Welcome to Flight 017 (May 2025)! This is the final flight of the annual cycle. This means that next month I will be republish material from last year and publish new material. But more about that next month.
This month we have two more academic skills that link to analytical reading from the last Flight. After an analytical read you can outline the text to help you retain the information better and create a helpful document for future reference. Mini essays flesh out ideas you might have got from your reading. Writing is thinking and reflecting on your reading by writing, you force yourself to think more deeply about the material.
For the listening we still have the “5 minutes on”. You might have more difficulty in finding them as the BBC has lumped them together with other shorts on the Latest News Picks page for international listeners. There is a link in the pdfs below that will bring you directly to the right recording. However, it is great the episodes are still available because “5 minutes on” are useful snippets on a wide variety of topics in various dialects and accents.
This month I have picked “Dodging Icebergs in Antarctica” with some English speaking Frenchmen, whilst going Scottish in “Any Day, Any Weather – Saving Lives in Glencoe”. You can use “5 minutes on” as a B1/B2 task during which students already see the questions as they listen. You can turn it into a note taking B2 task by having them listen to the recording and take notes first. They will see and answer the questions afterwards.
Writing will go into logical fallacies. I messed a bit last month with rhetorical devices. This was because for my students I combine rhetoric and logical fallacies in one lesson. And as I copy material from my readers to my Flight, I slipped up.
This month is also the final lesson on presentations. This lesson will bring everything together in a conclusion. Missed a month? No worries. Next Flight we go back to the very first lesson. There are no plans to add more lessons on doing presentations or a substitute speaking task, but I have something else that might be interesting.
Ben Reads Good is taking a sabbatical and promises to be back in a few months, so I have to do more homework in the future about book news. This month I have substituted his Book News with mentioning the Book Marks website, a subsidiary of LitHub.
At the moment I am involved in a project for SLO. The SLO (Stichting Leerplanontwikkeling) is the Netherlands Institute for Curriculum Development. It plays a central role in shaping and supporting the national curriculum for primary, secondary, and special education in the Netherlands. This project definitely demands some time (alongside my personal crusade against the AI hype, preparing classes, writing about education, and trying to keep up a reasonable reading schedule). However, I will keep publishing Flights! And I am actually excited to start new things next month! Stick around. :)
Flight 017
Flight 017 is now available for download. You can download the complete Flight 017 here (zip-file in Dropbox):
Flight 016 will still be available for a month.
Flight 017: Contents
Study Guide 027: mini essays
Study Guide 027: outlining
4 OWL assignments
Advanced Grammar 012: run-on sentences
Idioms 012: silence
Phrasal Verb 012: GIVE
Word Formation 012: NOTICE
Listening 026: 5 Minutes On - “Dodging Icebergs in Antarctica”
Listening 027: 5 Minutes On - “Any Day, Any Weather – Saving Lives in Glencoe”
Speaking - Cooperation 012: healthy life
Speaking - Individual Long Turn 012: future
Speaking - Pronunciation 012: tsj-sound (/tʃ/) and dzj-sound (/dʒ/)
Speaking - Presentations 12: conclusion
Essay Writing 09: logical fallacies
Reading
I have finally picked up reading again. I even managed to finish a solid fantasy novel. I have noticed that my monthly wrap-up and reading tips are out of sync, so I skip the reading tips for this month.
If you want to keep up to date with my current reading, you can connect on TheStoryGraph and/or GoodReads.
Student Read of the Month
The Student Read of the Month is Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. 1984, Brave New World, and The Handmaid’s Tale remain all-time favourites, but this lesser known dystopian novel still finds its way to some students. Rather than focusing on government control or oppressive technology, this story revolves around genetics. It is told from a first person perspective, which makes it quite accessible for most students.
Never Let Me Go follows the lives of Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy, who grow up in a mysterious boarding school called Hailsham. As they navigate their way through love, friendship, and their inevitable fate, they confront the dark truth about their purpose and the fragile nature of their existence.
Author: KAzuo Ishiguro
Published: 2005
Pages: 288
CEFR: B2
Plot Complexity: moderate
Language Complexity: moderate
Ideas Complexity: moderate
You can find more novel ideas at www.rookreading.com.
Book News
Ben takes a sabbatical for a few months, so that means I have to collect books news myself (which I maybe should have done in any case). No better time than to promote the website Book Marks: https://bookmarks.reviews/
“Book Marks exists to serve as a consolidated information resource for the reading public and a link between the worlds of literary creation, criticism and consumption.” If your TBR-shelf is already too long, do not visit this website. If you want to stay updated with what is the latest rave in the book reading world, browse away!
Poem of the Month
"To Daffodils" by Robert Herrick is one of the very first poems I personally loved as a teenager. It is sad but also beautiful. For a 17th century poem it has an interesting rhythm and line breaks. There are some subtle metaphors like passing hours with death connected by alliteration: 'die' and 'do'. Time is passing in this poem: 'haste away', 'rising sun', 'run', 'go...along', 'hasting day', 'dry away', yet the poet tries to stop that with 'stay, stay'. Finally, all beauty dies. That which is given life (plants need water), will fade. Herrick is direct in his message, yes, we will fade too, which means, we are beautiful and in that, also sad.
To Daffodils
Robert Herrick
Fair daffodils, we weep to see
You haste away so soon;
As yet the early-rising sun
Has not attained his noon.
Stay, stay,
Until the hasting day
Has run
But to the evensong;
And, having prayed together, we
Will go with you along.
We have short time to stay as you,
We have as short a spring;
As quick a growth to meet decay,
As you or anything.
We die
As your hours do, and dry
Away
Like to the summer’s rain;
Or as the pearls of morning’s dew,
Ne’er to be found again.