My Grandparents' School

Tuesday 10^th June

Hello again!

So, this is like the Agatha Christie’s novels…There were no one left!

Yes, you are disappearing little by little. Last week only Marcos, Sergio and Amara came!

I hope to see Paula next week because I don’t know if I need a substitute for the play! At least I’m sure about Marcos and Amara. And I know that Sergio isn’t coming but he helped us to rehearse in our last class.

Before the rehearsal, we continued with our last lesson of this course!

Last week we compared school subjects. This week we compared schools in the past with schools in the present.

We listened to the teacher’s father telling us what differences there are between his school days and schools now.

·         In his days, there were more children in each class and they were separated in big groups.

·         The kids didn’t sit around tables. They sat in long rows of wooden desks.

·         There weren’t pictures painted by the children on the wall. There were only photos of horrible head teachers.

·         They didn’t write with pens or had paints, They only used pencil.

·         They didn’t have computers or calculators.

·         Their subjects were different. They studied a lot of Latin and Greek.

·         Teachers were stricter.

·         They couldn’t speak in class. They had to be quiet.

Look at this chart and compare:

	PRESENT	PAST
Affirmative	He studies maths and Spanish at school.	He studied Latin and Greek.
Negative	She doesn’t study maths or Spanish at school.	He didn’t study Latin and Greek.
Question form	Does she study maths and Spanish at school?	Did she study Latin and Greek?
Short answers	Yes, he does. No, he doesn’t.	Yes, he did. No, he didn’t.

We make the past simple of regular verbs by adding “- ed”. We only use the verb ended in “-ed” in affirmative sentences. In negative sentences and questions we use “didn’t” or “did”. So, the verb doesn’t change. It’s always in infinitive.

And we learnt how to pronounce the past of regular verbs, that is the group “-ed”

DON’T PRONOUNCE “e”, ONLY AFTER “t” OR “d”

Want   wanted         end     ended           wait    waited

                   /ɪd/                           /ɪd/                            /ɪd/

When the verb does not end in “t” or “d”, “e” is never pronounced. Sometimes it sounds like “d”; sometimes it sounds like “t”. Don’t be lazy and try to read it in Spanish because native people won’t understand you and it sounds awful (terrible!)

If you want to practise pronunciation, follow this link.

Pronunciation of Regular Verbs

Remember the past of to be:

Present                     Past

I am                            I was

S /he /it is                  s/he/it was   

we /you / they are    we/you / they were

Homework: I know I didn’t give you homework! Revise everything we have learnt because next day we are going to have a games competition for our last games!!!

But this was the result for last week’s games

GAME 10

Player 1	----
Player 2	5
Player 3	10
Player 4	----
Player 5	----
Player 6	8

It’s boiling hot, so I suppose you are going to the swimming pool!

 Have a nice weekend!!!