Design Your Own Music Magazine

INTRODUCTION

In groups of three you are going to work on the project. Remember you must include vocabulary related to music. To create our magazine you will use the tool Glossi. Log in through Facebook with the email account and password I gave you.

Picture by Stux.

Your magazine is going to be divided into five different sections:

1. COVER PAGE

2. MUSIC QUESTIONNAIRE

3. TOP FIVE

4. INTERVIEW

5. REVIEW (include the ones you have already written).

COVER PAGE

Your cover page should have a title (try to be original), a picture and subtitles related to the articles you are going to include in your magazine.

MUSIC QUESTIONAIRE

Write ten different questions and ask them to your classmates, friends or family. This is an example:

	VERY OFTEN	OFTEN	SOMETIMES	NEVER
How often do you listen to these kinds of music? · Classical music · Pop · Pop-rock · Funky · Rap · Heavy metal
How often do you go to concerts?
Why do you listen to music? · Because it is relaxing. · Because it helps me to concentrate when I'm doing homework/ working. · Because it makes you feel happy.

Write the results and record the conversations using Soundcloud. Ask some follow-up questions. For example, if the question is Have you ever been to a concert? You should ask other questions to get more information, like What group played? When was it? Did you enjoy it?

TOP FIVE

A cool music magazine always includes a Top 5 section which is, basically, the five favourite tracks people have chosen, in this way your Music Magazine should also have one.

In your Top 5, you will have to select 5 songs you like and explain to the rest of the class:

1. Who is the band playing them?

2. What is the song about?

3. Why have you chosen this song?

You can play the songs in class (up to a minute) so that we can discuss what the song is about.

INTERVIEW

For the interview, you will have to choose an artist from the ones that you will talk about in your magazine. Write the questions and record the interview using  Soundcloud.

Sample questions:

·         - Who do you usually dedicate your songs to?

·         - Why have you decided to call your album “…”?

r      ALBUM REVIEW

      You have already done this part, so you just need to copy it into your  magazine.

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An Extreme Map Project

Picture by Gerald

We are going to create an extreme map of a country you choose. First of all, complete the following information:

	NAME OF THE COUNTRY
Highest mountain
Longest river
Largest lake
Biggest city
Most important city
Most interesting extreme sports
Best festival

Then:

- USE Glogster, Prezi or Power Point to create your poster. This tool allows you to include videos, audio, pictures and text. Log in with the user and password I gave you. Although I explained in class how to use it, here you are a tutorial for Glogster as well.

 -      -  FIND photos / pictures on http://search.creativecommons.org/·

·

Photo 1

·                       Find a map of your country

·      Introduce your country: name, capital, number of inhabitants, number of regions, main cities.

Photo 2

·      Find two pictures of that country first inhabitants

·         Write a short description. Who were them? Where did they live? What did they do?

Photo 3

·      Find at least three pictures of its landscape

-          Highest mountain. What’s its name? Where is it? How high is it?

-          Longest river. What’s its name? How long is it?

-          Largest lake. What’s its name? Where is it? How big is it?

                What other features can you mention? Any volcanoes? Rainforests? Beaches?

Photo 4

·    Find two photos representing some of the extreme sports you can do in the capital city.

-          What extreme sports can you do there? What do they consist of?

FIVE ‘MUST-DO’S’ IN THAT COUNTRY

FIVE DO’S AND DON’TS FOR EXTREME SPORTS

Your poster must include vocabulary related to the topic and different grammar points:

-          Present simple

-          Can

-          Comparatives and superlatives

-          Past simple

-          Must

-          Have to or don’t have to

-          Should or shouldn’t

ORAL PRESENTATION IN CLASS

Once you have finished, you will do an oral presentation in class. These are the criteria that we will use to evaluate your work. I will do it, you will evaluate yourself and you will evaluate your partner’s work as well.

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Creating our own restaurant

Internation Restaurant

I have got a small pre-teens group this year and I'm finding very difficult to engage them in class. They want to play games all the time and don't like writing, so when I saw them working and enjoying this project, I couldn't believe my eyes!

Step 1 – Restaurant selection
What KIND OF RESTAURANT is it going to be? A Chinese restaurant? A Mexican restaurant? An English restaurant?

     Now you need a NAME and a LOGO for it so that people remember it.

Step 2 – Create your own menu.

Your menu must include:

• o   Starters
• o   Main courses
• o   Side dishes
• o   Drinks
• o   Desserts

-     Brainstorm different dishes that you are going to include in your menu.

-    Include a short description of what each meal is (e.g. FISH AND CHIPS – an English meal made from fried potatoes and fish).

-        Include the price in pounds or dollars.

Step 3 – Create a radio ad.

Now that you have created your own menu, it’s time to advertise your restaurant to encourage customers to come in and enjoy a delicious meal there.

       
Step 4 – Dining Out. 
Create a short dialogue and act out a conversation in the restaurant. Two of you will be the customers and one will be the waiter or waitress.

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EFL Chefs - A new TV cookery show

Picture taken by Inma Alcázar

After such a long time without posting anything in the blog... I'm back! Did you miss me? I hope so. After very busy months full of exciting things to do, this blog post had been left behind in a folder somewhere. 

This was a lesson I and my students enjoyed a lot since it was about food, restaurants and cooking. Thinking on new ways for my students to learn new vocabulary, and not just that, but also remember it and put it into practice, I came up with this simple idea - EFL Chefs - A New Cookery Show.

I asked them to think of a dish or dessert that they enjoy cooking, the ingredients they would need to cook that dish or dessert and imagine they are teaching others to cook that recipe in a new TV programme. This was the result. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

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