Meaningfully Drilling Matters of the Heart

1. You will watch a movie scene of a guy who met a perfect girl. How would you describe someone perfect? Watch the scene and pay attention to details.

2.  Two sentences are correct. Can you find them?

When Hansen first saw Summer, he wasn't very impressed.

His friend liked her.

Hansen didn't like summer when they first met.

Summer just moved from Brazil.

Summer was a simple girl.

Summer and Hansen hit it off immediately.

Hansen wasn't listening to music in the elevator.

Hansen was listening to The Smith

Hansen ignored Summer in the elevator at first.

Summer didn't begin a conversation with Hansen.

It was easy for Hansen to talk to Summer.

Choose from the sentences below the ones that could help you to talk about the day you first met someone important to you. You may need to change some of the sentences to make them true to you.

When I first met my friend/wife/husband we were at a party.

We had a great time together.

I was very impressed by him/her.

I fell in love immediately.

I took a long time to fall in love.

We went out for a year before we started dating.

We hit it off immediately.

I remember our first date very well.

It was very easy/ difficult to talk to him/her.

We dated for many years.

I was very young when we got engaged.

I got married many years after I met my partner.

We had a wonderful wedding.

We got married in the summer.

We had two children.

We got divorced 5 years ago.

I hope to grow old together.

I Wanna Samba

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• Pre-intermediate
• Teens; Adults
• Speaking
• Movie activity
• Simple past
• Materials

1. Answer the following questions.

Where did Blu live before he traveled to Rio?

Where was Blu born? How can you tell?

Where did he learn samba?

Where was his girlfriend born?

When did he learn how to fly?

Did he live in the States or in Europe?

Was he happy before he came to Rio?

Why did he come to Rio?

2. Watch the movie and check or complete your answers.

3. Answer the following questions about you.

Where were you born?

What can you do well?

Can you name something you learned when you were a child that you have never forgotten?

Where did you live when you were a teenager/child?

Where was your mother or father born?

4. Report some parts of your conversation to the rest of the group. Did you learn anything new about your partner?

Teaching Simple Past - Short Biographies - John Lennon

• Pre-intermediate
• Teens; Adults
• Using pictures;Text reconstruction
• Biography
• Past simple
• video , worksheet. pictures

"Writing could be considered to be one of the most difficult skills to master. Few people, even in their native language, find writing a story, a biography or a descriptive narrative an easy task. However, even after just two semesters of instruction, we teachers ask our students to write. How can we make the writing practice more appealing?" I once attended a wonderful workshop at Laurels by Cathy Lonngren, and she provided the audience with some useful insights. I used some of her ideas to engage my students and guide them into writing a short biography.

1. Tell your students that you have a puzzle for them. Let them see the pictures and try to guess whose life it depicts.

2. Use the pictures as a prompt to encourage students to guess what the appropriate sentence is. Say the correct sentence and give the picture to the student who guessed the closest.

Illustrated by Cleide Nascimento

John Lennon was born in Liverpool, England in 1940.

He studied are and wanted to be an artist.

In 1962 he formed a band called The Beatles with Paul Mcartney, George Harrison and Ringo Star.

In 1968 John divorced his childhood sweetheart, Cynthia.

John married a Japanese girl named Yoko Ono.

The band broke up in 1970 shortly after recording one of the greatest albums, Let It Be.

In 1975 John's and Yoko's son, Sean. was born.

John spent five years helping take care of his boy.

On December8, 1980, a young man named Mark Chapman shot John outside his home in New York.

John died in a police car on the way to the hospital.

3. Class reconstructs the biography using the pictures as prompts.

4. After laying the pictures in the correct order, a gapped version of the text is given out. Students complete it with the correct verb tense or sequence markers.

5. Students then can write their own biography by following the model.