the video of Thriller filled the screen . He called me all excited about what he was seeing. I tried to explain who Michael Jackson was ( difficult when I got to the part of him turning white) and what the video was about ( the part about the graveyard and him turning into a zombie and scaring the girl was his favourite) and then, in my determination to show him how funny dancing could be I started searching the Net and bumped into this funny page where you can learn how to dance the Thriller Dance.

And well, I am just beginning to think it might be  very interesting to teach vocabulary related to verbs of movement in a funny way. So… dear students … get ready, next year when we get to the point of learning verbs related to movement we’ll be dancing Thriller… if you don’t believe me … have a look at how organised they’ve got it all for me , ready to be used!! We might even be asked to perform at the Christmas Party!! How about that!!! I can’t wait!!!

Let’s get started

Step 1. The Dance . There are 8 lessons and each consists of 4 clips

http://thrilltheworld.com/learn/videos

Step 2. The Dance Script

http://thrilltheworld.com/images/uploads/TTW_Official_Dance_Script.pdf

Spet 3. The Lyrics and the Script together

http://thrilltheworld.com/images/uploads/TTW_Lyrics_and_Script.pdf

Related Links:

• Karaoke online

It is called Visuwords and it’s worth a visit.

Never before have I seen such a display of colours, diagrams and words in a dictionary. It is great for everybody to use ‘cause it’s fun and it shows not only the definitions of words but also the connections between words. What’s more, if you place your cursor over any of the words ,the definition appears. You can even click and drag individual nodes to move them around to help clarify connections.If you ver get lost in this crazy tree of words ,use the colour-coded key on the left to understand the connections between the words.

“be who you are and say what you feel,

because those who mind don’t matter and

 those who matter don’t mind.”

Dr Seuss

Fancy a riddle??  

How many bricks does it take to complete a building made of brick?

Related Links:

A puzzle to rack your brains

What on earth is a palindrome?

Beauty is a product of Photoshop

About books

Some interesting or , at least, unusual facts about the English Language

Only one.

the last one.