Saving Our Planet

Good morning class. Today I am home with my husband who needs  a small surgery! Sorry to be absent today after the picnic on Friday. I am sure I'll see you tomorrow! I hope you enjoy today's lesson.We can fill out your Fall 2010 programs later this week.

Today you can choose to study with:

1. a reading and vocabulary lesson about recycling in San Francisco.
2. a video listening lesson about endangered elephants.
3. grammar practice with 1st, 2nd and 3rd conditionals.
   

Part One: Online Reading Lesson

Have you heard this proverb? "The longest journey begins with the first step." I think this is simple, important and helpful advice. There are so many long journeys. Sometimes we really need to get busy and start walking!

To take better care of our environment, we all need to take steps on a long journey. We need to take steps every day. We need to take steps soon. Fortunately, some steps we can take are very simple. Let's begin our lesson today with reading about recycling. Recycling has become required now in San Francisco, so everyone needs to be more careful and learn about it. Also, recycling is a small, important step we can take on this long journey. When we recycle regularly and carefully, I think we also remind ourselves to consider environmental problems more carefully and thoughtfully all the time.

How much do you recycle? How often do you feel confused about what you can recycle, or where you can recycle things such as old cell phones? What happens when we recycle here in San Francisco? In this lesson, you will read two pages about recycling, then you can take a quiz. Click here to begin the recycling reading lesson. 

Part Two: Video Lesson

People who work to protect the environment are called environmentalists. I believe when we take small steps, we can all be environmentalists. Some people become very busy with taking care of the environment. We call them environmental activists. Every April,  there are six prizes for every day people around the world who have worked as environmental activists and made an important change. These prizes are called the Goldman Awards. The winners receive $150,000 which will help them continue to do their work. These prize winners have all worked for many years with little or no money. They just had a dream to change a problem, and they got busy with small steps. 

This year, one winner was, Tuy Sereivathana from Cambodia. He has been working to help save elephants because he knows the elephants, farmers, and other animals, too, need to share the environment to live well. The elephants and farmers were having many problems living near each other. In our class, we read about elephants and farmers in Africa who had been having the same kinds of problems. 

Today, please listen to this short video. The video is about 4 and 1/2 minutes long. If you feel confused, you can stop the video with your mouse before the video finishes. You can rewind and listen more than one time, too. Listen, watch, and decide if the sentences below are true or false. Check your true false answers with your classmates and teacher.

1. The video shows a temple called Angkor Wat, which elephants destroyed many years ago.
2. Tuy grew up in a big city. 
3. There are only about 2,500 elephants still living in Cambodia.
4. Elephants need to swim across rivers when they migrate. 
5. Elephants had been raiding farms for food. 
6. Many people in the video are not afraid of these large wild animals.
7. Farmers built towers to watch for elephants who were coming near their farms. 
8. The farmers put up wires to frighten elephants away. 
9. Since 2005, no one has killed elephants to protect farmers or crops. 
10. A man who had hunted elephants before has refused to stop hunting them. 

Part Three: Grammar Links

First Conditional Practice Lesson: 

1. Example: If I recycle more, I'll help the environment. 
2. Practice Online

Second Conditional Practice Lesson: 

1. Example: If more people recycled carefully, we could reduce our waste.
2. Practice Online

Third Conditional Practice Lesson: 

1. Example: If we had begun recycling plastic earlier, we would not have created so much water pollution.
2. Practice Online