30 May 2013

Term 2 / week 7 - 8: East West Tunnel - Arguments Against

  • What do you know about the recent State government decision to build an East West Road Tunnel Link?  
  • What is your opinion?

Yarra Campaign: Trains not Tolls



City of Yarra is supporting the community campaign against building the East West Tunnel Toll road.


Researching the Arguments AGAINST the Tunnel


Video from our protest 12 June 2012

Guest speaker, Adam Bandt, is the Federal Member for Melbourne in the Australian Parliament. Listen to his speech. What is Adam Bandt's view of the East West Tunnel?


Community protest at East West Link geotesting site, June 2012 from Carlton NLC on Vimeo.

Speech in Parliament about the East West Tunnel

In May this year, Adam Bandt gave his opinion about the East West Tunnel proposal to the Federal Parliament. He says:
'Building more roads to relieve traffic congestion is like loosening your belt to cure obesity.'



Practice with Prepositions Part 2

Here's a review of prepositions which follow adjectives: as with the first Prepositions Review slideshow, you can test yourself by reading the sentences out loud and choosing a preposition to fill the gap.

Then press Enter to move to the next slide to check your work. Read the sentence again with the correct preposition.

 



21 May 2013

Make a Powerpoint presentation 2: more practice with photos and formatting text

Have you seen our first Slideshow which includes all the students' work from Week 5? You all did a great job and your work all looks good together.

This week we are going to put more images into Powerpoint slides and practice changing the format and layout of all three parts of your slide: Title, Caption and Image. Have a look at the Slide I prepared for you as a sample.

Jill's sample: image on the LEFT this time.
For this practice, I would like you to use images that are high resolution: either downloaded from your phone or camera (or from USB stick) or the ones in our shared folder.

Skills

  • Find and open the Presentation you started last week.
  • Change Layout of your New Slide to get ready to insert your image on the LEFT side.
  • Insert and resize your image.
  • Draft and type your Caption text - answering the three questions (you can see above). Get some teacher feedback on your writing.
  • Change the Format of your Caption and your Title to fill the space nicely.
  • Save your Presentation over the original one you did last week.

New skill: compress your photo/ slide show (to email to someone)

 

Photos that you downloaded from the internet will be quite small: 50-100 Kbs (kilobytes). However, photos from your camera or mobile phone will be much bigger: 1-3Mbs (megabytes) - that's about 1000 to 3000 Kbs. And your family and friends won't like you emailing them something as big as that.

If you want to email (or publish to the internet) your photo image or your Powerpoint presentation, you will need to compress the images (make them smaller). We can do this now (before you insert your image into a slide) OR after you have made your Slideshow presentation.

Here is a useful video that shows you how to Compress Pictures in your Powerpoint presentation.







Term 2 / week 6 - Dictation and some Practice with Prepositions

Write a Discussion on the topic of Graffiti

You can choose one of the following topics:

1. Graffiti should be legalised.
2. Graffitists should be put in jail.
3. Local councils are losing the battle to prevent graffiti.

Your introduction must include your opinion and some supporting sentences, based on experience or facts. This should be interesting enough to invite the reader to read more!

Use the Discussion Plan to start writing more arguments to support your view. Don't forget to discuss the Arguments AGAINST your view and what you think of them.

State law regarding Graffiti

The Victorian Graffiti Prevention Act 2007 recognises graffiti as a crime and acknowledges its potential severity through tough penalties. The offence of marking graffiti attracts maximum fines of more than $29,000 and up to two years imprisonment.
Under this Act, it is illegal in Victoria to:
  • mark publicly visible graffiti on property without the owner’s consent
  • sell spray paint to someone under the age of 18 unless they have proven it is needed for employment purposes
  • possess a graffiti implement with the intention of marking unlawful graffiti
  • possess, without lawful excuse, a spray paint can while on or adjacent to public transport property, or when trespassing
  • advertise spray paint cans for sale, if the advertisement is likely and intended to incite or promote unlawful graffiti.
The Act outlines what councils can do to remove graffiti from private property and what police can do to investigate alleged graffiti offences.

 

Strategies to prevent graffiti

Which graffiti prevention strategy has been used in the construction of this tram stop shelter on the corner of Johnston Street and Nicholson Street?

Dictation: Graffiti or Street Art?

Here's a dictation to review our vocabulary and prepare to write a Discussion about Graffiti.


Listen to the text three times and check your writing. When you can't improve your writing any more, you can check your work by looking at the Transcript here.

Practice with Prepositions

Here's a review of work we did last term: maybe you have removed these Grammar worksheets from your folder to make space for new work. So, here is a slideshow for you to revise which preposition to use with particular verbs or adjectives.

You will need to click the Next button to check your answer and then go to the Next Slide.



14 May 2013

Make a Powerpoint presentation: is graffiti art or vandalism?

While we are looking at different examples of Graffiti, it is a good opportunity to search for some photos of graffiti on the internet, save them to your Photos sub-folder and make a presentation to share with the class.

If you have taken some photos on the streets in your neighbourhood, you can also use them. You'll have to save them to your Photos sub-folder in your Folder on the Students' Drive first.

Slideshow: Examples of Graffiti in Melbourne 

I put all your slides into one presentation for people to browse. Now that you can change the size of text boxes and text, you can change the layout of each slide. Have you taken any photos yet? These photos will be a higher resolution than the ones you found on the internet. And they will look richer when you put them into your slide show. - JK: 17 May, 2013

Skills

  • Pin the Powerpoint program (app) to your Taskbar: this is a good idea because it's a lot quicker than finding it in the Start Menu each time you want to open it.
  • Open a New Presentation and type the Name of your Presentation: Is Graffiti street art or vandalism? OR Some examples of Graffiti
  • Insert New Slide - and choose the Layout: Content and Captions - see the examples below.
  • You can type your title and text, and insert your photo.
  • You might need to change the size of the Title and Text boxes, and even the photo too.
  • Have I forgotten any skills???

09 May 2013

Term 2 / weeks 4 - 5: Graffiti - is it art or vandalism?

Have a look at the following slide show. For each photo, think about the following questions:
  • What can you see? Describe the image.
  • What is the context (location)?
  • Does the art/ graffiti have any useful role or public benefit?




Write a Discussion text to persuade the readers to agree with your point of view.

 

Preparing to write a Discussion

Collect some photos of graffiti that you love (or hate) and share them with others in the class. 

Ask your friends and family for their views on graffiti.

Find out the local Council's policy on graffiti - the Department of Housing's policy on graffiti.
Do these organisations (or other organisations) have any effective strategies to prevent graffiti or remove graffiti?

 

Useful links

More images of Street art in Melbourne



    07 May 2013

    Get photos from the internet and create a table in Word

    Find three things: healthy food or fast food?


    While we're on the topic of healthy foods, here's an activity to practise the following skills:

    • search for images (using Google search engine) and save them to your folder (using Save Image as);
    • insert images into a doc and resize; 
    • insert Symbols, like a tick and a cross;
    • create a Table and navigate and edit it.
    Click this link to read and follow the instructions in the document.

    Can you create a document with a Table that looks similar to this?

    Make a Table with different foods



    02 May 2013

    Term 2 / week 3: Fat, fatter, obese

    This week we are spending more time reading and writing persuasive texts. Let's review some language that we read in the text Australia needs a Michelle Obama.


    Dictation: The two Michelles



    Listen and pause the dictation where you need to. Don't forget your punctuation. When you're finished, you can check your work by clicking the link to the transcript of the text here.

    Some Links to Michelle Bridges web pages