Rhyme means words that sound the same or similar in their endings. Poems and popular song lyrics often use rhyme. A simple poem can also be called a rhyme.
Many examples of rhyme are in folk songs, children's songs, and of course in nursery rhymes. Rhymes at the ends of the lines in a song or poem are normal:
Roses are red, violets are blue,
Sugar is sweet, and so are you.
Mary had a little lamb, its fleece was white as snow,
And everywhere that Mary went, the lamb was sure to go.
The counting song
One, two, buckle my shoe,
Three, four, shut the door,
Five, six, pick up sticks,
Seven, eight, lay them straight...
uses "internal rhymes," rhymes that fall within a single line instead of at the end of lines. In another children's poem,
With a knick-knack, paddy-whack, give the dog a bone,
This old man came rolling home...
knack and whack give another example of internal rhyme. Also, the rhymes at the ends of the lines, bone and home, are not "exact rhymes." Exact rhymes are the same in everything but the first sound. Exact rhymes are the most common type of rhyme and can be formed easily with common sounds in English:
pay / day / way / say / may / bay / play / pray / stay ...
me / we / be / see / tree / knee ...
Other rhymes are not exact but only similar:
Goosey goosey gander, whither will you wander,
Upstairs, downstairs, in my lady's chamber...
Here, the rhymes are not exact rhymes. Also, gander and wander are "sight rhymes," words that look like rhymes when printed but do not sound quite alike. Sight rhymes are more common in poetry meant to be read, than in songs or verse meant to be sung or spoken aloud and heard by listeners.
Rhymes can be made up of more than one word, as in the short poem Rondeau by James Henry Leigh Hunt:
Jenny kissed me when we met,
Jumping from the chair she sat in;
Time, you thief, who love to get
Sweets into your book, put that in:
Say I'm weary, say I'm sad,
Say that health and wealth have missed me,
Say I'm growing old, but add,
Jenny kissed me.
Along with simple normal rhymes, met and get, sad and add, and one internal rhyme, health and wealth, Hunt creates sets of clever two-word rhymes.
Some poets and writers use very unusual rhymes. Well-known examples are in the song lyrics to the 1939 MGM film version of L. Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz. The lyrics, written by E. Y. "Yip" Harburg, use many odd rhymes, plus internal rhymes, complex rhyme patterns, and other tricks of language. W. S. Gilbert, the lyricist for the Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas, wrote the same way. The books of Dr. Seuss are also famous for their many strange rhymes.
Young people are getting animated about the environment - and being very articulate about it:
18-year-old Boyan Slat combines environmentalism, entrepreneurism and technology to tackle global issues of sustainability. After diving in Greece, and coming across more plastic bags than fish, he wondered; "why can't we clean this up?"
While still being on secondary school, he then decided to dedicate half a year of research to understand plastic pollution and the problems associated with cleaning it up. This ultimately led to his passive clean-up concept, which he presented at TEDxDelft 2012. Working to prove the feasibility of his concept, Boyan Slat currently gives lead to a team of approximately 50 people, and temporarily quit his Aerospace Engineering study to completely focus his efforts on The Ocean Cleanup.
The progress of The Ocean Cleanup can be followed through www.theoceancleanup.com, www.facebook.com/TheOceanCleanup, as well as www.twitter.com/TheOceanCleanup. In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.*
Ashlie’s sure her band is going to make it big – and Stephen wants to be a part of it! But it turns out that it takes more than just hard work to become top of pops…
Summer in the UK means music festivals – and lots of them! Amandeep gets to go to one of the UK’s biggest festivals, interview fans and meet British Sea Power!
Leszek Borysiewicz, vice-chancellor of Cambridge University, sees bilingualism is an important asset. Photograph: Felix Clay for the Guardian
Arriving at his Cardiff primary school aged five, the future vice-chancellor of Cambridge University had just one English phrase. Coached the previous evening by his Polish emigree parents, young Leszek Borysiewicz quickly tried out "Please can I go to the toilet?", before realising his classmates were only putting up their hands for registration.
At 63, the memory of that initial confusion remains, but so does the recollection of the dedication shown by teachers who taught the young Polish-speaker English, spending extra time after school or simply taking him for a walk and naming objects – grass, tree, stream.
Now, installed in one of the world's most influential academic posts after a career in medical research, Professor Borysiewicz is adamant that full bilingualism such as he acquired, far from being a problem, is an important asset, both for the individuals concerned and for the country where they grow up.
Conversely, he warns, the sharp decline in modern language study in the UK, especially in state schools serving disadvantaged areas, hampers efforts to widen participation in higher education among poorer students. Allowing learning languages to become the preserve of a privileged elite would be "absolutely wrong", the vice-chancellor told the Guardian.
Borysiewicz called for an end to the term "heritage languages" to describe the languages spoken alongside English by migrants to Britain and their descendants.
