Stormont Parliament Buildings

Let's visit the Parliament!

Parliament Buildings, commonly known as Stormont because of its location in the Stormont Estate area of Belfast, is the seat of the Northern Ireland Parliament.

FlickreviewR. *A general view of the Parliament Buildings* (CC BY)

At the end of the session, you will have:

used a thinking routine about the Northern Irish Parliament.
revised and practised the past continuous and the time expressions this verbal tense is used with.

To start with, let’s begin with a thinking routine, about the Stormont Parliament. Look at the picture of the place:

After viewing this building, answer the questions below:

What do you see?
How do you imagine the buildings?
How many members of parliament might be in the parliament?
How many people can work there?

Visit the official website of the Northern Ireland Assembly. Take the online tour which shows you the Assembly Chamber and the Great Hall.

Then, answer the following questions:

What do you think about working in a Parliament?
Have you ever visited the Parliament of your Autonomous Community?
What does it make you wonder?

You have to answer these questions in your personal blog.

Remember that the Stormont Parliament Buildings must be part of the route at your Google Sites map.

Continue with your posts on Twitter (#taskinterview and #EDIAbelfast). Have you ever visited a Parliament? Which one/s? You can share the official link of the Parliament you have visited or the one you would like to, using the hashtags. The 'Rubric to assess a Tweet' can help you do a great job at this social network.

What were you doing at this time last week?

The Past Continuous tense is used for actions and states that were unfinished at a certain time in the past or to stress the duration of something.

GeographBot. Former Methodist church, Belfast (CC BY-SA)

These links can be really useful to understand and practise the past continuous tense:

Try to do the activities in pairs. Your teacher can help you with all the exercises.

Once you finish, you have to write in your learning diary a short text about the last time you went shopping and you have to tell what you did, who you went with and what you bought. Another pair of classmates have to revise your text and give you some improvement suggestions regarding vocabulary, verbal tenses and expressions.

In order to produce an accurate text, you can use the 'Rubric to assess an explanatory text'.

If you need to see all the different time expressions that are usually used with the past continuous tense, visit Time expressions used with the past continuous tense.

Your Task: First version of the interview

Task Step 3: First version of your interview

In this step of your task, it is time to start making questions, start preparing the sentences, rehearsing them, etc.

As you have to do this task in pairs, start rehearsing the dialogue in front of another pair of classmates. This way, the other pair can give you their opinion, what you can improve, what they like the most and give you some suggestions to improve your interview.

Your challenge: Belfast at the Google Site

Challenge Step 4: Organizing the Belfast entry at your Google Site

At this step, you have to keep on organizing all the information you have gathered in order to complete the entry.

Each group ( 2 / 3 people) has to organize the information you have searched about Belfast at your Google Site. Creativity in the distibution of the contents is very important.

At this step, you have to include at your Google Site the following information: 1 video about tourism in Belfast.

If you find more than one representative video, you can also include it in your Google Site.

Learning diary

Learning diary Step 4: Revise all the steps of your task and challenge so far.

Peter O'Shea. Writing Tools (CC BY)

You are in the middle of the Belfast project. It is time now to revise all the steps you have done so far in both the task and the challenge.

Click on the "Show Feedback" button and answer these questions in your learning diary.

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