Friday's Assignment

1. Write a report on yesterday's schoolwide field trip.

• Include information on the weather, participants, scenery, activities, and food.
• Get pictures from this blog or elsewhere (e.g. Facebook) and add captions to each.
• Have at least two other classmates check your work before publishing.
• Comment on three other classmates' blogs.
2. Compare Kijiji and Craigslist vs other job search sites, such as those you looked at earlier this week. List three differences and discuss them with a partner. (If you prefer the challenge, you can do Task 2 of today's Workplace English assignment instead.)

Thursday's Schoolwide Field Trip

Here are some pictures from the picnic (more on Facebook):

Some of the beautiful people that showed up on a beautiful day yesterday: Nishi, Fottima, Benny, Yun Xia, Salim, Tao, and some of their children

Benny, John, Vanessa, and Yun Xia about to demolish the sushi

For details and map to Bluffers Park, be sure to check out this fabulous website.

Wednesday's Assignment

The first job for many in Canada is often an unpaid one, a voluntary job. As a volunteer, you get not only real Canadian work experience, but your dedication could earn you referrals and recommendations when your bosses become your work references. This morning we look at what volunteer positions available in Canada.

1. Using the editing checklist and corrected blog printouts, update your blogs to reflect the corrections.
2. Listen and roleplay with a partner: Getting a dream job.
3. Find 3 volunteer positions you would be interested in, and tell a partner what they are and why you would be interested in them.
4. If you have some time left, complete the assignments you may have left unfinished.

Tuesday's Assignment

Good morning! Are you "linked in" yet? Today we continue on the theme of job search with an online networking website:

1. Connect with 5 classmates at Linkedin.com. Discuss with a partner how LinkedIn is different from Facebook. Think of three differences.
2. Listen and roleplay with a partner: A job recommendation
3. Reading and vocabulary: Reviewing job applications

Monday's Assignment

Good morning! Welcome to our last week before the Canada Day week off. Can you guess the theme/s of the week?

  

 Here are your tasks for this morning:

1. Find a previous or a prospective job on Monster.ca or Jobboard. Think of who you might want or not want to be your 3 references. Discuss your reasons with a partner.
2. Headphones on, practise singing O Canada with this video. Write down and look up any words you don’t know. Practise again with this guy.

 

 

Friday's Assignment

Great job, everyone, on completing the dreaded editing checklist, some of you for the first time! Here are your tasks for this afternoon:

1. Use your editing checklist to correct your posts on your blog. Make sure to look for all nine items on the checklist and ask two partners to help you check before clicking on the Update Button.
2. Take dictation from this clip: 00:40 - 01:06
3. Check with 3 partners before posting on your blog.

Write your parenting advice on summer to newcomers. Use a numbered list and include 5 to 10 points.


Sometimes parents give up and call in a professional. What do you call a professional who is paid to take care of the kids? What do you call a superhuman professional who is paid to take care of the kids? What do you call one that goes beyond that?

See the rest of the cartoon here.

So, here are your tasks:

1. Choose two of these dilemmas and study them for 8 vocabulary words. Then use these words in an email to give parenting advice to a struggling parent. Feel free to share from your personal experience with parenting, whether with your kids or maybe your parents! Publish your email on your blog.
2. Read three of your classmates’ blogs and leave a comment on each.
3. When you've finished, watch the Super Nanny video below with a partner and discuss your thoughts about the mom's, the dad's, and the supernanny's roles:

Thursday's Assignment

Good morning! Taking the kids out to the park or to a festival can do something for your parenting creds. What's the fun activity in the video below called?



Some of these venues you may visit on field trips, and others you may discover by yourself. Try to think like a parent in today's assignment:

1. Publish on your blog a report on Friday’s extended field trip. Either write it via computer or speak it into an Android/iPhone via the Blogger mobile app.
2. Add some nice pictures. Then go and comment on three of your classmates’ blogs.
3. Check out this weekend's Toronto Waterfront Fest. Learn the vocabulary words using Google/Youtube, and make a field trip itinerary for your family. Share it with with two or three partners.

Wednesday's Assignment

For some people, one of the most memorable aspects of parenting dilemmas is being at a parent-teacher interview.

1. Reading and Speaking: Practise, and role play this dialogue with a partner. Record your voices on audioboo and post the link on your blog.
2. Listening, Writing, and Vocabulary: Listen to this conversation and make sentences with five new words.

Tuesday's Assignment

Have you got a spoilt child? Or perhaps have you been one? Or, uh oh, are you one yourself? Have you ever been disciplined?

1. Have a look at the cartoons and tell a partner how each one is funny (or isn't).
2. Practise, and role play this dialogue with a partner. Record your voices on audioboo and post the link on your blog.
3. Were you ever spoilt as a child? Share an experience with your partner and discuss the difference of views about discipline in your country of origin as compared to Canadian values. Write about your partner's experience on your blog and mutually check before posting.
4. Listen to this old song, "Let the Church Roll On," and identify 3 forms of discipline recommended. Then, to get a Ph.D. in ESL, take dictation of some other ways of discipline in this variation or others.

Monday's Assignment

For this afternoon's assignment:

1. Write a 10-sentence summary of Joseph Rosendo's Quebec City DVD using the vocabulary words you have learnt. Feel free to include pictures and a personal reflection on the possibility of taking your family on a road trip in Canada.
2. Write three comments or share a post of new ideas on the EZ Camping Tips for Torontonians Facebook Page.