One in six children in English primary schools do not have English as a first language. "These are real languages: living languages that give people a huge insight into culture and give the children who can speak them additional opportunities.
Culture crossover: communication between nations depends on understanding each other’s languages.Photograph: Alamy
Curriculum changes, a new education secretary and policy reviews all spell good things for language education. But is enough being done to join up the dots?
This academic year, primary school pupils started learning languages. A change to the curriculum now requires all schools using the national curriculum in England to teach a modern foreign language at primary key stage 2. Pupils aged seven to 11 will be learning basic French or Spanish and, in some schools, even Mandarin and Arabic.
A recent report from the British Council said that 85% of primary schools welcomed the move. “It’s a very positive step to introduce languages at key stage 2,” says Vicky Gough, schools adviser for the British Council. “But will they be able to continue the language they have chosen at secondary school?”
Gough’s comments address the bigger picture in language education: although small steps are being made, giant leaps are still a long way off.
Do strange things happen to our brains during adolescence?
This is from a TED Talk:
Why do teenagers seem so much more impulsive, so much less self-aware than grown-ups? Cognitive neuroscientist Sarah-Jayne Blakemore compares the prefrontal cortex in adolescents to that of adults, to show us how typically “teenage” behavior is caused by the growing and developing brain.
The Queen sends first tweet to launch Science Museum gallery
That was the Queen's first tweet - sent through the @BritishMonarchy account - heralding the launch of a major new exhibition at London's Science Museum.
Three years in the planning, the exhibition is one of the most ambitious projects the museum has undertaken.
Alongside historic objects, visitors can enjoy interactive experiences.
The Information Age gallery, opened by the Queen this morning, takes visitors on a journey through the history of modern communications from the telegraph to the smartphone.
There is the first transatlantic telegraph cable which connected Europe and North America, the broadcast equipment behind the BBC's first radio programme in 1922, and Sir Tim Berners-Lee's NeXT computer, which hosted the first website.
You can construct a 1980s mobile phone network, making sure your cell towers are efficiently positioned. You can go into the web story box to find out exactly what happens when you click on a link. And you can plug headphones into a 1950s telephone exchange, and listen to the operators describing what their work involved.
The gallery's chief curator Tilly Blyth hopes that visitors who may be somewhat blase about the digital revolution will come away with a longer view.
"We really want them to see that our predecessors lived through similar periods of change. Ours isn't the only revolution - just the latest. in a series of transformations since the electric telegraph in the 1830s."
Baroness Lane-Fox, who has campaigned for better access to and understanding of the internet, welcomes the new gallery: "It's an amazing opportunity for people young and old to come and see the extraordinary developments in technology over the last hundred years or so. It really reminds me of the scale of ambition that people have had to change things."
She hopes too that visitors will learn of the great contribution made by Britain to the development of communications - from Ada Lovelace, the woman who conceived the idea of computer programming in the 1830s, through to the 1950s when Lyons Corner Houses introduced the first business computer Leo, and on to Sir Tim Berners-Lee: "I hope that people who visit will have their ambition and excitement lit so we can continue to be world leaders in this field because it's so important."
The gallery certainly does show off the role Britain has played, and a number of British companies including BT and the chip designer ARM Holdings have sponsored the Information Age and supplied exhibits. But, as they wander past early computers like the ACE, designed by Alan Turing, visitors may begin to ask themselves a question.
In a communications world now dominated by the likes of Google, Apple and Facebook, where are the British technology giants that will shape the communications of the future?
The mes-english.com website has lots of ready-made stuff for young learners:
Resources for teachers of young learners. All of the resources are designed to be versatile and useful in many preschool and K-6 classrooms. I have free
flashcards, printable worksheets and handouts to match, phonics worksheets, printable ESL games, printable certificates
, stickers to print, and other activities all ready for printing.
for download: I have over 1800 words depicted in flashcards. There are 100+ sets covering 60+ themes and I'm adding to them regularly. These are flashcards not clip art. They are ready to print and go with
matching handouts, PowerPoint flashcard presentations, game cards and bingo cards
. Plenty of cards for designing your lesson plans.
to match MES-English vocabulary sets. These are available on a different site toolsforeducators.com . You can make printable dominoes, dice, crisscross bingo boards, crossword puzzles, word searches, tracing worksheets, multiple choice worksheets, spelling worksheets, reading quizzes, board games, and custom vocabulary handouts. The best part is LOTE teachers can customize these worksheets to match the MES-E flashcards. I'm trying to bring you some versatility.
available for download and a list of 15+ other games to play. These games were designed to be flexible and useful across a broad range of target language and great care was put into making them fun, interesting and student centered. Many are great for one-on-one. You'll find Big Town, High Town, Eigomon, Bombs Away, Treasure Island, Spiders and Candy, Get Four, the Paper Game and more.
