Teaching English

Mind Maps

2012-02-01T20:16:00.002+01:00

Free Mind is an open source program that allows you to make mind maps. I’ve recently discovered the program and, once I did, I realized the useful it can be for students and for teachers and I decided to implement it in my lessons.

Our school is immersed in an ICT project (Escuela 2.0, also called Abalar in Galicia) by which the educational government provides the students with personal netbooks, those netbooks work with a Linux-based operative system and open source software. FreeMind is one of the programs that comes in the computer image we are working with.

How do I use FreeMind in the classroom? The most common purpose is as 'a teacher tool' to explain a lesson, especially Science lessons, below I let you one map I prepared to talk about classifying animals in the second and third grades of Primary Education.

Taking into account this, another purpose comes by inversing the process, making students prepare their own mind maps to summarize a lesson and learn it better, but that would just be appropriate for higher levels and subjects such as science or history.

As I haven’t yet started to teach Science in English to the higher level students, I decided to ask them to make a mind map at the end of each of the ESL units. At the beginning, I had to spend some time teaching them how FreeMind works but now they find it very easy and they don’t need the teacher help. It might be good to give them a model to start.

Free time (Unit 1, model, saved as Flash object)

When students have their maps finished and corrected, they can export them to JPEG files or FLASH files and print them to study and review at home.

Examples of my students’ maps:

The Animal Kingdom (Unit 2, 5th Grade) by Nerea

Food from around the world (Unit 2, 6th Grade) by Chris

Food from around the world (Unit 2, 6th Grade) by Lucy

If you want to download the program, click on the following link:

http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

Vegetables

2012-01-19T20:32:00.000+01:00

My higher level students have a unit on food in their coursebooks but they already know a lot of vocabulary related to the topic so I decided to prepare this vocabulary game to teach them vegetables. Primary education students usually learn some vegetable vocabulary like potatoes or carrots and that’s the end of it so, why don’t teach them more? 

I hope you like the activities:

Plants

2012-01-12T19:39:00.001+01:00

‘Plants’ is a CLIL unit aimed at the first and second grades of Primary Education.

The goals I want my students to achieve are divided into two groups:

Science goals:

Describe the main characteristics of a plant.
Recognize and label the parts of a plant.
Name some common plants and trees from our environment.
Say what a plant needs to grow.
Find out about seeds.
Distinguish between flowered and non-flowered plants.
Analyse and recognize the different stages in the plant life cycle.
Tell the difference between bushes, trees and grass.
Find out about vegetables.

Linguistic goals:

Understand and produce vocabulary related to plants: names of plants and trees, parts of the plant, …
Write words and vocabulary in the second language.
Sing a song in English.
Listen and understand important information.
Connectors: first, then, next, finally.
Talk in English about plants.
Read short sentences related to the unit.

I have developed a Notebook file for the digital whiteboard that acts as the guiding thread of the whole unit. There are different types of pages in this file, some to teach vocabulary with pictures, some to practice the contents by doing different exercises, some to elicit oral interaction, some with animations and interactive games, … You can see how the file works in the video below and if you like it you are free to download it for your lessons.

Notebook plants

Download

One of the proposed goals deals with the parts of a plant, in order to teach them I work with the following video song that it’s quite catchy and helpful (my students love it).

Parts of a plant

Apart from the multimedia resources already seen here, students also do some worksheets to practice individual writing skills, those worksheets are a way to check their knowledge and to give me feedback about the lesson plan.

Plants worksheets

plants1ºciclo

A practical activity I put into practice to make students see the life cycle of a plant was “growing a bean plant”. We inserted three beans with cotton in three transparent glasses and we watered them from time to time, there were different conditions in each of the glasses (different levels of water, different position according to the sun, …) and during some weeks we drew the different stages of the plants and finally we analysed why one grew before the others and what the differences were among them.

An excellent book we read in the classroom when talking about seeds and plant stages is ‘The tiny seed by Eric Carle’. Apart from being very useful for teaching Science it’s also great to use in Art because of the so good and colourful illustrations.

Last but not least, I prepared a Wordle with all the things the students knew of plants at the end of the unit.

Wordle

Thanksgiving Day

2011-12-01T20:05:00.000+01:00

This year for the first time we have been working on this important American date. We have learnt about the Thanksgiving History through a video, we have learnt some vocabulary with an activity played on the interactive whiteboard, we have coloured some pictures, we have written our ‘thanks for’ and we have designed our own Pilgrim and Indians hats in the Art lessons.

Teachers can realize the variety of possibilities this topic offers, most of the skills and different competences are innate to it and several subjects can be involved (History, Art, Religion, Citizenship, Language).

The video below was the one we watched in the classroom to understand the Thanksgiving origins.

We have played this game below on the interactive whiteboard in order to learn some vocabulary.

zonaClic - actividades - Thanksgiving day

Older students wrote some sentences following the pattern ‘I’m thankful for (my family, my cat, …).

The next box shows some pictures with the Pilgrim and Indian hats.

Make a free slideshow design

Special Dates

2011-11-30T23:54:00.006+01:00

PDI y Moodle en el aula de inglés

2011-11-30T23:10:00.000+01:00

I was as a lecturer in the III Congreso Escuela 2.0 (Granada) in the month of October. I was talking about my experience with new technologies in my English lessons. I presented some activities to work with students in the digital whiteboard and I also presented the virtual courses I created in the Moodle platform.

I will let here the presentation and the video with the lecture.

