[11thCW] THE BEATLES' "YELLOW SUBMARINE"

"Yellow Submarine" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles, written by Paul McCartney and John Lennon, with lead vocals by Ringo Starr. It was included on their 1966 album Revolver and issued as a single, coupled with "Eleanor Rigby". The single went to number one on British charts, remained at number one for four weeks. [+info] (From Wikipedia)

Video:

Lyrics:

In the town where I was born
Lived a man who sailed to sea
And he told us of his life
In the land of submarines
So we sailed up to the sun
'Til we found a sea of green
And we lived beneath the waves
In our yellow submarine

We all live in a yellow submarine
Yellow submarine, yellow submarine
We all live in a yellow submarine
Yellow submarine, yellow submarine

And our friends are all aboard
Many more of them live next door
And the band begins to play

We all live in a yellow submarine
Yellow submarine, yellow submarine
We all live in a yellow submarine
Yellow submarine, yellow submarine

(Full speed ahead Mr. Parker, full speed ahead
Full speed ahead it is, Sergeant
Action station, action station
Aye, aye, sir, fire
Captain, captain)

As we live a life of ease
Everyone of us has all we need (has all we need)
Sky of blue (sky of blue) and sea of green (and sea of green)
In our yellow submarine (in our yellow, submarine, ha ha)

We all live in a yellow submarine
Yellow submarine, yellow submarine
We all live in a yellow submarine
Yellow submarine, yellow submarine
We all live in a yellow submarine
Yellow submarine, yellow submarine
We all live in a yellow submarine
Yellow submarine, yellow submarine

Fuente: LyricFind

Autores de la canción: John Lennon / Paul McCartney

Letra de Yellow Submarine © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

[11thCW] FELIXSTOWE: THE PORT OF BRITAIN

The Port of Felixstowe, in Felixstowe, Suffolk is the United Kingdom's busiest container port, dealing with 48% of Britain's containerised trade. In 2017, it was ranked as 43rd busiest container port in the world and 8th in Europe.

Video:

Info video about the importance of British ports:

"SO MUCH IN THIRTY (YEARS)": 'RAFAEL DIESTE' 30th ANNIVERSARY

This school year sees our school become 30. 

There hasn't been an official celebration like 5 years ago when we celebrated its 25th anniversary. You can remember what happened back then on our previous posts about RD25Years.

But our school's Dinamización Lingüística team has released a bookmark with a commemorative design by Victoria García-Rebull Cuiñas with this year's calendar on the reverse side. The slogan "TANTO EN TRINTA" ("SO MUCH IN THIRTY [YEARS]") was an idea by one of our Galician teachers Dores Castro Villar.

[11thCW] A SEXTANT WITH HISTORY (2)

This is a sextant with history. It belonged to my grandfather and was given to him by Jacobo F. J. Stuart y Falcó, XVII Duke of Alba & Count of Andrade, Ambassador of Spain in London in 1942.

These photos show the sextant, the box that contains it, its original certificate and a page from a Spanish newspaper from 1954, on the first anniversary of the Ambassador's death, telling the story of the sextant and the meeting between the ambassador and my grandfather Félix Neira back in June 1942.

Below is the translation into English of the story. On the previous blog-post you can see what a sextant is used for when sailing a boat (HERE).

"To the first class coastal fishing skipper Mr Felix Neira Neira souvenir from the Ambassador of Spain in London Duke of Alba & Count of Andrade. London June 1942."

[Spanish newspaper, 1954. A year after the Ambassador's death]

"[...] Being today the first anniversary of the death of his excelency Mr Jacobo F.J. Stuart y Falcó, XVII Duke of Alba, an event which occurred during his stay in London as Spanish ambassador becomes relevant.

