VOA Special English stories related to the environment include:

Green Transportation Festival

Sharks: A Bad Image, but Oceans Value Them

Earth Day: 2003

Seven Win Goldman Environmental Prize

Study Measures Enviromental Effects of Human Activity

Here are stories related to the environment:

Environmental Health

Better Gas Mileage

Hybrid Cars

Wind Energy

Second Hand Smoke

Here are California Distance Learning Project stories related to the environment and Earh Day:

 Burning Wood Bad for the Air

California Toxic Spill

County Starts Using Electric Buses

Hurricanes Could be Cause by Warm Weather

Californians Want to Fight Global Warming

Polluting Cars

Pollution Fight

Save the Forest

 Jaime Escalante died on March 30, 2010. He was an educator who made a difference, inspiring his students and those who heard about him. Read stories and see videos at the Futures Channel.

California Low-Cost Auto  Insurance Program

Auto Insurance Comparison for 2010

Matching- Quia

Concentration

Common Irregular Verbs

MatchWord          Speedword

Matchword #2     SpeedWord #2

Matchword #3     SpeedWord #3

Matchword #4    Speedword#4

Concentration/Matchword #7

English Page- Basic Irregulars Quiz

Irregular Verb Quiz 1

Irregular Verb Quiz 2

Irregular Verb Quiz 3

Irregular Verb Quiz 4

ESLDesk Irregular Verb Quiz

University of Victoria Tutorial with Quiz

List for repeating (go to the bottom of the page) and MP3 of Common Irregular Verbs

 English Zone Irregular Verb Chart

Irregular Verb List

You and two others have just been hired by a travel agency that specializes in California.

You have been asked to use Microsoft Publisher to make a brochure for tours the company offers.

 You have been asked to plan seven (7) day long tours of the state for the following people:

• a family with two children that likes to camp. They will be driving their own car
• a retired couple that likes to stay in nice hotels. They want to fly to each place and rent a car
• a 45 year old single person who likes art and music. She will be using planes, trains, buses, and other public transportation to get around

Choose one of these clients for your tour.

To get you started, you need to learn about the state and what is available.You want to show the people the different areas of the state. Choose two from the following regions (North, Central, or South).

South

• Southern Caliifornia
  
  • Los Angeles
  • San Diego
  • Inland Empire

Central

• Central Coast
• Central Valley

Northern

• San Francisco Bay Area
• North Coast
• Mountains
  • Shasta Cascade
  • High Sierra
  • Mother Lode

• Desert

Day 1- Explore the regions using the websites that are in this story about California travel. Write an e-mail to your teacher and tell her why you chose those two regions for your tour.

Day 2- Decide which places the people will visit, how they will get there, where they will eat and where they will stay. Use Excel to keep track of costs. E-Mail your teacher the Excel spreadsheet with the cost as an attachment. Here is a link to travel websites to help you plan your itineraries

Day 3- Use Google Maps to plan the time for the itinerary. Send the link to your teacher. (You will have to get a GMail account if you don't have one so that you can save the map to My Maps). For help on how to do this, use the Google My Maps tutorial

Day 4- Make your brochure. Show it to your teacher for proofreading. After you make corrections, hand it out.

Challenges: If you find you have extra time, you can:

• Make a tour using Google Earth
• Add destinations
• Make a tour for a  client that you "invent"

Below are sample written driving tests and a check on your driving knowledge. If you want to read about the laws first, you can look at the PDF of the California Driver Handbook or the HTML.

Sample Driving Tests

California Driving Knowledge Tutorial

Here are some sites for focusing on grammar:

The Azar Grammar website has PowerPoints that present the various grammar points covered in the Azar Grammar series:

Basic English Grammar (Beginning Level)

Fundamentals of English Grammar (Intermediate Level)

Understanding and Using English Grammar (Advanced Level)

Each of the Step Forward chapters include a grammar exercise. Here's a link to the Step Forward site. Make sure you click on your book image so you are on the right level.

A4ESL has lots of grammar exercises. They are divided into easy, medium, and difficult. The exercises are done by many different teachers in different ways so try more than one if you don't like the first one that you try.

The BBC Learning English site has excellent grammar lessons . Make sure you look at the "Grammar Challenge".

Manythings.org has a grammar section. Some of the exercises link to A4ESL but some of them are just on many things.