Presentation:

Pdi y Moodle en el aula de ingles

View more presentations from isabelbp.

Lecture:

London by students

2011-05-26T21:10:00.002+02:00

I have asked my 6-7 year-old students to draw the London places they could remember after watching a video about this famous capital city (This is Britain, OUP).

This was one of the activities within the Social Science teaching unit called ‘My neighbourhood’. Students should learn the differences between a city and a town and recognize some cities.

My students are able to draw and recognize the London Eye, Big Ben, Tower of London, red buses, black taxis and Queen’s wards as you can see in the photos below.

I am a pizza

2011-05-19T19:27:00.000+02:00

'I am a pizza' is the title of a song I’ve recently discovered when teaching food. It’s a great song that allows you to exploit different ESL contents: food vocabulary, feelings and intonation, asking for a pizza (pizza menu), writing a recipe…

The song and the pictures in the videoclip are really funny, my students love them and whenever they have the opportunity they ask me to play it, no need to say that they are singing it all the time. Although the song is rather long, it isn’t a disadvantage because ‘I am a pizza’ is a catchy song that sticks in your mind and you can’t stop singing it.

I worked with this song in the first and second grades or Primary Education when we were dealing with a food teaching unit. I designed a digital activity for the SmartBoard aimed at pre-teaching the vocabulary in the song. In the video below you can watch the different screens with the different activities and games, if you like and you are interested in downloading it, you are free to do it, there’s a link below the video screen that allows you to open or download the file.

Download the file.

As you can see in the video, although you can’t hear it, there are some activities with audios and listening games.

I was going to adapt the activities for higher levels by adding some ordering activities, some pizza menus with prices to prepare dialogues, some drill activities to exploit some phrases in the song … but I ran out of time and I had to cover other curriculum contents that couldn’t be related to the song.

Lastly, a good piece of news for those who like and teach other languages is that you can find the song in French and Spanish too.

Pets and their food

2011-05-19T19:24:00.003+02:00

‘Pets’ is one of the teaching units in the 1st cycle teaching program. This year as a final activity I asked the students to talk about pets and their food after doing a cut-out with food and animal stickers.

The contents involved are animal vocabulary, food vocabulary and present simple of have got.

This is the video with my students talking about pets.

Finalist Edublog 2011

2011-05-12T18:35:00.000+02:00

I am proud to receive the award of being among the best teacher blogs (V Premio Espiral de Edublogs 2011). I want to thank my blog readers, my Twitter followers and all my colleagues for their support, without them my blog wouldn’t be here.

CONGRATULATIONS to all the blogs and teachers that share with me the privilege of being named finalists, you deserve it. GOOD LUCK!!!!!

Finalist ESL blogs that worth a visit are:

http://www.2englishornot2english.blogspot.com/ (Secondary Education)

http://www.inglesiesollosgrandes.blogspot.com/ (Secondary Education)

http://amlescortsenglish.blogspot.com/ (Primary Education)

http://ourspecialfunnyworld.blogspot.com/ (Primary Education)

ESL in Moodle

2011-04-29T01:11:00.006+02:00

In this post I want to apologize for not writing as many posts as I would like, I’m quite busy at the moment and it’s very difficult to publish something because of all the work that is behind (writing the post, preparing the pictures, making videos and presentations, uploading files…), the problem is that I have many things to tell you and many posts stored in my mind and no time to make them real.

Future posts I hope to write are:

Easter
Past Carnival
The very hungry caterpillar
Oliver’s vegetables
I am a pizza

Let’s see if you can read them before the school year finishes. I will try my best.

The reason why I’ve been so busy to write is that I ‘was and am’ working in Moodle. I created two virtual ESL courses aimed at the older students (10-12 years old), the courses are based in the teaching program I have for those levels and in the coursebook I use, but they can be used with other teaching programs because the contents that most of the teachers deal with in those levels are more or less the same.

I'm embedding a presentation about Moodle for those teachers who haven't heard of it.

Moodle presentation

View more presentations from Alja Isakovic

My virtual courses allow students to review, practice and study the contents they have seen in the classroom with me, apart from improving their listening, reading and writing skills, as well as their digital competence, so important at the moment.

Along the units I provide students with all kinds of exercises, activities and explanations. They have listening quizzes, cultural videos, grammar explanations and exercises, writing tasks, vocabulary practice, texts … a great variety of opportunities to improve and practice the language.

You can find different kinds of files, Powerpoints, Flash, PDF, Word, html… and you can find activities designed with Hotpotatoes, Quizfaber, JClic and online tasks. As you can check Moodle is a very interesting tool where you can compile lots of different files and activities.

I made some screenshots to show you some of them but I invite you to take a look at it on the next link, you have the possibility to enter as a guest in the two English courses.

http://www.edu.xunta.es/centros/ceipvilarbarrio/aulavirtual/course/category.php?id=13

Moodle

View more presentations from isabelbp.

St. Patrick's Week

2011-03-22T22:53:00.002+01:00

This will be a flash post about St. Patrick’s Day, just to tell you my teaching experience at school.

We have been working through this special date along the past whole week in the different subjects I teach: English, Art and even Science.

The contents about this date for the different subjects are:

English: traditions, sociocultural aspects, Ireland as an English speaking country, vocabulary (leprechaun, shamrock…) …
Art: felt-tip pen colouring, combining colours, cutting and tracing, templates, using paints and paintbrushes…
Social Science: Irish traditions and geography.

