The Little Red Hen and Donald Duck

You may have grown up reading Donald Duck comic books. (Maybe you still do - many adults in Norway do....) But did you know he was first introduced in a cartoon? The cartoon was called "The Wise Little Hen" and was a retelling of "The Little Red Hen", one of the first stories in the Tracks 1 book. This cartoon is from the 1930s - the animation and even the music look very strange to us today.

Dara O'Briain on Anglo-Irish relations

Irish comedian Dara O'Briain is an Irishman living in London. Here he talks about the relationship between Ireland and Great Britain. He has a very very Irish accent!

For certain members of my Tuesday morning class:

As promised, the Death Metal Mix of "Friday". In return, you will never play that song in my class again. Do we have a deal?

Need some help with your Northern Ireland / Terror on the Tube presentations?

The BBC's excellent Newsround service for younger readers and foreign-language English learners has useful information about The Troubles in Northern Ireland and about the July 7th, 2005, terror attacks on the London Underground. Here are the links:

Northern Ireland and The Troubles

The July 7th Attacks

Other links (check back, I will be updating these!):

The Omagh Massacre, the last major incident of The Troubles, carried out by the so-called "Real IRA" just weeks after the Good Friday Agreement was signed

A timeline of the 2005 London Tube bombings  from Wikipedia

And a few more...

Symbols used in murals in Northern Ireland, by both Loyalist (Protestant) and Republican (Catholic) groups

Photos of murals in Northern Ireland

And more...
A BBC presentation on the Tube Bombings,  including facts about the bombings and about the police investigation that followed.

The blog our "Terror on the Tube" sound file comes from.  This is the story of "Rachel", who we met through the sound file on the Tracks website. Here she adds more detail, and uses some words that aren't appropriate in a school textbook!

The Guardian's page on the attacks.  The Guardian is a large British newspaper. Here they have collected hundreds of articles about the attacks and the aftermath.

Wakko's 50 State Capitols

First-years, you made some great posters in class on Thursday! Would you like to learn more about what you would find in the fifty US states? This link takes you a map of the US, with clickable links to the tourist office for each state. Even North Dakota wants tourists to come visit!
Each state has a capital, of course. Children in US schools are often told to learn the names of all the states and their capitals. This is a song about them from a cartoon called the Animaniacs. (Wakko is right: Maryland clam chowder is wonderful! Though I miss their crabcakes more.)

A film about Thanksgiving

Stephen Fry on Language and Pedants

Stephen Fry is a British actor, author, and comedian. Here he talks about language and pedants. Pedants are people who insist that everyone should do things in the way they believe is the right way. Because Stephen Fry is very smart and speaks with an upper-class accent, many people believe he is a language pedant. But he is not. What do you think of what he has to say?