2nd Edition
2 Teaching Notes
Vocabulary – Page 20, Exercise 2
Some learners, mainly those who lack
organization skills or those that have attention
difficulties may get lost easily when trying to
follow the lines to interpret the family tree,
and if they happen to suffer from some form
of anxiety, they may just refuse to try to do the
activity. Among the general pieces of advice to
bear in mind to help these students, the first
one is that you should embrace what works
for each person. Some learners work better
when they have more time, others when they
can work in pairs, but each student is unique
and there are no recipes that work for every
student in your classes. Another piece of
advice worth mentioning is that you should
teach them to use colours to underline or
highlight key words.
In this particular case, the illustration is very
clear but you need to give the class enough
time to understand the connections that the
lines represent. Some students will get the
answers very easily but others will not. It
would be advisable to segment the information
and work first at the parents and siblings level.
Once they know the words, you may move
on to the rest. As you do this, you may draw
a similar family tree on the board, which will
help the class memorize the new vocabulary
for it is a way of repeating, re-presenting the
material. It will look like this:
MUM DAD
ME SISTER BROTHER
Having presented the words orally and on
the board, you may invite the class to do the
activity.
The next piece of advice is to go personal. You
may invite SEN students to use the new words
to talk about their family, remembering that
if they refuse, you may always use the photos
on your mobile phone to introduce your own
family. They will be really interested to learn
about them!
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Reading – Page 21, Exercise 1
When we find a reading comprehension activity
in a book, we naturally think of strategies to
help those students who find reading hard,
some of whom may be dyslexic. Research has
shown that dyslexia is a specific neurological
learning disability that is characterized by
poor spelling, difficulties in word recognition
and decoding ability. Although many dyslexic
people learn to read accurately in their
mother tongue, they may continue to read
slowly and not automatically, and even more
so in a second or foreign language. They will
obviously need more time to interpret what
they read because the mere decoding of
words takes all their effort. This is the reason
why it is essential to anticipate work, to give
SEN students the chance to read texts at
home, without any kind of pressure. Also, it is
important to make their reading purposeful.
You should tell them exactly what they have
to do with what they read.
In this particular case, you could introduce
the text by having all the class do Exercise 1.
Then invite SEN students to read the text
again at home and underline family words
and names. If they want, they may use a colour
code. They may underline mother in red and
the mother’s name in the same colour. This
will help them do Exercise 2, which you will
do with the class as a whole. One last thing
that you ought to bear in mind is that most
SEN students need to be assessed mainly in
terms of their oral performance. Therefore,
once they have completed the table in
Exercise 2, oral reconstruction of the
information is necessary to guarantee
production and sense of achievement.
Grammar – Page 22
Possession is a rather complex notion in
English, on the one hand, because it can
be expressed in different ways, and on the
other, because possessive adjectives and
the possessive ’s have different exponents
in Spanish. Weaker learners may find this
page far too challenging and, as teachers, we
should guarantee their understanding. You can
reorganize the same material in a segmented
way, as in the SEN accommodation provided
(see pages 16―18).
UNIT 2 13

