Audrey Hepdurn - biography

Audrey Hepburn is one of the best players in golden time of Hollywood’s movie and the EGOT actors who win all sorts of awards - Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony. She was also an icon and popular actress who had slender appearance and bright smile. 

She had influenced  not only to cinema production but also to fashion market. Her dresses of  "Breakfast at Tiffany’s"  had been designed by Givenchy, and the black dress she wore is one of the most recognized as her style.

Her life, which we receive from articles in the magazines,  shows brilliant success and supreme happiness. However, her true story in childhood was relatively unknown. World War II had broken her future as a ballet dancer by malnutrition in the war. In her late life, after getting many prizes, she dedicated her life to UNICEF which helps the poor children who need help for their lives.

While traveling for UNICEF, she had found out she had cancer. To get back to all of the children who had been waiting for her help,  she decided to fight the cancer in the USA, but she couldn't win. Her family recommended she go back to her peaceful house in Switzerland which she loved, and lived happily with her family. 

Although her body had no power to walk by herself, Givenchy prepared his private jet plane for her safe return.  In 1993, she had breathed her last in her house with her loving family at her side.

Posted for Yumi M

Story telling in the future tense - Predicting Matt's future

As a final writing task after practising using 'will' & 'going to' for future predictions, I set up a creative writing task to make predictions about the futures of 4 high school friends, using the visual prompts on the worksheet to help them generate ideas. Do you agree with the examples of 'will' & 'going to' in these texts?

Matt's future:

Matt isn't going to graduate the high school. He wanted to become an actor. He was hopeful, but his parents felt sad.

At first, he is going to audition for a commercial. He won't get a job. Reality was strict. He is going to get a part time job and he is going to study at an acting school for 2 years. One day he is going to get a small role in TV drama. He was very happy.

He is going to become very popular. He is going to get main role in TV drama series after three years

Finally he is going to move to Hollywood. He is going to get main role in some movie. Now he is going to become super star. Dream come true! He get much money and become a big name.

Posted for Yoko

The Jungle Book: after reading - a movie pitch

Which is your favourite character in The Jungle Book? 

Imagine YOU are the character, and write an email to Hollywood and explain why the next movie should be about you (and not Mowgli)!

My favorite character in The Jungle Book is Bagheera – Black Panther. He is very strict about the rules. He got angry at Mowgli’s selfish behavior, but he cared about Mowgli very much. When Mowgli was taken away by the monkeys, Bagheera ran quickly to the crowds of monkeys and started hitting, right and left, as hard as he could. I like him since he has not only strictness but also kindness.

I am writing this e-mail to Hollywood since Baloo – brown bear and I are proper to be main character for the next movie. We are in a position to teach Mowgli about the jungle in Wolf-Pack although we are bear and panther respectively. In the movie, we would like Hollywood to cover the background that we attend the wolf-meetings and have the right to say our opinion there. We also would like Hollywood to cover the future of Mowgli from the point of view of us. We still need to teach him about the jungle and see how he grows up there. We are very interested in his growth as a member of Wolf-Pack in the jungle.

Posted for Chinasa

Analogue Story Generator - a dice & a homestay visitor

This is a fun activity which worked very nicely in class with my returnee brothers and their English homestay guest in a one hour class last week.

I was expecting them to not be in the mood for a regular class, prepping for FCE, and also that our native-speaking guest would probably have a lot of raw language I could use more creatively...

Column 1: Superhero - think of silly name for the six rows, brainstorming eg people we know & admire, sports stars, anything silly...
Column 2: Villain - maybe a baddy we don't like from school or the news...
Column 3: Location - somewhere local, or a place we like or want to visit...
Column 4: An object - a favourite toy or super-power delivering tool...
Column 5: Main event - more dramatic/mundane the better...
Column 6: Ending - obvious? Challenged mine to come up with a sticky end, a twist, comic book, science fiction, sporty & surprising finishes.

Materials = piece of paper with 6 rows x 6 columns, and a dice. Pencils would be handy!

The brain storming actually took quite a while as I needed to filter suggestions a bit so we would end up with an interesting variety of outcomes (and publishable ones!).

Selection phase = students throw the dice in turn to choose a superhero from column one. Repeat for the other 5 columns: each student now has a very eclectic set of characters & bizarre storyline to concoct!

Embellishing = decide on a cast list for the main characters (Mum featured as did the teacher), a narrator, supporting cast, a title.

Homework - write a summary of the plot (rough draft). Aim = second draft with more detail, structure/organisation, Hollywood moment etc!

Immediate feedback = very entertaining interaction & entertaining suggestions - only told them the 'story' aim after we'd brainstormed all the 36 components (otherwise the'd have been filtering their own ideas - as it was they guessed they were going to make a story - but a horizontal one eg all #4s - and had tried to make things 'fit')

This activity would never work with my usual junior high school/high school crowd; it did work splendidly with noisy, energetic, imaginative, competitive teens. One-upmanship added a lot to the storyboard, and I for once was not 'the expert' - all I had to do was pass the dice around...and moderate the input!