The seven billionth baby

Today the world population has reached 7 BILLION, according to the UN's projections.
Here's a short video with some interesting facts:


Check also BBC Learning English - Words in the news. We'll be listening to it and taking notes.

Seas of Plastic

Plastic pollution was the subject of (half of) today's lesson. I guess the existence of a Great Pacific Garbage Patch was news to you.

There are many other audio files (and scripts) you can download from BBCLearning-6 minute English about virtually any subject. Here's another one about Plastic carrier bags.

Finally, if you want to find out more about the consequences of our overuse of plastic, listen to Charles Moore from whom I borrowed the title for this message (a TED conference).
Even if you find the speaker difficult to follow, don't miss the photos. They deserve a moment to think.

Global WarNing

This video narrated by Leonard diCaprio helped us think a bit about how to take good notes. But not only...

The Concerned Adolescent

On Monday we'll read and discuss a poem by Wendy Cope entitled The Concerned Adolescent.
Please print the poem and the worksheet and bring it to class.Here it is:

Open publication - Free publishing - More environment

Another poem by Wendy Cope.

Your Carbon Footprint

Use the footprint calculator and tell me how many planets you need to keep your current lifestyle.
You'll be surprised with the small things you can do and that have a positive impact on the environment.

If we give up...

This week we started a new unit with a challenge: design a campaign or create an advert (poster/video) that not only sensitizes people to the problem of GLOBAL WARMING but actually does the trick: moves us into action.

We watched and discussed this video:

Your Poster

There are some do's and dont's of building a poster.
First of all you should ask yourselves what kind of poster you're doing, what for, for whom. The usual questions as you see.Here you'll find an example of a (not so successful) poster and two examples of science posters, which follow quite definite rules.
Finding the right balance between image and text (in order to be both informative and appealing) is easier said than done. But obviously too important to be dismissed.
This site will give you some hints about how to do it.