2 Teaching Notes
Vocabulary – Page 23, Exercise 2
When considering helping students with
Specific Learning Difficulties, you must bear
in mind basic accommodation strategies such
as breaking tasks into small steps, probing
regularly to check understanding, providing
regular quality feedback and modelling what
you want students to do besides explicitly
teaching study and organizational skills.
In this particular case, although stronger
learners may learn the adjective pairs easily,
it is clear that others will not. It is advisable
then to go step by step, making sure they really
internalize both form and meaning of the
words. You should start by teaching big and
small, practising through questions, and then
move on to young and old, proceeding in a
similar way, and so on.
At this stage it is worth pointing out that
learning new vocabulary implies being able to
actually use it in different contexts, not just
filling in an exercise, and SEN students may
need more revision as well as processing time.
Reading – Page 24, Exercise 2
This is a reading comprehension activity and,
once again, anticipating the text may be useful.
However, it is a fact that some SEN students
are unlikely to do the set homework. This
happens for different reasons: they may forget
they have to do it, they may lack parental
support or simply not be interested. Whatever
the reason, you should not get angry for they
do not do this on purpose and they do not
do it to you. These lapses are just a part of
their condition. What should you do then?
You should use the warm up to provide as
many prompts as possible. In this particular
case, you may not only elicit the names of
the characters (Exercise 1) but also their main
features: if they are old or young, if they have
a little brother or sister, what they know about
their family members, etc. Clearly, appropriate
use of the board to write key words is of
utmost importance too.
Grammar – Page 25, Form
As teachers, we know we must not diagnose.
Doing that is a rather complex task that
requires the work of an educational therapist
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Starter
and/or psychologist. We should just make a
point of offering enough opportunities for
every single student to learn the most they can
in the best possible way. However, we tend to
classify students. For example, we know who
pays attention, who can’t focus, who is a strong
learner and who finds it hard to understand
concepts. Stopping at the classification level
doesn’t help us solve our managing difficulties.
We ought to move a step forward. What can
we do to help those students with a certain
condition discover how they can learn better?
We have mentioned an interesting range
of presentation accommodations. In this
particular section, you may try something
different. You may invite some SEN students
to work individually, in pairs or small groups,
to draw a summary table integrating the verbs
be and have got in all their forms. You should
explain clearly what you expect them to do
and the aim of the activity: you want them to
help their classmates remember the grammar
they have seen. This will make SEN students
have an important role in the class and feel
empowered. Besides, if they are allowed to
use digital formats, they will shine while all
the others will profit as well. This is a good
example of inclusion in the classroom.
Build your skills: Reading – Page 26,
Exercise 2
Visual aids play an important role in the
teaching-learning process of any student, let
alone SEN students. In this particular activity,
although all the questions require a proper
name as an answer, family terms are not so
easily internalized. Besides, the use of the
possessive ’s is not easy either. As part of your
anticipation accommodation or even in class,
either individually or in pairs, you may ask
students to read the text and draw the family
tree or to read and search online for more
information to draw Miley’s family tree. Once
you check this, you may move on to Exercise 2.
As you correct their answers, and in order to
recycle vocabulary, it would be useful to elicit
sentences not just with the words mum or dad
but both ways: daughter, son, etc. The same
family tree structure may be used for the ‘Give
your opinion’ section. Recycling is essential for
SEN students!
UNIT 2 14
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2 Teaching Notes Starter

Build your skills: Listening & Speaking – Progress check – Page 29

Page 27, Exercise 3 For students who have some kind of condition,
A diagnosis of learning disability is something you may find the SEN accommodation provided
no parent wants to hear. To the child, however, useful (see pages 19–21).
the diagnosis can provide relief in that it ends
the uncertainty about what is going on. Anyway,
it also adds a very real fear of what it can mean
for the future. They need to understand that it
has nothing to do with intelligence, it is just a
different way of processing information, and
some of the world’s most brilliant people, like
Alexander Graham Bell and Winston Churchill,
were said to have learning disabilities.
As teachers we ought to be aware of the
fact that a SEN student often feels the
psychological impact of their social and family
stigma, which often leads to low self-esteem
and depression. This affects their socialization
and their learning. What can we do? The
answer is simple. We should always look for
ways to soften the impact, to help them feel
confident and show that they can do almost
the same activities as their classmates.
In this particular case, some students will
take longer to write, and this is a listening
comprehension activity, so instead of asking
them to write, you may anticipate and have
them choose so that the focus is on listening
and the purpose is to check their predictions.
You may use the SEN accommodation provided
(see page 18).

Build your skills: Writing – Page 28, Exercise 1

We know that in English the correspondence
between graphemes and phonemes is
irregular, which makes it difficult for students
with certain conditions to read and interpret
the text. They will naturally tend to read
the words as they are spelt and because it
is silent reading nobody will correct them.
Besides, some students may find it hard to
associate the different sections on this page.
You can help by encouraging them to use a
text-to-speech app so that what they hear
is the right pronunciation of each word. This
together with the use of a transparent ruler or
reading window to follow the lines will simplify
the task. Finally, monitoring is of utmost
importance in Exercises 3 and 4, and also while
the writing task is in progress.

