LEARNING THE FUTURE

Here is a web page which explains the different possibilities of expressing the future and provides several exercises.
Click here for another helpful explanation.

Now  you can download some worksheets to revise the future:
EXERCISE 1
EXERCISE 2
EXERCISE 3
EXERCISE 4 
EXERCISE 5
EXERCISE 6
EXERCISE 7

ROMEO & JULIET

Romeo & Juliet  is a 2013 British film adaptation of William Shakespeare's romantic tragedy of the same name which opens in the United Kingdom and the United States on  11 October 2013.

Romeo  &  Juliet  is revitalized on screen by  "Downton Abbey" writer Julian Fellowes and Italian director Carlo Carlei. This timeless tale of love from the world's most celebrated author is  adapted for the 21st  century. Told in the sumptuous  traditional setting it was written in the 16th century, the movie gives a new generation the chance to fall in love with this lasting story.

With an all-star cast including Hailee Steinfeld, Douglas Booth, Paul Giamatti and Stellan Skarsgaard, it gives those unfamiliar with the story the chance to put faces to the two names they have certainly heard countless times: Romeo and Juliet.
http://www.romeoandjulietilfilm.it/

CONDITIONAL SENTENCES

ROMEO AND JULIET AT SHAKESPEARE'S GLOBE

Specifically created for schools, Playing Shakespeare with Deutsche Bank is a project designed to promote active and practical approaches to the teaching of Shakespeare. 

Here you can find an amazing online resource for Romeo and Juliet which provides lots of information and activities about the play. 

I hope you will enjoy it!

TO AUTUMN

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells. 

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, –
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breat whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

John Keats (1795 - 1821)

To Autumn was written on 19 September 1819, and published the following year. 

Here  you can find a detailed analysis of the poem.

TRICKY WORDS!

Now let's discover what homophones are here! 

Click here to find some exercises on using homophones in context.

QUESTION TAGS

What are question tags? They  are the short questions that we put on the end of sentences – principally in spoken English. There are a lot of different question tags,  but the rules are quite easy to learn. Click here to read a detailed explanation.

Here you can download some exercises to practise using question tags.

REMEMBERING SEPTEMBER 11, 2001

The precious gift of time

The moment to spend with a husband who loves me, or a sick friend, or a delicious new grandchild is here and now. Not some time later. And yes, now is the time to do that work in the community I've always said I wanted to do.

The nation learned this lesson all at once that horrible day in September 2001. The pictures stay with us — the fires and falling debris and, most hauntingly, the faces. Look how young so many of them were, people who thought there would be much more time, a lot of "later" when they could do all the things they really wanted to do. I grieve for their families — especially for those, like me, who haven't found any trace of the people they loved. But I grieve even more for the people who died that day. They couldn't know what we know now about the precious gift of time. 

Cokie Roberts, political commentator for ABC News, senior news analyst for NPR News

Here you'll find teaching and learning resources about 9/11.

BACK TO SCHOOL

I  wish you good luck on your first day at school tomorrow!

I wish you all the best! Reach your goals, keep smiling, never give up! Believe in yourself, believe in your quality, and never doubt in what you can achieve! 

The teacher who is indeed wise does not bid you to enter the house of his wisdom but rather leads you to the threshold of your mind.  ~ Kahlil Gibran

A teacher is one who makes himself progressively unnecessary. ~ Thomas Carruthers

Who dares to teach must never cease to learn.  ~ John Cotton Dana

THE VOW

Based on a true story, The Vow is a 2012 romantic movie starring Channing Tatum and Rachel McAdams.

A car accident puts Paige in a coma, and when she wakes up with severe memory loss, her husband Leo works to win her heart again.

Here you can read an article about this touching movie. 

SEPTEMBER, 1918

This afternoon was the colour of water falling through sunlight;

The trees glittered with the tumbling of leaves;

The sidewalks shone like alleys of dropped maple leaves,

And the houses ran along them laughing out of square, open windows.

Under a tree in the park,

Two little boys, lying flat on their faces,

Were carefully gathering red berries

To put in a pasteboard box.

Some day there will be no war,

Then I shall take out this afternoon

And turn it in my fingers,

And remark the sweet taste of it upon my palate,

And note the crisp variety of its flights of leaves.

To-day I can only gather it

And put it into my lunch-box,

For I have time for nothing

But the endeavour to balance myself

Upon a broken world.

September, 1918 by the Modernist poet Amy Lowell is a very enlightening poem. It gives a sense of hope and imagination. It was how the writer wanted to see the world in the year 1918, during the World War I. Amy Lowell was painting a picture of how the world should have been compared to the way it really was.

Here  you can find a detailed analysis of this poem.

For books are more than books, they are the life, the very heart and core of ages past, the reason why men worked and died, the essence and quintessence of their lives.

Amy Lowell