Students learnt some vocabulary related to this special date, they read some texts and answered some questions, and they played games.

In the Art lessons, the higher-level students coloured a leprechaun poster and also cut some shamrocks in green cardboard paper in order to decorate the school. Students in lower levels coloured some leprechauns and some pots of gold, and they made a leprechaun face from a paper plate.

You can download in the link below a file with the worksheets on St. Patrick’s Day that I used in the classroom.

http://db.tt/ynL7nlr

On March 17th, students wore green clothes and other stuff in order to commemorate the famous Irish date. I uploaded a video with some photos.

Winter

2011-03-10T18:44:00.007+01:00

Spring is almost here but before it arrives I want to publish the post about Winter. I’m sorry I couldn’t do it earlier, but it will remain in the blog and perhaps you will be able to use it the following year.

As I told you in the past, ‘seasons’ are quite an interesting topic to work at school because they relate to Science, Art and other subjects.

My Winter lesson plan is aimed at my 11/12-year- old Art students, although it can be adapted to any level changing the difficulty of the activities and the goals. At the end of the post, you can see some Winter resources for other levels.

The contents in my lesson plan are:

Art contents: different colouring techniques (paint, wax crayons …), collage, scissor skills, fine motor skills.

ESL contents: all the language dealing with Winter, how to borrow materials, material names, the modal verb can, present simple.

Science contents: winter facts, hibernation and migration, weather.

The unit sketch is rather similar to the autumn one.

The first lesson covers a kind of brainstorming about what we know and what we can add in the English language. I write an outline of the ideas on the board:

Winter months.
Start and end dates.
Weather.
Winter clothes (scarves, coats, mitten, boots, gloves, hats).
Sports (ice-skating, skiing, snowboarding, go on a sleigh).
Colours.
Special vocabulary: snow, snowflakes, snowman, snowfall, ice.
Special dates: Christmas, Peace Day, St. Valentine’s Day, Carnival, Pancake Day, St. Patrick’s Day.
Animals (migration and hibernation).
Facts: shorter days, longer nights.

The last half of the lesson students start to work on the Winter poster.

The activities for the second lesson are reviewing all the information about the season, watching a video and working on the poster.

The next lessons deal with finishing the poster and writing some essays.

Students write two different compositions, one about Winter and the other about the poster and its description. In order to write the composition about Winter, I give them a list of questions that have to be answered in the form of a text.

The questions are:

When does Winter start?
When does it finish?
What’s the weather like?
What clothes do you usually wear in Winter?
What sports can you practice?
What happens to some animals?
What special dates do you commemorate?

As you can see, there are many contents involved and that’s the reason why we spent a long period of time working on it, the unit was about two months long.

The results are:

From this point on, I will share other resources suitable for different levels and ages:

Winter song: lower levels.

Snowy weather: advanced video

Winter websites with worksheets and facts.

Winter Websites

Shapes

2011-01-04T22:22:00.005+01:00

The activities I’m presenting are suitable for 6-7 year-old students, they were thought for the Art subject, although some of the activities are also appropriate for Maths.

The Art contents involved are: drawing and recognizing shapes, shapes in Art, Tangram, space representation and abstract art using shapes.

The ESL contents are: shapes vocabulary, colours, objects that represent shapes (dice, wheel)…

The teacher, to start, will introduce the vocabulary for shapes with the help of some pictures and also with a song.

Once the kids get familiar with the name of the shapes, they will have to recognize shapes in ordinary objects they come across every day, in order to do that, there are many books about shapes you can use or, if you don’t have any, you can use pictures from the web.

The book I use is Agatha’s Shapes published by Gaviota.

Students can also practice shapes playing snap (I use the card game by Usborne but teachers can make their owns cards).

From now on, students will work on the Art aspect of Shapes. First, the teacher will introduce the Chinese game Tangram explaining the origins and the rules.

The teacher will give each of the students a Tangram worksheet, students will have to recognize the shapes, colour them and cut them.

Before designing their own tangrams, the teacher will give the students some models they will try to copy and say what they represent. After that they will design their own tangrams and they will have to show them to the rest of the students, the students will have to guess what they are representing.

EjTangram

The final task about Shapes will deal with creating an abstract picture using shapes and then using colour to improve its presence. Students will make a frame for their pictures.

Watch the slideshow for results:

Some ideas to work with shapes in higher levels:

Abstract Art (Mondrian: line, shape, color): http://www.kinderart.com/arthistory/abstract.shtml
Cubism (Picasso portraits): http://teachkidsart.blogspot.com/2009/06/wild-n-crazy-picasso-portraits.html

A multidisciplinary lesson plan: Autumn

2011-01-03T13:58:00.002+01:00

Autumn, as well as the other seasons, is a very interesting topic to work at school because it can be approached from different subjects, Science, Art, Language and even Maths.

In my case, the lesson plan on autumn has a place in the Art programme during the first term of the school year. It is planned for the 3rd cycle of Primary Education.

The Art contents involved are mixing colours, collage techniques and painting vocabulary.

The contents related to ESL are dates (reading and writing), fruit vocabulary, animals, weather and clothes, and traditions.

The first lesson of the unit will mainly deal with talking about the season, so students and I make a brainstorming on autumn covering the following points:

• Autumn months.

• Start and end of autumn (dates).

• American name.

• Colours.

• Weather – clothes used.

• Fruit and food (acorns, chestnuts, corn, nuts…)

• Scarecrows

• Special Dates (Columbus Day, Halloween, Chestnut Party and Thanksgiving days): what day is it celebrated? where does it come from? traditions involved and why?

• Hibernating animals (hedgehog, beaver, squirrel)

• Autumn facts.

The different points will arise out of the observation of some pictures, see the example below:

At the end, the students and I will design the sketch of an autumn poster.

During the second lesson students will learn a song about autumn and they will work on the poster.

In the third lesson we will watch a video to learn some facts and vocabulary about this season and they will continue with the poster.

The following lessons will help review the contents learned and finish the poster.

This unit can be also adapted for lower levels. A good clipart autumn book to work with lower levels is the one that follows:

clipart_autum

You can check how the students performed their task by watching the poster:

Apart from the poster, it’s possible to do some crafts related to autumn or to special dates, depending on the time you have. Some easy craft ideas are:

Leaves collage.
Leaves place mat.
Scarecrow.
Turkey.

A video clip for CLIL: 70 Million by Hold Your Horses

2010-12-30T22:31:00.000+01:00

     I want to share with you a video clip I’ve recently discovered in a conference by Isabel Pérez. It’s the song 70 million by Hold your horses. Once you watch it, you’ll understand its inherent potential when talking about Art.

     I haven’t yet thought through how to exploit in my Art lessons, but I’m very sure that I will use it with the kids in the future and when it happens I will let you know.

     I embedded this video clip from Youtube because on its comments, there is a list with all the paintings that appear on it.

CLIL experiences: Art workshop in Culleredo

2010-12-20T23:18:00.001+01:00

The scribd document that comes next is the one I have used in order to present my materials in the Art workshop in Culleredo. The powerpoint is a too large file and that’s the reason why I had to convert it to pdf. As a pdf file it’s impossible to visualize the videos but I will upload them for you in the nearby future.

Although the presentation didn’t work as expected due to technical problems, I hope you liked and you enjoyed the activities.

You are welcome to write your opinion in my blog and any suggestions you can think of in order to improve it.

I’m too busy right now, but as soon as I can I will post the activity about colours for the digital board (you will be able to download and use it) and some specific information about the different Art units, as well as the autumn videos.

Experiencias CLIL na materia de Plástica

Living and not-living things: lesson plan

2010-11-01T22:29:00.007+01:00

My first post on Science, let’s see if you like it. I will present you my lesson plan about living and not-living things. It’s aimed at the first cycle of Primary Education.

First, using some flash cards (tree, monkey, giraffe, ball, train, caterpillar, daddy, …) I try to elude from students the differences between living things and not-living things, explaining the main characteristics of living ones.

At the beginning of the different lessons I always review the contents seen using some examples, I ask: what’s this? Is it a living thing or a not-living thing? Or is a teacher a living thing or a not-living thing? I try to use vocabulary they can recognize from previous years (toys, animals, school objects…)

In order to differentiate between those two categories, they do some worksheets (colour and circle living things, cut and paste into the appropriate column…). They also learn to name the pictures that appear on them.

They use their notebooks to draw some living and not-living things.

After some lessons, students have to say by themselves names of living and not-living things.

When all the students have a clear concept of living and not-living things they will make a booklet (the template is at the scribd document), they draw pictures and then, with the help of the teacher, they will write the names of the pictures and they will learn the words if they don’t know them.

The next stage deals with learning the main characteristics of living things. To be able to do that, I present the next sentences with the use of mime and gestures:

Living things grow.

Living things need energy.

Living things move.

Living things reproduce.

Living things remove waste.

Living things breathe.

Repetition is an important part in the process of learning the sentences. At the beginning they hear the sentences and they do the actions, and then, when they feel more comfortable, they also say the sentences. They write the sentences on their notebooks.

The same living-thing flashcards I used the first day will be used in order to categorize the three groups in which they can be divided: animals, plants and human beings. We will talk about the main differences among them and they will categorize some given examples and they will give some more.

They will learn the next sentence and they will copy it on their notebooks. They will also draw some examples below each category.

Living things can be animals, plants or human beings.

Finally, I work with the students on the concepts of natural and man-made, analyzing some examples and doing a worksheet.

Some useful worksheets about this unit are:

Living and not-living things

Here you have some presentations that can be adapted or used with older students:

Living Things

See more presentations by Lucianna

Upload your own PowerPoint presentations

http://www.authorstream.com/Presentation/fivbert-238272-living-non-things-characteristics-science-001ppt-liv-automatic-education-ppt-powerpoint/

Ourense tourist guide

2010-10-28T00:57:00.000+02:00

Couldn't help it, it's late at night but I have just found this presentation made by some ESL students from Ourense directed by their teacher María Jose. That will be the tourist guide for native speakers in the future. I really like the result of their work.

Find more videos like this on EFL CLASSROOM 2.0

Pointillism

2010-09-16T23:26:00.003+02:00

I want to offer you a new unit I designed for my Art through English subject, it’s aimed at 11-12 year-old students.

The language contents I deal with are: vocabulary about sea animals (you can choose another topic), there is/are, present continuous and descriptions.

The Art contents are: Pointillism /ˈpɔɪntiˌlɪz(ə)m/, Seraut as a pointillist and space recreation.

In the first stage I give students a sheet with sea animals. It’s possible to print it from the web page:

http://www.mes-english.com/flashcards/files/animals4.pdf

We work on the vocabulary and the pronunciation. Afterwards I give them a piece of paper with the following description:

In this picture you can see the sea and a thin line of sky. There are some animals resting in the depth of it: two starfish, a crab and a sea turtle. A big octopus, unconscious of the danger, is moving around and a shark is watching it. Some clown fish are swimming nearby. Three seahorses are playing around a group of plants.

Students have to draw the picture in a white sheet of paper. Instead of this description, teachers can make up their own using the vocabulary they want pupils to learn.

La Parade by Seurat

The next stage is about giving colour to the picture by using the Pointillism technique. In order to do that, students must understand the concept, look at some examples and study some Seurat’s works by using Internet. Some useful links are:

Apart from sea animals we can also introduce activities in the sea and means of transport. What can you do in the sea? I can sail, I can swim, I can go snorkeling, I can go fishing… How can you travel in the sea? I can travel by ferry, boat, ship, …

http://www.childs.mccsc.edu/art99/art2p6.htm

http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/seurat/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointillism

Once they finish the picture, each of them will do a different Pointillist scene and they will describe it in English in the classroom.

It’s possible to add a new stage to this project. It will deal with colouring a portrait using Pointillism in Microsoft Paint.

New bilingual section: our project

2010-09-09T22:01:00.001+02:00

Back at work again, after a long and well-deserved period of holidays. And I start with good news, this year I will also be teaching Knowledge of the Natural and Social World through English, yes, that’s it, our school will offer another bilingual section in the first cycle of Primary, so that means, there will be new CLIL resources in my blog related to this new subject. Let’s see how it goes, it will be more difficult than teaching Art through English but I’ll do my best.

Have a look at the project if you are interested and don’t doubt in asking for a bilingual section in your school, it’s a great experience for pupils and also for teachers.
proxectoseccionbilingueconocimiento

Dear Zoo

2010-06-15T23:51:00.001+02:00

Dear Zoo is a storybook for young children by Rod Campbell. I find it very useful to teach zoo animals as well as adjectives. I have bought it during this school year and I started to work on it one month ago. I have prepared a teaching unit based on it and I’m very happy with the results obtained in the classroom.

I made some cards with the story animals (elephant, giraffe, lion, monkey, snake, camel, frog) to teach them to my 5-year-old students.

The unit sketch can be something like this:

In the first lesson I teach those animals by listen, listen and repeat, listen and touch activities, … In one of the activities I tell the children that the classroom is a zoo and there are many animals inside, I will call out animals and they will have to imitate them with sounds, gestures and movements; apart from the animals seen in this lesson, I will call out others already learnt.

In the second lesson, I will reinforce the vocabulary about animals through some drills and a miming activity (where each child has to imitate the animal I whisper and the rest has to guess it). Once they know it, I will start with the adjectives related to each of the animals (big-elephant, fierce-lion, tall-giraffe, scary-snake, naughty-monkey, grumpy-camel, jumpy-frog), I try to elude from them the adjectives in their mother tongue and I translate the word into English. Then, when I show the animal card we say the adjective and we make the gesture. We also play the zoo game to review animals.

The goal of the third lesson is to reinforce the vocabulary, animals and adjectives, through different activities, games and worksheets. We also take photos representing the adjectives so then, we will use them as flashcards. At the end of this lesson, to create expectation I show the storybook to children, we read the title, we make guesses about the content and we name the animals in the book cover.

In the next stage and lesson, I read the story at the same time that they lift the flaps and discover the animal in each box. At the end, they have to guess the animal the zoo sends. I ask them about their opinion and we retell the story, this time they participate by saying the animals and the adjectives. We also start to make a big poster about the story by colouring and cutting the pictures on the next pdf file.

http://www.kizclub.com/storypatterns/dearzoo.pdf

Finally, in the following lessons, after telling the story several times, they are able to do it by themselves.

He/She has got

2010-05-11T23:46:00.004+02:00

Today I want to show you an activity I’ve prepared for the digital board using the Smartboard software. It’s based on the principle of learning by doing and acting. It is addressed to ten-year-old children.

Students will learn to use the third person of singular of the verb have got by including it in small descriptive texts. They will also learn some vocabulary related to face signs and hair colour and they will recycle previous words from other courses and units.

I recorded the activity, so everyone can watch how the activity goes. I’m not going to upload it because there are photos of my students but if someone is interested I can send it by mail.

What's the time Mr. Wolf?

2010-04-22T16:19:00.004+02:00

Time to talk about games, in this article I will talk about a funny game I use with younger students in the playground. It's called What's the time Mr Wolf?, and it's the twin of our Spanish game 'Escondite inglés'; the similarity between both games implies children's knowledge and recognition, as well as, a significant relation between native children's games and their Spanish games. That relation is very important in the sense that students will feel confident because they can guess the rules of the game and play without the need of having a good level of English.

This game is very useful to practice numbers and to introduce the time in English. This video shows you how to play.

Playground Games:

How To Play 'What's The Time Mr Wolf'

If you've got a big classroom you can prepare a place free of chairs and tables to play. The first time I taught the game I did it in the classroom, I prepared a wolf picture and a paper plate clock, and I stuck them on a wall, I played the role of the wolf and I moved the clock hands showing the time I called out, when I said dinnertime I did the gesture of being hungry and I chased them. They really enjoyed it and all of them were anxious for playing the wolf.

Father's Day Portraits

2010-04-05T21:07:00.004+02:00

I haven't forgotten my blog but holidays are holidays and that means no work at all. In this article I will tell you about the project we have made for Father's Day.

The same project but with some changes was made with all the groups at school. In my case, I carried them out with the first cycle and the third cycle of Primary Education.

The idea was that students would prepare a self-portrait to give as a present to their fathers.

The project involved several stages as well as several art techniques depending on the ages and the method used.

The first stage is the same for everybody. We need a digital mug shot of each of the students and then, convert it to a pencil sketch with Photoshop or through some web pages specialized in that:

http://www.sketchmyphoto.com/

http://www.dumpr.net/sketch.php

Once we have the converted photo, we must print it and give a copy to students.

In the second stage, students with coloured pencils have to trace the different lines on the face and the hair and afterwards apply colour to eyes, mouth, skin...

Students learn not to press down when colouring because if they do it their portraits will look like clown faces.

The language contents of this stage are obvious: name of colours and the parts of the face and other features (sideburns, lines, beauty spots, freckles...)

If you want to make a nice background you can use a new technique I've learned, you need to sharpen the graphite of a coloured pencil and keep the shavings, you have to place the shavings in the picture and, with your finger, drag them around the portrait. Students love doing it and showing their dirty fingers.

The next and last stage deals with framing the picture. At this moment, I took into account the age and the abilities of the students and I used different techniques depending on that.

For framing the self-portraits of the first cycle, you can use a piece of thick cardboard in order to stick the picture, corrugated cardboard, foam and tissue paper. The teacher will cut stripes of corrugated cardboard and students have to stick them around their portrait; using some heart models, students will draw the shape on the foam and cut them, the hearts will be used to decorate the frame, it's also possible to do some flowers with the tissue paper.

The language contents would be actions related to art (cut, stick, glue, draw...) and nouns (heart, shape, flower...).

The technique used for the third cycle is more difficult. You need pieces of puzzles, scholar tempera paint, superglue and a thin plank. Students will paint the puzzle pieces with tempera mixing primary colours on a palette. Next they'll glue the picture to the thin plank and the puzzles pieces around the picture.

The linguistic contents are related to painting: the name of primary colours, how to obtain the rest of colours, vocabulary for utensils (brush, palette, tempera, watercolours...)

Finally with all the projects we can make an oral presentation. All the students have to show their job in front of the class and present it to their mates making a description: I have got blue eyes, a small mouth, freckles...

Reusing in Art

2010-03-25T16:05:00.005+01:00

Reusing in Art is the title of a CLIL project I designed after doing a course for CLIL teachers, it's based on the idea of reusing old things to create new ones.

Here you can read, download and print the teaching unit in Spanish with the goals, the contents, the assessment and the different stages .

Título: “Reusing in Art” Autor: María Isabel

Here it's the web page where I uploaded the project with the reusing song, the recycling story, the game and the craft links.

http://centros.edu.xunta.es/ceipvilardebarrio/?q=node/261

If you click on the link below, it's possible to download all the files and use them with the students on the digital board without entering the school webpage where I have uploaded. To be able to visualize it, first you''ll have to unzip it.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4883303/Proposta%20Did%C3%A1ctica%20Isabel%20Blanco.zip

We are fruits!

2010-03-19T01:10:00.004+01:00

Last year I had to teach a small group of 4-5 year-old students in order to help the Infant Education teacher. I spent two hours every day with them, teaching reading, writing and numeracy.

I love small children and I love when they enjoy learning so, when I am with young students I usually act like a clown, doing things so that they can laugh and feel more motivated. A role I used to play with them was that of a CONFUSED teacher who had problems to remember names and letters.

Every day children had to do some worksheets in the classroom and I had to write their names on them to avoid mixing one's with other's. As it was a boring task and they had to wait until I had finished, I played my "confused" role, I usually called them fruit or vegetable names to make them laugh. At the same time, they offered me help to find more names for other students.

Taking into account that, I decided to incorporate the same idea to the English lessons so that my students could learn the fruits in the second language.

I prepared some fruit necklaces, using fruit pictures attached to a string, I gave one to each of my students: an apple, a strawberry, a cherry, a watermelon, a melon, an orange and a bunch of grapes. I told them that I had forgotten their names and I renamed them with the fruit names. Students only had to learn their piece of fruit, it was an easy task and it didn't involve any kind of learning imposition, in fact, that wasn't the aim of lesson, in that moment we were working on the tale of Pretty Ritty.

After two lessons using the fake names and the necklaces everybody knew the fruit names. I told them that I would give them a prize if they were able to remember the rest of the fruits. All of them won the prize.

If someone wants to make the necklaces, try the following links where you can find nice pictures:

http://www.supercoloring.com/pages/category/fruits/

http://www.coloring-pages-kids.com/coloring-pages/nature-food-coloring-pages/fruits-coloring-pages/fruits-coloring-pages-images/fruit-coloring-page-02.php

Useful resources

2010-03-05T00:16:00.000+01:00

I was looking for some Sesame Street colouring numbers because a teacher had seen them in another school and she couldn't find them anywhere on the net when I found this great page with lots of resources for our lessons: crafts, colouring pages, videos and so on.

I just wanted to share it:

http://www.sproutonline.com/sprout/home/

Microsoft Paint in our lessons

2010-03-03T20:19:00.004+01:00

I'm going to present you a new activity I've recently made in the English classroom. The main goal of the activity was to evaluate the use of there is/are and some/any in the written form.

If I tell you the truth, I'm really fed up with those structures, even if students know the rules to use them; when writing, they aren't able to apply the rules and so, their compositions are always full of mistakes and I get angry because I can't understand their mistakes.

As my older students had to review this grammar point, I decided to prepare a different activity, I asked them to draw a picture with Microsoft Paint on the computer and then, they should describe it using there is/are and some/any. Apart from the structures, they had the need to remember recycled vocabulary from other units and they had to be creative in order not to do similar drawings.

Here are the results. If you can't read the texts, it's possible to take a look at them on the Slide webpage.

Slide Album: There is

St. Valentine's Day

2010-02-25T22:57:00.002+01:00

Due to Carnival celebrations I hadn't got time to work on Saint Valentine and, in my opinion, this date represents a good chance to work on poems and creativity.

At the last minute and running I decided to do something on the topic with my older students since it would be the last year at school and I had never done anything about writing poems with them. First, we have worked on some vocabulary and then, we started with the poems, I gave them a pattern to follow and based on it they made up their own poems.

The pattern was a structure they have learnt in the first term to talk about TV programs and their likes so, at the same time, they were reviewing curriculum contents. The verbs they could use were like, love, hate... and they should take into account that after those verbs they could only write noun phrases or gerunds.

The result wasn't as good as I had expected but it's necessary to bear in mind that they invented them in a hurry and they couldn't improve them because of time.

Writing poems is a useful activity to teach grammar, teachers only have to take a pattern or a grammar point and give students a model to use. A good pattern for valentines is also the composition of an adjective plus a noun.

Here you have my students' poems.

Clothes & Carnival

2010-02-22T22:51:00.008+01:00

Using an idea I saw at http://casadetolos.nireblog.com/, I edited some student's photos, I cut their faces with an image program (Photoshop, Gimp) and I added them to a disguise, so each student was wearing a different costume. Afterwards, I printed the final photos in a piece of paper and students had to design a WANTED banner describing the clothes and the accessories they were wearing.

The final result was really funny, you can see it below and pupils were motivated to write in English.

Carnival

Give peace a chance

2010-02-05T00:07:00.005+01:00

Schools usually commemorate Peace Day making different activities: workshops, outdoor games, readings and so on. As a compulsory activity in our curriculum we must deal with it in the best way so that our students can learn new contents in the second language.

Let's Dream Of Peace

View more presentations from Nubia Group.

From the ESL point of view, teachers can work with famous songs and singers that support the Peace idea. The songs about Peace I like the most are:

-Imagine (John Lennon)

-Peace on Earth (U2)

-Heal the world (Michael Jackson)

-Give peace a chance (John Lennon)
-USA for Africa- We are the world (Michael Jackson)

This year I designed an activity to do in the digital whiteboard with my older students based on the song Heal the world by Michael Jackson. I love this song and I chose it as a remembrance of one of the best composers in the world. To see the activity follow the link: http://tinyurl.com/yhjgt7s

If you are interested in Peace facts, I will recommend you to use the activity Peace? Yes, please! with your students at the computer room. It was created with EdiLIM by a famous teacher in Galicia. Don't hesitate to visit her blog because she has got great ideas for the classroom.

Peace? Yes, please!

Finally, you can work on Peace in the Art lessons, I let you here some ideas of projects in this subject:

-A dove cap

-A dove made of a white balloon

-A mosaic of doves

-Origami doves
-Posters
-...

It's possible to see some of them on the slide below.

Last Christmas

2010-01-20T00:16:00.017+01:00

Christmas is another important date in our subject calendar and a very interesting theme for CLIL projects. Every year, I prepare for my lessons some activities about this special date. In this post, I will show you the activities prepared for this year in my Arts&Crafts course.

Students from the third cycle of Primary have made a snowman paper chain. First, they prepared the paper chain folding a long white piece of paper in several pieces, then, using a template, they drew the snowman on the chain cover and they cut it. They unfolded the paper chain and they decorated the snowmen in the following way:

• Cotton in the body.

• Gomets as bottons.
• Blue Crepe Paper as scarves.
• Orange Paper for noses.
• Velvet for hats.

Then, we have also made some snowflakes; by cutting circles on a white piece of paper and folding them several times, students can obtain nice snowflakes, they only need to cut different shapes in the circle.

The main linguistic points involved in this activiy: the materials in English, the body, what the snowmen are wearing.

Students from the first cycle of Primary have made reindeer hats to wear at our Christmas festival. They have coloured and cut some Christmas pictures and a reindeer's head, they stick them on a green metallic cardboard and we used glitter to decorate it. At the slide, you'll see the result. The linguistic points at this activity are related to materials and, above all, vocabulary about Christmas (reindeer, sleigh, Santa...)

At the slide, there is a wide range of decorations for Christmas made by students and other teachers as well as those made by my pupils in Art and English lessons.

Two little dicky birds

2009-12-30T01:30:00.002+01:00

One of my first lesson plans in Infant Education is based on the finger rhyme "Two little dicky birds". Although it seems too complicated, children learn it quickly, and they enjoy the game with the fingers. This rhyme has got a small plot, it's short and it has got three important elements in teaching young children: repetition, rhythm and intonation.

Peter and Paul, the characters, are two paper birds that live in my cloth bag inside the magic box. Each time I want to introduce new vocabulary, I make my students guess it, I hide the flash cards or the objects in the cloth bag and I try them to elicit it giving them clues, they have to make their guesses in their mother tongue, I repeat what they say in English.

Then, bit a bit, I show them my birds and I explain the rhyme story. Their names are Peter and Paul, they are two, they are very small, they are sitting on a wall... To explain it, I draw a wall on the board and I stick my birds on it, I move the birds taking into account what the rhyme says. Once they know the plot, I start to say the rhyme using my fingers, and then, I ask them to do the finger actions with me. The first day, my pupils are usually able to do the finger actions by themselves and after a few lessons they are able to say it without my help.

After each lesson, students make some table activities related to the rhyme: colouring Peter and Paul, making the puppets, drawing the wall... These activities are very useful and they help children speak in English at home, they see their work and they can show it to their parents imitating what the teacher does.

These are my students saying the rhyme:

This is the template you can use to make two finger puppets (Peter and Paul).

Recently, I've learned in a teachers' course in Norwich a new version. In the video, it's possible to see Jamie Keddie (a famous ESL writer) with other teachers singing the rhyme. Jamie has got two bird drawings stuck on his nails, and when Peter and Paul fly away, he changes the fingers and we can't see the birds. Children love it because they think that the teacher is a magician that makes Peter and Paul disappear and appear again.

You can watch other videos about the rhyme clicking on the links:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opIWKEmx09A&feature=fvw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3z824bjI0g

Weather

2009-12-15T00:36:00.009+01:00

I've designed this activity as an introduction to the unit on the weather. With this activity I want my students to learn vocabulary related to the weather and the seasons. It is made with a new program called EdiLIM that serves to create and to edit interactive books (LIM=libro interactivo multimedia), this program is easy to work with and it has got a good variety of activities to choose, it's based on Flash but it isn't necessary to know anything about Flash in order to prepare your own activities. Try it, I hope you'll like the activity I designed.

Vowel sounds

2009-12-14T23:44:00.001+01:00

Here you have a very useful song to practise vowel sounds, it's called "Apples and Bananas" and although the lyrics are too simple, even childish, pupils love it because the music and the rhythm are really catchy. Taking a look at the lyrics, you can see that it's always the same verse but with words spelt differently according to the vowel sound used in that moment. The song sticks on our pupils' minds and without realizing they are learning some of the most common vowel sounds in English as wells as their usual spellings.

This video with the song is the one I like the most since students can see the lyrics at the same time that they are listening and associating the spelling with the pronunciation.

Halloween & Art

2009-11-30T20:28:00.009+01:00

As you can see in my profile, I teach Art through English and, in this article, I would like to talk about one of the topics I use with my Art students: Halloween.

This special date gives a wide range of possibilities to students of English to learn and practice the language. Halloween is a topic with an intrinsic motivation and as a teacher you can take advantage of it and use it in order to work on vocabulary, structures, rhymes, stories, intercultural aspects ... but, above all, Halloween is especially useful for Art lessons since it offers you the chance to decorate classrooms in the same way that English kids do at home to commemorate this date.

On the net it's possible to find lots of resources about Halloween with pictures for colouring and crafts with good explanations. You only have to bear in mind the contents you want to teach and look for the appropriate activity. Apart from the variety of Art contents in each of the activities, there is also a great variety of ESL contents you can introduce (related to the communicative competence as well as the sociocultural one).

Some examples of Art activities about this topic are: collages, posters, crafts, Origami, colouring, ...

In the next slideshare, I show you some of the things made by my students.

Some useful links are:

http://www.bogglesworld.com/

http://www.kidsdomain.com/

http://theholidayspot.com/

http://www.familymanagement.com/holidays/halloween/party.ideas.html

http://www.familyfun.com/

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=halloween+crafts&search_type=&aq=2&oq=halloween+cr

Very young learners

2009-10-02T01:11:00.000+02:00

Teaching very young learners (between 3 and 5 years old) is a very difficult task that demands a lot of energy from the teacher. Kids at this age are very dynamic and active and their need of movement must be applied to any activity designed for them.

I love teaching very young learners because they have fun using the foreign language and they don't feel embarrassed about it (as older ones do). They can learn many words and useful chunks of language from songs and stories that later, in higher levels, will help them in the deeper study of grammar and composition rules.

I don't use any coursebook at these levels but I get ideas from them to prepare my own materials. I use a magic box (a big box well decorated) where I keep all the things I need in each lesson: the pet, a small ball, the CDs I need, a surprise bag (where I introduce the vocabulary I want them to learn), the things already learnt (they can be flashcards or realia) and worksheets for the lesson. The pet sleeps in the magic box and, from time to time, when we go on holidays it gets lost around the classroom. Children love the magic box and they always want to see what's inside. The magic box whets their curiosity and increases their opportunity to learn.

One of the main points when teaching very young learners is establishing routines. When children know what to expect and what to do they feel more confident and free to participate in the activities proposed. I have posted in this article a list with the routines I use in my English lessons. You can see that they have different levels of movement to improve students' attention. In the future, I will post some videos about my routines. Most of them are related to a chant or a song.

Table time (they usually are working on their tables when I arrive).

• All aboard (they catch the train)

Circle time

• Sitting down in a circle.

• Saying hello.

• Waking up (the pet is sleeping in the magic box )

• Asking how we are.

• Taking the register.

• Revision

• Introduction of vocabulary, songs or stories

• Playing games to practice

• Saying bye bye to our pet.

• All aboard.

Table time

• Sitting down.

• Worksheet

• Tidying up.