MES-English.com Forums: There are forums for games and activities ideas and questions, forums for teaching where you can get or leave advice, a 'What's new?' forum, and more. Check out the MES-English community, leave feedback, ask questions, find support for problems, get or leave game ideas, advice ...
: No more fishing for key pals or e-pals. MES-English has opened its International Project Exchange Library! All the projects are ready to go. Just print and complete the lesson plan. Then share with your students projects already completed by others around the world.
Worksheets: A growing section of MES-English. There are talking worksheets, worksheets for introduction of grammar points, a phonics workbook series, award certificates, clipart to make your own worksheets, song sheets, nursery rhymes and chants cards, hundreds of color in sheets, teacher printables, and worksheets to match the MES-Flashcards.
The Language Resource Room is a collection of what I feel to be excellent sites with actual content. They are not collections of links to links and I hope they are helpful to you if I don't have what you're looking for.
MES-Games - I have made some on-line FLASH games for students. Some of them match the flash card sets and there are grammar builders and phonics programs as well.
MES-English.com is a site containing actual resources, made by myself to be downloaded and used today. This page is not a collection of links to resources, with links to resources, with a collection of links to resources ... (which frustrated me enormously and forced me to make everything myself.) I will try to keep it short to the point and help you find what you're looking for fast. You do not have to register but an e-mail letting me know something worked well, was helpful, or with suggestions would be great.
Indeed, such is the political force that is UKIP, the Minister for Local Government has responded by making it clear that the greenbelt 'should only be used in exceptional circumstances':
WHAT IS THE 'ANTHROPOCENE'? - CURRENT DEFINITION AND STATUS
The 'Anthropocene' is a term widely used since its coining by Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer in 2000 to denote the present time interval, in which many geologically significant conditions and processes are profoundly altered by human activities. These include changes in: erosion and sediment transport associated with a variety of anthropogenic processes, including colonisation, agriculture, urbanisation and global warming. the chemical composition of the atmosphere, oceans and soils, with significant anthropogenic perturbations of the cycles of elements such as carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus and various metals. environmental conditions generated by these perturbations; these include global warming, ocean acidification and spreading oceanic 'dead zones'. the biosphere both on land and in the sea, as a result of habitat loss, predation, species invasions and the physical and chemical changes noted above.
The 'Anthropocene' is not a formally defined geological unit within the Geological Time Scale. A proposal to formalise the 'Anthropocene' is being developed by the 'Anthropocene' Working Group for consideration by the International Commission on Stratigraphy, with a current target date of 2016. Care should be taken to distinguish the concept of an 'Anthropocene' from the previously used termAnthropogene (cf. below**).
The 'Anthropocene' is currently being considered by the Working Group as a potential geological epoch, i.e. at the same hierarchical level as the Pleistocene and Holocene epochs, with the implication that it is within the Quaternary Period, but that the Holocene has terminated. It might, alternatively, also be considered at a lower (Age) hierarchical level; that would imply it is a subdivision of the ongoing Holocene Epoch.
Broadly, to be accepted as a formal term the 'Anthropocene' needs to be (a) scientifically justified (i.e. the 'geological signal' currently being produced in strata now forming must be sufficiently large, clear and distinctive) and (b) useful as a formal term to the scientific community. In terms of (b), the currently informal term 'Anthropocene' has already proven to be very useful to the global change research community and thus will continue to be used, but it remains to be determined whether formalisation within the Geological Time Scale would make it more useful or broaden its usefulness to other scientific communities, such as the geological community.
The beginning of the 'Anthropocene' is most generally considered to be at c. 1800 CE, around the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in Europe (Crutzen's original suggestion); other potential candidates for time boundaries have been suggested, at both earlier dates (within or even before the Holocene) or later (e.g. at the start of the nuclear age). A formal 'Anthropocene' might be defined either with reference to a particular point within a stratal section, that is, a Global Stratigraphic Section and Point (GSSP), colloquially known as a 'golden spike; or, by a designated time boundary (a Global Standard Stratigraphic Age).
The 'Anthropocene' has emerged as a popular scientific term used by scientists, the scientifically engaged public and the media to designate the period of Earth's history during which humans have a decisive influence on the state, dynamics and future of the Earth system. It is widely agreed that the Earth is currently in this state.
After 11,700 years, the Holocene epoch may be coming to an end, with a group of geologists, climate scientists and ecologists meeting in Berlin this week to decide whether humanity's impact on the planet has been big enough to deserve a new time period: the Anthropocene.
The term, coined in the 1980s by ecologist Eugene F. Stoermer, takes its prefix from the Ancient Greek word for human because its proponents believe the influence of humanity on the Earth's atmosphere and crust in the last few centuries is so significant as to constitute a new geological epoch.