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Name: Class:

2 Grammar – Page 22

Possessive adjectives

USE FORM
Analyze these sentences from the text on Complete the table.
page 21. Underline six more possessive
adjectives. Subject Possessive
pronouns adjectives
I live with my family. I
you
Our house is in Saint Petersburg. he
she
Her name is Lida.
it
His name is Marko. we
they
Its name is Rudolf.
Read the rule and write a second
Tell me about the members of your family. example.
What are their names? We can use possessive adjectives
+ singular or plural nouns.
Complete the rule with the correct
examples. • his sister, his sisters
,
their Alexander’s your parents’

To talk about possession, we can use: It’s a small dog. Its name is Woolly.
• possessive adjectives, for example, It + short form of is possessive adjective
, .

1 Complete the sentences with possessive adjectives.

1 Hi. name is Alexander. I’m 12 years old.

2 This is my stepfather. name is Fedor.

3 My grandmother is 60. name is Lida.

4 What’s name? My name’s Jay.

5 Are these your brothers? What are names?

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Name: Class:

Possessive ’s

USE FORM
Analyze these sentences from Read the rule and write a second
the text. Underline three more example.
examples of possessive ’s.
We use the possessive ’s in this way:
My stepfather’s name is Fedor. • singular noun + ’s: brother’s,

My mother’s name is Irina. • plural noun + ’: brothers’,

My half sisters’ names are Julya and Mila.
They’re my mother’s parents.
His nam e’s Bra d. My bro the r’s nam e is Bra d.
Complete the rule with the correct short form of is possessive ’s
examples.

their Alexander’s your parents’ COMPARING LANGUAGES

Translate into your language:
To talk about possession, we can use: My father’s name is Leo.
• possessive ’s, for example, , My teachers’ names are Ana and Lina.
. Compare the word order.

2 Choose the correct options.

1 My fathers’ sister / father’s sister is good.

2 His name’s teacher / teacher’s name is Lorraine.

3 My uncle surname / uncle’s surname is Pérez.

4 My brothers’ names / brother’s names are Ted and Vin.

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Name: Class:

3 Write five sentences about the members of your family.

My grandparents’ names are Alberto and Marta.

Name: Class:

2 Build your skills: Listening & Speaking – Page 27, Exercise 3

Read and choose the correct options. Then listen and check.

Jason: Who / What is that man on the right?

Claire: Will Smith.

Jason: Is he / He is an actor?

Claire: Yes, he is an American actor.

Jason: And who are those?

Claire: They are his son / mother, Trey, and his daughter, Willow.

Jason: And the lady in black / red?

Claire: That’s his wife, Jada.

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Name: Class:

2 Progress check – Page 29

1 Complete Tom’s family tree.

grandfather +

father +

Tom

/ 6 points

2 Complete the sentences with the correct words.

bad old strong sad big

1 My house isn’t . It’s small.

2 His brother isn’t weak. He’s .

3 They aren’t happy in this photo. They’re .

4 My grandparents aren’t . They’re old.

5 He isn’t a man. He’s good.

/ 5 points

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Name: Class:

3 Choose the correct options.

1 This is my brother. His / Her name is Roy.

2 I’ve got two good friends. Their / Our names are Cathy and John.

3 That’s my mother. Its / Her name is Karen.

4 We’re in year 8. Their / Our teacher’s name is Paul.

/ 4 points

4 Choose the correct options.

1 My grandparents’ / grandparent’s names are Steven and Maria.

2 My fathers’ / father’s parents have got a cat.

3 My brothers / brother’s dog is brown.

/ 3 points

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Name: Class:

5 Complete with the correct form of have.

’ve got haven’t got ’s got hasn’t got

1 We a big classroom. (✓)

2 They a big family. (✗)

3 I an identity card. (✗)

4 She a little dog. (✓)

5 He a new friend. (✗)

6 You a small family. (✓)

/ 6 points

6 Complete the questions with have or has. Then match the questions to the answers.

1 Peter got a little sister? a Yes, I have.

2 your aunt got three children? b Yes, he has.

3 you got a big family? c No, she hasn’t.

1 2 3

/ 6 points

Reflect and share!  Total Score: / 30 points

✓ This unit is about...

✓ Before working on it, I knew...

✓ After working on it, I know...

✓ I have a question: ... ?

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