http://www.friendship.com.au/index.html#index
Unit 1 is about friends. Ask your students to think about what makes a good friend, then check out the results of the ‘friendship survey’ on these pages. There are also some interesting writing activities and information on International friendship day – August 1st. Alternatively you could take some of the quotes from this site and find out which ones your students agree with.
http://ntl.matrix.com.br/pfilho/summer.html
At the end of unit 1 there is a task which asks for the students to collect examples of ‘pop song English’. Guide your students to this site which contains hundreds of song lyrics from many artists.
Your students can either choose their favourite artists/bands or search for songs by one of the 6 groups mentioned in exercise 3 on page 12. The first site has many ‘Golden oldies’ while the second site is dedicated to the more recent ‘hits’.
Unit 2
http://www.msn.co.uk/entertainment/films/default.asp
Film and video reviews from ‘Popcorn’. This is linked to page 22 of the book where there is a review of The Horse Whisperer. Let your students read the reviews of the latest releases and decide which film they would go to see and why. You could also ask them to complete a table with information such as; name of director, main actors/actresses, type of film (genre) and adjectives used to describe the film.
This site can be a bit slow to load.
http://film.reviews.co.uk/New_pages/Review%20Archive.htm
Short snappy reviews with easy to follow star-ratings. If you find the "Popcorn" reviews too long or challenging for your students why not try this site. Use the same activities or ask your students to think of a film they’ve seen, write a short review and then compare it with the review here.
http://www.bookends.co.uk/
Alternatively, you might want to have a look at book reviews. Although there are hundreds of sites devoted to book reviews these two are well worth a visit. ‘Bookends’ also gives a list of current top 10 books – a nice place to start if you haven’t heard of the books mentioned on the front page.
Before looking at the site get your learners brainstorm the kind of information they would expect to find. Then, look at the site and check. Finally, ask your learners to choose a book they have recently read and write a review for it.
Unit 3
http://www.astrology-online.com/about.htm
In unit 3 the topic of astrology and astrological signs comes up. The focus is on Ki astrology (a Chinese astrology). However, how much do your learners know about western astrology? This site is both informative and easy to navigate around. Find out the dates for each sign, the characteristics and weekly horoscopes. On page 29 there are names of famous people linked to the Ki signs, check out when they were born and find out which sign of the zodiac they were born under and whether the characteristics are similar.
Unit 4
http://www.allextremesports.com/
Extreme sports is the theme to unit 4. Start by brainstorming what is meant by ‘Extreme sports’ and put the results up on the board (eg. Snowboarding, BMX, Skydiving, Ice-cross etc). Then get your students to select one sport and ask them to find out five facts about it. The link here is to an online magazine devoted to the thrills, spills and adrenalin associated with all forms of Xsport.
http://www.deadmike.com/indexNS.html
At the start of unit 4 you are introduced to Mike and the extreme sport of skydiving. The article mentions an accident but no details are given. If you want you can visit Mike’s website, read details of the gruesome accident that give the site its name – he does survive, as well as view footage of real skydives. Warning – the site does contain some ‘strong’ language and some fairly gruesome images!
Unit 5
http://www.roalddahl.com/index2.htm
http://www.roalddahlfans.com/
http://tqjunior.thinkquest.org/5113/
Three sites which bring us everything we ever wanted to know about Roald Dahl, and more. Information about the books he wrote, online quizzes, word sections and information about the author make these sites worth visiting. Also includes extracts from a number of his books, and the second site has lots of suggestions for classroom activities.
http://www.zuzu.org/pre.html
Site that links into both unit 5 – kids' views – and unit 9, page 80 – future predictions. Get your students to write down some predictions under the following headings: City life, Schools of the future, Life in space. Then get them to compare their predictions with those made by the kids on this site.
