English language

Reasons why the English language is so hard to learn:

1) The bandage was wound around the wound.

2) The farm was used to produce produce.

3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.

4) We must polish the Polish furniture.

5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.

6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.

7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it
was time to present the present.

8) A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.

9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.

10) I did not object to the object.

11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.

12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.

13) They were too close to the door to close it.

14) The buck does funny things when the does are present.

15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.

16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.

17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail.

18) After a number of injections my jaw got number.

19) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.

20) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.

21) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?

Let's face it - English is a crazy language. There is no egg
in eggplant nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in
pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England or
French fries in France .

Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't
sweet, are meat. We take English for granted. But if we
explore its paradoxes, we find that

quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a
guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing,
grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham? If the plural of
tooth is teeth, why isn't the

plural of booth beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2
meese? One index, 2 indices?

Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one
amend. If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?

If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught? If a
vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?

Sometimes I think all the English speakers should be
committed to an asylum for the verbally insane. In what
language do people:

Recite at a play and play at a recital?

Ship by truck and send cargo by ship?

Have noses that run and feet that smell?

How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a
wise man and a wise guy are opposites?

You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in
which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you
fill in a form by filling it out and in which, an alarm goes
off by going on.

English was invented by people, not computers, and it
reflects the creativity of the human race, which, of course,
is not a race at all. That is why, when the stars are out,
they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are
invisible.

PS: Why doesn't "buick" rhyme with "quick"?

SOSE - Sandlot

The Plot

It's 1962, and Scotty Smalls is the new kid in town. He's shy, slightly awkward and doesn't find it easy to fit in with the neighbourhood kids. His mother constantly urges him to go outside and make friends, but it's not as easy as she thinks it is. More than anything else, Scotty wants to play baseball with the other kids. But that's not really an easy task when you don't know how to catch a ball. Scotty even tries to get his stepfather to teach him, but he's too occupied with his work. All that changes when Benjamin Rodriguez, the best ball player in town, invites him to be the ninth player on their team. Benjamin shows Smalls (as he comes to be called) the ropes and teaches him how to catch. Pretty soon Scotty's days of sitting at home by himself are over. And so starts the best summer of his life.


Subplots

Scotty belts a ball over a fence that is guarded by a fierce beast, where no ball is ever recovered. The problem is that Scotty took the ball from his dad, and the ball was signed by Babe Ruth. This leads to numerous confrontations with the beast to try and recover the ball.

In The Sandlot everything is exaggerated and becomes something larger than life. That's the way many adults recall seeing things as a boy or girl. There's a dog that rules over the land of lost baseballs and he's a huge monster of cartoon proportions - the sort of creature that only exists in tales told in sleepovers and backyard camp-outs.


Setting

A quiet town in the USA in 1962.


Drug Education

Tobacco contains nicotine. It can cause lung cancer, heart disease, heart attacks and many other health problems.


Themes

Making new friends after moving to a new area.
Cooperation.
Team building.
Accepting others.
Helping others.
Using technology to achieve a goal.
The world is not as scary as it seems.


Characters

Benjamin Franklin Rodriguez
Scotty Smalls
The Beast
Hamilton 'Ham' Porter
Michael 'Squints' Palledorous
Alan 'Yeah-Yeah' McClennan
Kenny DeNunez (as Brandon Adams)
Bertram Grover Weeks
Tommy 'Repeat' Timmons
Timmy Timmons


Activities

- learn softball skills.
- make the dessert called smores.
- write a campfire legend like the story of The Beast.
- analyse the film The Sandlot.
- for technology, design a ball retriever for when your ball goes over the fence.
- write a word bank and incorporate the words into class writing activities.


Resources

- cooking ingredients
- softball equipment
- DVD The Sandlot
- Smartboard for group technology designs.

5 Random Things

Write down five random things you've never done before.

I've never:

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Now, write down five exotic/important things that you have done.

I have:

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.