Friends
http://www.friendship.com.au/index.html#index
Unit 1 is about friends. Ask your students to think about what makes a good friend, then check out the results of the ‘friendship survey’ on these pages. There are also some interesting writing activities and information on International friendship day – August 1st. Alternatively you could take some of the quotes from this site and find out which ones your students agree with.
http://ntl.matrix.com.br/pfilho/summer.html
At the end of unit 1 there is a task which asks for the students to collect examples of ‘pop song English’. Guide your students to this site which contains hundreds of song lyrics from many artists.
Your students can either choose their favourite artists/bands or search for songs by one of the 6 groups mentioned in exercise 3 on page 12. The first site has many ‘Golden oldies’ while the second site is dedicated to the more recent ‘hits’.
Dating
http://www.astrology-online.com/about.htm
In unit 3 the topic of astrology and astrological signs comes up. The focus is on Ki astrology (a Chinese astrology). However, how much do your learners know about western astrology? This site is both informative and easy to navigate around. Find out the dates for each sign, the characteristics and weekly horoscopes. On page 29 there are names of famous people linked to the Ki signs, check out when they were born and find out which sign of the zodiac they were born under and whether the characteristics are similar.
Adrenalin
http://www.deadmike.com/indexNS.html
At the start of unit 4 you are introduced to Mike and the extreme sport of skydiving. The article mentions an accident but no details are given. If you want you can visit Mike’s website, read details of the gruesome accident that give the site its name – he does survive, as well as view footage of real skydives. Warning – the site does contain some ‘strong’ language and some fairly gruesome images!
Kids
http://www.roalddahlfans.com/
http://tqjunior.thinkquest.org/5113/
Three sites which bring us everything we ever wanted to know about Roald Dahl, and more. Information about the books he wrote, online quizzes, word sections and information about the author make these sites worth visiting. Also includes extracts from a number of his books, and the second site has lots of suggestions for classroom activities.
http://www.zuzu.org/pre.html
Site that links into both unit 5 – kids' views – and unit 9, page 80 – future predictions. Get your students to write down some predictions under the following headings: City life, Schools of the future, Life in space. Then get them to compare their predictions with those made by the kids on this site.