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Uh oh. Welcome to a week on parenting dilemmas!

1. Read this page and list out Dr. Phil’s 4 parenting dilemmas. Discuss with a partner whether you agree with Dr Phil’s list.
2. Practise and then role play with a partner this conversation on being a first-time parent.

Extended Tour of Duty: Centre Island, Sugar Beach, St Lawrence, and Back

Crowning off a week's work on recreational centres and facilities, our trip to Centre Island developed a life of its own and we covered not only the key places offshore but also some interesting places on the mainland as well!

Usual meeting point in front of the coffeeshop inside Don Mills Station, above the subway train platform

Transiting at Sheppard Yonge ... wonderful mobility aid thanks to Rexdale Community Health Centre via MicroSkills' Kaye Bromfield and Ling Hu

Streetcars not in service; so service 509 was a regular old kneeling bus.

The rain-threatened delegates Nishi, Tao, Vanessa, Salim, Rui, Mehran, and Fatimah

Plus this lovely selfie from Mr and Mrs Taofeeq and Edgar

Brave Rui and Vanessa check out the uber-priced Pizza Pizza

Add caption

Quo Vadis?

Time to head on back early, Mehran hand to the plough ... to do a little errand for MicroSkills at Corus Quay.

Hoofing it over to Redpath Sugar Factory and Sugar Beach--all to pick up 500 Shriners Circus tickets for MicroSkills

Pink umbrellas in back!

Great pulmonological help!

St. Lawrence Market--almost home free!

From here, pedal to the metal past the Flatiron Building, past St. James, and into the King subway just when it begins to drip again!

Field Trip Friday: Centre Island

This Friday the Thirteenth, we're headed to Toronto Islands for a picnic! Please remember to check this blog on Friday morning to make sure there are no changes.

Can you find the following places: Ward's Island Ferry Dock, Centre Island Ferry Dock, Hanlan's Point Ferry Dock, Island Airport, Manitou Beach, Clothing Optional Beach, Rental

Those leaving from Don Mills Station should leave the station around 9 a.m. Here are the map details. The aim is to take the 11 a.m. ferry to Centre Island (where else does the ferry go?). We should be on the island around 11:30 and be able to find a picnic spot by noon.



What should we do on our picnic? What are we looking forward to? What should we bring? TTC tokens? Ferry fare? Food and water? A hat? Please type and share your comments below!

Thursday's Short Assignment

Good morning, folks!

This morning, before our 9:30 a.m. talk on Employment Standards, we're having a short discussion on our field trip on Friday as well as the following tasks:

1. Check out the following places and write an email on your blog inviting a friend to go with you:
1. Alpine Slopes
2. Sherkston Shores
3. Sky Zone
4. Try New Things
2. Make sure to find a partner to check and discuss before publishing. Then comment on 3 classmates’ posts.
3. Role Play: Getting Childcare

Wednesday's Assignment

Going beyond the City's services, we look today at a community helpline.

What's funny about this picture?

1. With a partner, identify 3 useful services on this website and select 1 to make a 211 call for.
2. Make the call on a phone or role play it with a partner on Audioboo.com.
3. Type in your postal code here and find the nearest food banks, dental assistance, and suicide and distress centres. Click on Map.
4. What is most surprising about the 211 service? Tell a partner.

Tuesday's Assignment

Now that we know about the Toronto Fun Guide, we may need assistance accessing some of the courses there. What can we do if we have a financial need?

Here are some steps to try out this morning:

1. On which page of the Fun Guide can you find the Welcome Policy?
2. Check out the FAQs on this page.
3. Take notes. Discuss with a partner. Then make the necessary phone calls to apply for Welcome Policy membership or benefits.
4. Role play with a partner: Finding Other Singles.
5. Find out some reasons the Welcome Policy had to be changed a couple of years ago.

Monday Afternoon's Assignment

Here are your tasks for this afternoon:

1. Continue to proofread your blogs using the editing checklist. 
2. Write on your blog a report on last Thursday's field trip to Roy Thomson Hall. If you were not there, you may interview a classmate who went. 
3. Find out the ferry schedules and fares for Toronto Islands. Then find three activities or places there you might be interested in. Make a voicemail recording for Feng or Fabien, who are not here today. You can start by saying, "Hi Feng/Fabien, our next field trip, on June 27, is to ...." Place the audio link on your blog. 
4. Which words were used in the concert performance's "Mulligatawny Macbeth"? Check out these videos. Then check out the witches' chant from Shakespeare's Macbeth.

Monday's Assignment

Welcome back! This week, some of you (LINC Level 5 and up) may be applying to go on to Workplace English and other programs. Our theme for the week here is Recreational and Community Centres.

 

Here are your tasks:

1. Check out the North York TFG. Which of the following doesn’t belong: TTC, trees and ravines, skiing, skating, swimming and pools?
2. Can you locate the 8-digit code in the Spring edition for the Guitar-Beginner course at Oriole Community Centre (in North York) for 9-12 year olds, $38/9 weeks, on Saturday mornings from April 5?
3. Find one more activity in the Toronto Fun Guide, and see if you can get your partner to find the code in the Toronto Fun Guide.