The Anthropocene Working Group assembles in Berlin on Friday, an interdisciplinary body of scientists and humanists working under the umbrella of the International Commission on Stratigraphy and "tasked with developing a proposal for the formal ratification of the Anthropocene as an official unit amending the Geological Time Scale".
The AWG will examine the shift in the biophysical conditions of the Earth humans have brought about (Picture: Getty)
The 30-strong group, which includes a lawyer, has outlined two key questions which it will address during deliberations at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt:
"How does the recent cognition of the immense quantitative shift in the biophysical conditions of the Earth affect both scientific research and a political response to these changes?" and "Does the Anthropocene also pose a profound qualitative shift, a paradigm shift for the ways in which science, politics, and law advance accordingly?"
Following the Pleistocene, we have for the last 11,700 years lived in the Holocene epoch, which is characterised by the warmer and wetter conditions that came after the end of the last ice age and has seen humans establish new territories and the Earth's population soar.
Many scientists are happy with the Holocene as a term, but after Nobel Prize-winning atmospheric chemist popularised the "Anthropocene" at the turn of the millennium it refuses to go away and the ICS has deemed it in need of serious debate.
Based around a series of presentations by members of the AWG and statements from invited speakers from the humanities, the social sciences, and political fields, the forum will "discuss both the extraordinary changes to the Earth system as well as its consequences in setting new agendas for governing, researching, and disseminating crucial knowledge." In pictures: Changing climate around the world1 of 15
Greenland: Calved icebergs from the nearby Twin Glaciers are seen floating on the water in Qaqortoq, Greenland: Joe Raedle/Getty Images
The group has given itself until 2016 to come up with a proposal to submit to the ISC, which ultimately determines what time period we live in - this might seem like a long way away, but when you consider the earliest epoch, the Paleozoic, began approximately 541 to 252 million years ago, it's just a speck in the Earth's history.
And this is from the NewYork Times from a participant in that Berlin meeting:
ANTHROPOCENE Does the Anthropocene, the Age of Humans, Deserve a Golden Spike? By ANDREW C. REVKIN OCTOBER 16, 2014 6:45 PM 16 Comments
Many boundaries in geological history are demarcated physically with a golden spike in a particular rock layer, as here near Pueblo, Colo. (GSSP is the acronym for Global Stratotype Section and Point .)Credit Brad Sageman, Northwestern University
BERLIN — I just participated in the first face-to-face meeting of the Anthropocene Working Group , a subset of a branch of the International Commission on Stratigraphy examining whether humanity’s growth spurt (in both numbers and resource appetites ) has caused sufficient change to Earth systems to leave a discernible trace in layered rocks that will build and endure far into the future.
Phil Gibbard, a geologist at Cambridge who set up the working group in the first place, is one. “ I’m not in favour of this being defined formally as a division of geological time. I think it’s an extraordinarily difficult thing to do,” he said. “We are living in an interglacial period and there’s no question we’re still within that period, and it’s called the holocene.”
But the consensus of those gathered on Thursday was clearly in support of the Anthropocene, although there are still plenty of questions to answer — like whether it’s an age within the Holocene or a new geological epoch in its own right, and when it started. (The consensus on Thursday appeared to be the mid twentieth century, reflecting various indicators of humanity’s surge, from exponential growth in resource extraction to radionuclides from nuclear weapon tests .)
Another question on the table at the meeting was whether the Anthropocene deserves a spike like this one near Pueblo, Colo. , which indicates the beginning of the Turonian Age , 93.5 million years ago.
Big transitions in the planet’s geological history get a “golden spike,” a bronze marker placed on a particular exposed rock layer that serves as a reference for a substantial global shift in conditions. The formal term is a Global Boundary Stratotype Section and Point (GSSP ). Other more murky transitions are demarcated by a date, or Global Standard Stratigraphic Age (GSSA ).
A formal decision won’t come for several years as this working group’s findings work their way up the earth sciences chain. (It will also be vital for the initial team — very white, Western and male — to shift to a composition more representative of the global population.)
On Friday and through the weekend, the host institution for the meeting, Berlin’s House of World Cultures , which has focused on the Anthropocene for two years, will hold a series of arts events and discussions surrounding the science.
Disclosure note | I’m a member of the Anthropocene Working Group because of my 1992 book on global warming , in which I proposed one of various framings of this era:
"Perhaps earth scientists of the future will name this new post-Holocene era for its causative element — for us. We are entering an age that might someday be referred to as, say, the Anthrocene. After all, it is a geological age of our own making."
MES-Games: I posted 22 versatile 
Worksheets: A growing section of MES-English. There are talking worksheets, worksheets for introduction of grammar points, a phonics workbook series, award certificates, clipart to make your own worksheets, song sheets, nursery rhymes and chants cards, hundreds of color in sheets, teacher printables, and worksheets to match the MES-Flashcards.
MES-Phonics:
Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy
