The Electronics Deli

• Have you got your face in the middle of the camera?
• Have you got your favourite pencil ready?
• Have you got your notepad ready?
• Are you relaxed?

Ready?

Lets go!

ONE: Get to know each other

• How old are you?
• Which school do you go to?
• What grade are you in?
• What is your favorite subject in school?
• What is your least favorite subject in school?
• What languages can you speak?
• Which languages do you want to learn?

• What do you like to do on weekends?
• Do you play any sports? Which ones?
• What’s your favorite season, and why?
• What book did you read this week?
• What is something you are really good at?
• Do you have any siblings?
• Do you have any pets?
• What’s your favorite animal, and why?
• What countries have you been to?
• What is your favorite game to play?
• What are your hobbies?
• What is something new you learned recently?
• Do you like to draw or paint? What do you like to make?

• What do you like to do when it’s raining?
• Do you prefer the beach or the mountains?
• What is your favorite kind of weather?
• What is your favorite thing to learn about in science?

TWO: Spelling Test – only done if student is low-level

Instructions to teacher: stop screen sharing and instruct the student that they must write down the words that follow. Read each word twice, with a pause.

Writing

Writing 1: For 10 minutes, write a self-intro of three paragraphs.

You basically need to write about yourself: talk about who you are, where you live, who you live with, where you go to school, what you like, what you don’t like, etc.

Cool question from Brian: Can I write in cursive?

Answer: Only if your cursive is good-looking! Not like this:

Prepared Speaking 2: Choose one of the following prompts, spend one minute preparing. Then speak and answer the question in 2 minutes.

• Prompt A: “Describe a memorable experience you had during a vacation or holiday.”
• Prompt B: “Explain the importance of protecting the environment.”
• Prompt C: “Write about a hobby or activity you are passionate about and why.”

Comprehension

Wombats are chunky, stubby-legged marsupials from Australia, have one of the strangest and funniest superpowers in the animal kingdom: they poop perfect cubes. Not kind-of-square blobs. No, actual six-sided, stackable poops that look like brown dice. This isn’t a weird accident or a wombat joke. Scientists have found that the wombat’s intestines have stretchy and stiff parts that squeeze the poop into cubes as it slowly makes its long, bumpy journey through nearly 10 meters of gut. Why cube poop? I mean…uh…why poop cubes? Because wombats use it to mark their territory, and round poop would just roll away, which is rubbish if you’re trying to build a smelly wall to tell the other wombats “This is my patch. Go away.” So instead, they drop a tidy pile of cube poop, sometimes stacking it like a stinky little sculpture. Somewhere in the Australian bush, a proud wombat is squatting right now, squeezing out the latest brick for its poopy pyramid.

Comprehension Questions:

1. What is special about wombat poop?
2. How do wombats produce cube-shaped poop according to scientists?
3. What do wombats use their cube-shaped poop for in the wild?
4. If you could design and create a new animal or bug, what would it be like? What special feature would it have?

Deep in the jungle, there’s a fungus that doesn’t just grow on trees—it takes over ant brains and turns them into walking, climbing zombies. The fungus, Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, starts by sneaking into an ant’s body, quietly spreading like a creepy invader. Once it’s in control, it hijacks the ant’s nervous system and forces it to do the unthinkable: climb a plant, bite down on a leaf or twig, and stay stuck there like a weird little statue. Then the fungus grows out of the ant’s head—yes, straight out of its skull—like a horror movie antenna. From that high perch, the fungus releases a shower of spores that fall onto the forest floor, ready to infect new ants and start the cycle all over again. Scientists still don’t know exactly how the fungus controls the ant’s movements with such eerie precision, but it’s clear that the ant is no longer in charge. It’s like nature invented a real-life remote control—and gave it to a mushroom. So somewhere in a rainforest right now, an ant is clinging to a leaf, frozen in place, doing the bidding of a mind-controlling fungus that thinks it runs the jungle.

Comprehension Questions:

1. What does the fungus Ophiocordyceps unilateralis do to ants?
2. How does the fungus use the infected ant to spread its spores?
3. Why do scientists find the fungus’s control over ants so strange and interesting?
4. What is the final stage of the fungus’s life cycle in the ant’s body?

FOUR: Reading

50 Below Zero: Link