During the last world war, a small Galician fishing boat was fishing in front of the French coast in a place called inappropriately "the great sun" ("le grand solle"). Suddenly an English destroyer, which was trying to escape from a German torpedo plane's persuit, invaded the fishing area. The destructor's prow headed towards the small fishing boat that without being able to change direction collided and sunk. All the fishing crew were safe and went on board the destructor. Scarcely after an hour on the English ship, the planes hit it and the fishermen were in a shipwreck a second time, but luckily again, they were collected by another ship which took them to England.

Once in Great Britain, the Galician castaways were taken care of by our Embassy and met the ambassador, who held a long interview with the skipper of the fishing boat. The Duke of Alba was interested in the details of the adventure and the skipper's life, who had lived mostly in Pontedeume. They also talked about the loss of all the crew's belonging on board and the skipper also regretted having lost a sextant, which he had bought very recently. It was the most heartfelt loss for him.

Having spent the necessary time to organize their trip back to Spain, the skipper went to the Embassy to say goodbye and he received a parcel containing an excellent sextant, together with a singular card, which said: 'Duke of Alba & Count of Andrade".

The Duke of Alba's present to the Galician skipper was a delicate summary of what they had been talking about in their conversation. The sextant would take up the place of the one lost in the wreckage and as the Duke had chosen, among his thirty two titles, the one of Andrade, it was an elegant souvenir to the place where the skipper had lived many years: Pontedeume."

In men's lives, pure emotions are almost always disguised with intimacy and simplicity. Knowing about these intimate acts is necessary to know about the person. [...]"

Jose María Basanta Barro

[11thCW] WHAT'S A SEXTANT USED FOR? (1)

Wikipedia

What's a sextant used for?

Translated from "SaberAlgoDeTodo".

Sailors have always had to solve the problem of knowing where the position of the ship.

The first instrument able to answer this demand was the astrolabe, examples of which had already been found in the wreckage of a Greek vessel of the IV century BC. A development of this device was the sextant, an instrument that is used to calculate the position of a ship.

Who invented the sextant?

The nautical sextant considered one of the most important inventions of the Middle Ages was invented by John Bird at the request of John Campbell in 1757. This invention replaced the astrolabe, which was less accurate and had been of great importance for many exploration voyages and the developments in sailings as it had been the main instrument to measure latitude for many years.

How does a sextant work?

It's made up of a a circumference arch -a sixth of a circumference, from here its name-

provided with a small spyglass or telescope and two mirrors; one is permanently fixed and the other movable.

It's used in this way: you address the spyglass towards a previously chosen star, after you turn the instrument so that the star's image appears reflected on the movable mirror. Then you turn the instrument until the image of the reflected star appears on the horizon; you look how much the instrument has turned and so measure the height of the star.

Video:


The following post is about A SEXTANT WITH HISTORY: a sextant that belonged to my grandfather.

[11thCW] THE STORY OF THE SWEDISH SHIP 'VASA' & HOW IT SANK

 The Vasa ship.

Vasamuseet (Vasa Museum) at Stockholm.

Vasa or Wasa (Swedish pronunciation: [ˇvɑːsa] (listen)) is a Swedish warship built between 1626 and 1628. The ship sank after sailing about only 1,300 m in  her maiden voyage on 10 August 1628. She was located again in the late 1950s in a busy shipping lane just outside Stockholm harbor. The ship was recovered with a largely intact hull in 1961. She was housed in a temporary museum called Wasavarvet ("The Vasa Shipyard") until 1988 and then moved permanently to the Vasa Museum in Djurgarden (Royal national Park) in Stockholm. The ship is one of Sweden's most popular tourist attractions and has been seen by over 35 million visitors since 1961. Since her recovery, Vasa has become a widely recognised symbol of the Swedish "great power period". [+info] (From Wikipedia)

- VASAMUSEET EXHIBITION CLOSE-UP

Video about the Vasa and Vasamuseet:

Video about how the Vasa sank:

[11thCW] THE 'TITANIC' WRECKAGE: HOW IT SANK

RMS Titanic was a British passenger liner operated by the White Star Line that sank in the North Atlantic Ocean in the early morning hours of April 15, 1912, after striking an iceberg during her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York City. Of the estimated 2,224 passengers and crew aboard, more than 1,500 died, making the sinking one of modern history's deadliest peacetime commercial marine disasters. RMS Titanic was the largest ship afloat at the time she entered service. She was built in a shipyard in Belfast. Thomas Andrews, chief naval architect of the shipyard at the time, died in the disaster. [+info] (From Wikipedia)
Two videos come in this post: a recreation of how it sunk and real footage of the departure from Southampton on its maiden and only voyage.

Video HOW THE TITANIC SANK: (James Cameron Titanic animation)

Video the real departure of the 'TITANIC':

WHAT IS THE CORONAVIRUS?

Photo: Wikipedia

All international media is full of news about the incidence of the Coronavirus. here's a video with some basic information about it.
To know more about how to prevent it, click HERE.

Video:

14-FEB, VALENTINE 2020: WHY WE LOVE & THE SCIENCE OF ATTRACTION

Photo: Ted-Ed

On February 14th, Valentine's Day, we bring you philosophical and scientifical approaches on why we love and how we are attracted to others.

Video:

For all the previous posts on Valentine's Day LINK HERE.

[11thCW] HOW EARLY SAILORS NAVIGATED THE OCEANS

The earliest navigation methods involved observing landmarks or watching the direction of the sun and stars. Few ancient sailors ventured out into the open sea. Instead, they sailed within sight of land in order to navigate. When that was impossible, ancient sailors watched constellations to mark their position. Watch the video below for information.

Video:

[11thCW] THE IMPORTANCE OF GREENWICH IN THE HISTORY OF NAVIGATION

Greenwich (/ˈɡrɛnɪtʃ/ (listen) is an area of South East London, England. 

Greenwich is notable for its maritime history and for giving its name to the Greenwich Meridian (0° longitude) and Greenwich Mean Time. The town became the site of a royal palace, the Palace of Placentia from the 15th century, and was the birthplace of many Tudors, including Henry VIII and Elizabeth I. The palace fell into disrepair during the English Civil War and was demolished to be replaced by the Royal Naval Hospital for Sailors, designed by Sir Christopher Wren. These buildings became the Royal Naval College in 1873, and they remained a military education establishment until 1998.

The maritime connections of Greenwich were celebrated in the 20th century, with the siting of the Cutty Sark (video below) and Gipsy Moth IV next to the river front, and the National Maritime Museum (video below) in the former buildings of the Royal Hospital School in 1934. [+info] (From Wikipedia)

Info video:

Video about the importance of Greenwich in the history of astronomy & navigation:

Video about the National Maritime Museum @ Greenwich:



Video "CUTTY SARK":

[11thCW] BRITAIN & THE SEA: BASIS OF ITS TRADE AND EMPIRE

Including a short documentary about what the sea has meant to Britain in its history.

Video:

This animated map video describes the development of the United Kingdom's colonial empire due to its unchallenged command of the seas..

Video:

[11thCW] HOW BIG & DEEP IS THE OCEAN?

Working on the topic of the SEA. Today we start posting a series of entries with information on the topic. 
To start with here are some videos that show us how big and how deep an ocean is.

Video "HOW BIG IS AN OCEAN?"

Video "HOW DEEP IS THE OCEAN?"

- OCEANS OF THE WORLD BY SIZE

[11thCW] COMING UP... THE SEA PREVIEW.

As we're approaching our 11th cultural week about "THE SEA", in the following days and weeks we'll be posting entries about the topic so that you can gather information to work on.

Watch out for the posts full of information and videos. Coming up...

- THE DIMENSIONS OF THE SEA: LARGENESS AND DEPTH.

- BRITAIN AND THE SEA: BASIS OF ITS TRADE AND EMPIRE.

- THE IMPORTANCE OF GREENWICH (LONDON) IN THE HISTORY OF NAVIGATION + THE CUTTY SARK.

- HOW EARLY SAILORS NAVIGATED THE OCEANS.

- SHIPWRECKS: THE 'TITANIC' AND THE SWEDISH 'VASA', HOW THEY SANK.

- FELIXSTOWE: ONE OF BRITAIN'S MOST IMPORTANT PORTS.

- MUSIC "YELLOW SUBMARINE".

- NAVIGATION GADGETS: THE SEXTANT. + ONE WITH HISTORY.

TODAY'S PALINDROME DATE

Today's date is quite peculiar. It's a palindrome date, that is, the group of numbers of today's date can be read the same from left to right and viceversa.

It's an uncommon phenomenon which depends on the calendar's numerical combinations. It happens three times in a decade. It will happen again next year and the following and then won't occur again until ten-year-and-a-day's time (03/02/2030).

Apart from all this, it's the 33rd day of this year and there's 333 days left to the end of it. The most supersticious people associate these kinds of dates with good luck and often choose them for special celebrations.

LINKS TO STUDENT GUIDES FOR TRINITY ISE I, II & III EXAMS

Here are links to student guides for each level of Trinity exams with specific information about what the exams are like, how to prepare them, what happens on the exam day and what is being assessed by the examiner on the following links:

- STUDENT GUIDE FOR ISE I

- STUDENT GUIDE FOR ISE II

- STUDENT GUIDE FOR ISE III

INFORMATION TO CANDIDATES ABOUT LISTENING & SPEAKING EXAMS

DOWNLOAD READING-WRITING INFO VIDEO

DOWNLOAD SPEAKING-LISTENING INFO VIDEO

[11th CW] THE SEA

This year's topic for our eleventh cultural week is:

THE SEA

A very broad subject matter to work on, as usual we're open to suggestions on things we can work about from and in English.

English is a language which from an island has travelled throughout the world and over the wide seas and oceans. Its origins are in a land surrounded by the sea, and of course, it's not only Britain, Ireland, Australia and even the States have great connections with the sea. So hopefully we will be able to come up with many ideas...

Let's brainstorm ideas... storms are also connected with the sea...

Waves of ideas...
This year's cultural week will be between March 30th and April 3rd.

+ info @ Wikipedia/Sea

Some possible suggestions to work on:

- Historical ships: Mayflower, RMS Titanic, Vasa, The Three Caravels (Pinta, Niña & Santa Maria), Cutty Sark, Spanish Armada, USS Enterprise, Queen Elizabeth II... (Top historical ships)

or fictional ships: Nautilus, Pequod, African Queen, Black Pearl, Yellow Submarine...

- Shipwrecks (General info on shipwrecks, List of shipwrecks, Shipwreck history)

- Seas & oceans. (Oceans & seas, Data, The biggest seas & oceans, Oceans vs seas, The 7 seas, Straits-Canals-Gulfs)

- Important ports around the world. (List of ports worldwide, British ports, Spanish ports, Container ports)


- Maritime traffic. (Cruise ship tracking, Cargo-container tracking)

- Shipyards. (List of shipyards around the world)

- The sea as a way of trade and extension of political power.

- The sea in culture. (Sea in Culture)

- The sea in literature. Moby Dick, Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver's Travels, Heart of Darkness, Old Man and the Sea... (Nautical fiction) 

- The sea in songs and music. Yellow Submarine, Surfin' U.S.A., Beyond the Sea... (Songs with 'Sea' in title,  30 songs about beaches, Top 10 sea songs)

BASIC BLOGGING TERMINOLOGY

[Info taken from: freetech4teachers.com/a-glossary-of-blogging-terminology.]

Post: “Post” can refer to an entry on your blog as in “a blog post.” “Post” can also be used as a verb as in “I am going to post a new entry on my blog.”

Page: A page on a blog is different than a post because a page is designed for static content. Pages are good for posting information that you want visitors to your blog to be able to quickly access. For example, my classroom blog had pages for curriculum outlines and review guides.

Theme: WordPress (Wordpress is open-source software that powers many blogging tools) and many other blogging platforms use “themes” to describe the look of a blog. The theme can include the color scheme and the placement of elements like calendars and margins on a blog. Changing the theme does not change the content of your blog posts.

Template: Blogger and some other blogging platforms use the term “template” to describe the look of a blog. The template can include the color scheme and the layout of elements on the blog. Changing your template does not change the content of your blog posts.

Tag: Tags are applied to WordPress (Kidblog, Edublogs) blog posts to identify the key ideas or purpose of a post. Tags make it easier for people to search and find older posts on your blog. For example, if you write a post about your Revolutionary War lesson, tag it with “revolution” or “revolutionary war” so that at the end of the school year when you have 150 posts on your blog your students can quickly click on the “revolution” tag and jump to the post that have that label. It’s a lot easier to locate older posts by tag than it is to click through archives by date.

Label: Labels are applied to Blogger blog posts to identify the key ideas or purpose of a post. For example, if you write a blog post about your Revolutionary War lesson plan, label it with “revolution” or “revolutionary war” so that at the end of the school year when you have 150 posts on your blog your students can quickly click on the “revolution” label and jump to the posts that have that label. It’s a lot easier to locate older posts by label than it is to click through archives by date.

Tag Cloud and Label Cloud: Tag and Label clouds can be added to your blog’s homepage to make it easy for visitors to see the tags or labels that you use, click on one of them, and jump to a list of all of the posts that have that particular label.

Categories: In WordPress-powered blogs you can use categories for broad descriptions of posts in addition to using tags. For example, on iPadApps4School.com I use the categories “pre-K,” “elementary school,” “middle school,” and “high school.” I assign each post to a category and use tags for describing the academic topic of the post. This way if someone visits my blog looking for math apps appropriate for elementary school he or she can click on the “math” tag then click on the “elementary school” category to find all of my posts meeting that search criteria.

Embed: To display a video, slideshow, audio recording, Google Calendar, Google Map, game, and many other multimedia elements in a blog post you will use an embed code provided by service hosting that media. Embedding media into a blog post does not make you the owner of it and as long as you follow the guidelines set forth by the hosting service you are not violating copyright by embedding something you didn’t create. For example, when you find a video on YouTube that you want your students to watch you can embed it into a blog post and ask students to comment on the blog post. If the owner of that video decides to take it offline the video will no longer play through your blog post.

Embed Codes: An embed code is a piece of code, often HTML, that media hosting services like YouTube provide so that you can easily display the media that they host in your own blog posts. On some services like SlideShare.net an embed code will be clearly labeled as such next to the media you’re viewing. On other services the embed code will be one of the options that appears when you click on the “share” option. YouTube, for example, currently requires you to open the “share” menu before you see the embed code option.

Widget: A widget is a small application that you can include in the posts and or pages of your blog. A widget could be a game, a display of Tweets, a display of RSS feeds, a tag cloud, a calendar, or any other application that offers an embed code.

Gadget: Gadget is the term that Blogger uses for a widget. A gadget and a widget do the same things.

Plug-in: A plug-in (sometimes plugin) is a small application that you can add to the software that powers your blog. Unlike widgets and gadgets plug-ins operate in the background and visitors to your blog will not see them working. A plug-in can add functions to your blog such as suggesting related posts to your visitors or detecting the type of device a visitor is using to view your blog then automatically displaying the mobile or desktop version of your blog’s layout.

Permalink: Each blog post is assigned its own separate URL this is known as a permalink (permanent link). This URL is the one that you would share if you wanted someone to directly access a post rather than going to your blog’s homepage then searching for the post.

WISHING YOU ALL A...

ENJOY THE HOLIDAYS!

Video CHRISTMAS FLASMOB: