Monday, 24 December 2012
Monday, 17 December 2012
Classroom management!
An effective classroom management has to take into account the following tips:
- Know what you want and you don’t want
- Show the students what you want to create you want; Create expectations
- Correct the student’s behavior periodically
- Create rules in the classroom
- Develop an effective praise:
ü Is expressed sincerely, spontaneous and using non-verbal gestures
ü You must not compare with other students
ü Encourage students to appreciate their accomplishments
- For an effective parents conferences:
ü Documentation about the child’s behavior
ü Maintain eye contact
ü Be a good listener
ü Ask the parents for his input regarding the student
ü Giving parents some concrete ideas for behavior management at home
- Monitoring the entire class
- Gaining the students’ attention
- Move around the class
- Establish a line between teacher and student
Do you want to know more about classroom management?
Think about it...
If we want our learners use the language to express their opinions and ideas and, in short to communicate them with people, teachers should develop activities according to this objective.
We have to take into account what our aim is when we are designing our activities.
What do you think about that?
Are you agree with the boy in the picture?
Sunday, 16 December 2012
P H O N I C S
How to teach your children to read using phonics
It is very useful to teach your students the phonics in a relevant and funny way.
It's time to improve your phonics!
Look at the following pictures...
Monday, 3 December 2012
Anxiety in the classroom
Many students become anxious just before a test and/or they get nervous when they have to give a prepared speech or presentation in front of their partners. Such temporary feelings of anxiety are instances of state anxiety. However, some students are anxious a good part of the time, even when the situation is not an evaluation, for that reason, we have to take into account some tips to achieve a good and relaxed atmosphere.
We suggest some tips to prevent the anxiety:
- Educate and inform the students about anxiety
- Provide an open-communication classroom, where all the students should participate and all the ideas are good to learn
- Teach and discuss the positive strategies and techniques to be relaxed with the students
- Allow students opportunities to practice and apply useful strategies to get over the anxiety. For instance, allow students to use stress balls during class or listen to soothing music while taking exams. Using this strategies may reduce tension and anxiety in the classroom.
- Model positive ways to prevent and manage anxiety
- Provide an effective praise
- Teach students to focus their attention on a specific object
Finally, we suggest an interesting video about "learned helplessness", in which we can prove how students feel when some students in the class know how to do an activity and they do not. In this video, the teacher gives different exams (one very difficult, and another one very easy). Then, s/he asks the students; who have done the first question, and the students with the difficult exam get surprised when they see that some students done it (without know that they are different questions). After that, the teacher gives the same exam to the whole class, and, even doing the easy one, some students do not know the answer. It is possible that this student group after this situation are frustated... What do you think?
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Sunday, 2 December 2012
Storytelling!
Storytelling can be an interesting tool very useful in the classroom.
It is helpful to begin the class with the teacher playing the role of storyteller or maybe by inviting a proffesional storyteller into the classroom, due to the fact that it will be very motivating to the students.
Students usually love stories, and teachers should take advantage of this fact to teach the new language. Teachers should use some strategies to facilitate the understanding and oof the students (games, gestures, redundancy, pictures...)
When learners are listening the stories, they are developing listening skills and vocabulary, increasing concentration, developing imagination and, also, they are more motivated to read. If the learners are telling the stories, we are improving the oral language skills, the expression, the motivation to create new stories, etc.
We suggest some stories of the website; http://www.starfall.com
Integrate storytelling into other subjects
While language arts and the creative arts are obvious areas, stories can help us to understand other cultures and other times. They can easily be integrated into history or geography. If we chose the stories carefully, they can be integrated even with maths or science. We have to take into account that this activity develops the social competence in our students and, if we chose an interesting topic and develop the activity in an appropriate way, we will be able to develop a lot of competences.
But, it is when the learners become the storytellers that storytelling makes a great contribution to the classroom.
Improve your Reading!
In this activity, we can see the most common questions in a reading comprehension but; are they useful to develop the reading skill?
If you reflect on the kind of
activities that teachers used to develop with their students, we
can notice that we are developing the lower order
thinking skills (remember, understand and apply)
What about “analyse , evaluate and
create”? We need that our students reflect on their learning and
also, they need to be competent to create in
reference to their own ideas and opinions, to
make decisions and evaluate each situation and to analyse
whatever that they are interested in.
In this way, maybe it is necessary to
review the Bloom’s taxonomy.
We
suggest some questions/activities:
- Create
a new ball for the dog. Decide the colour and what
the dog will do with it.
-
Do
you think cats and dogs play in the same way? Why (not)?
-
Suggest
other toy to my dog and try to persuade him that
this one it is better than the ball.
What do you think? Can you
suggest us any question/activity according to the High stages?
Saturday, 1 December 2012
Assessment: Videos
Hi again! This time we want to share with you our ideas about the videos that we had to see!
Tuesday, 27 November 2012
Monday, 26 November 2012
Wednesday, 21 November 2012
The PEPP Model
Hii! This time we are focusing on the PEPP Model. We are going to show you some information and some interesting videos about PEPP. I hope you like them :D
THE PEPP MODEL:
This model is useful to introduce new vocabulary to students. It consists of
four phases (Presentation, Exposure, Practice and Production) gradually getting
the student to become familiar with them.
1.The first phase is the Presentation, the teacher "presents" the new
vocabulary to their students by creating an environment where they have the
need to know the language. To attract the attention of students focused on
pronunciation and articulation, the teacher has to get on and off the pitch
and exaggerate the articulation of words.
2.The next phase is Exposure, which aims to "expose" students to new
vocabulary in different contexts and activities. So students are accustomed
to the oral form of new vocabulary.
3.Practice is the next step. The goal is to shape the language produced by
the students to fit the model provided by the teacher. Common activities
are imitation, repetition, correction, ...
4. The last step is Production. The aim of this phase is the development of
automated and communicative use of language. The most common activities
are: activities in pairs or groups (surveys, role-plays, dialogues,...).
Monday, 12 November 2012
Multiple intelligences
Do you already know what the multiple intelligences are?
Teaching must recognise the diversity of intelligences
and abilities within the classroom.
Presentation and practice of contents should engage all or most of the intelligences. Thus, students will be able to develop all their intelligences.
In addition, teachers should become aware of their students’ “intelligence profile” (through on-going assessment, intensive interaction, observation, gathering and analysis of tasks, etc.) and thus, they should try to develop all the intelligences of their students and improve the learning, in this case, of a foreign language.
We suggest some websites to improve the different intelligences and learn English at the same time. What do you think about them?
1. Musical intelligence
Learn English through your favourite songs:
2. Visual intelligence
Click to see a visual dictionary!
3. Interpersonal intelligence
4. Intrapersonal intelligence
5. Bodily/kinesthetic intelligence
Let's go to make a play:
6. Logic/maths intelligence
Do you like maths?
and crosswords?
7. Naturalistic intelligence
Games about nature and science:
8. Existential intelligence
This article can help us to improve the existencial intelligence:
9. Verbal intelligence
Read the news!
Friday, 26 October 2012
Improve your listening! (II)
If you want to improve your listening, you can find more resources and materials here!
We suggest some websites! Enjoy it!
PODCASTS
"A podcast is a digital media file that is downloaded directly from a streaming Internet source."
You can find podcast (audios) in these websites.
You have to choose your level, a topic and start to listen!
FILMS
This is an interesting website where you can find a lot of films. Here, you will find the key information to understand the film in English. So, would you like to watch Toy Story, Star Wars, Titanic or maybe, Shrek? Let's click and see all the films!
LISTENING QUIZ
In the following websites, you will be able to listen a lot of audios and then, answer some questions about them.Check your listening comprehension!
Improve your listening! (I)
We are going to suggest some videos of a website which have a lot
of resources and materials that teachers can use to teach English!
Marta Cortés
In my opinion, this listening activity is very useful to learn ‘The
transport’ topic; such as train, car, boat,etc. Furthermore, it’s a catchy
song because the verses are very repetitive, so this song can be sung by
young children. This song is suitable for lower Primary Education because the
grammar structures and the vocabulary are easy.
This activity is suitable for the third cycle of Primary Education because
the contents and the vocabulary are more difficult. Despite this, I would
recommend this activity to learn ‘our solar system’ through a song
instead of using the textbook. Also, personally, the children would prefer
listening to a song and learning the characteristics of the planets in a
playful.
Álvaro Domínguez
In my opinion, this listening activity is very useful to learn ‘The
transport’ topic; such as train, car, boat,etc. Furthermore, it’s a catchy
song because the verses are very repetitive, so this song can be sung by
young children. This song is suitable for lower Primary Education because the
grammar structures and the vocabulary are easy.I chose this activity because I think it is important that our students learn about other cultures and customs, so I think it's a good idea to do an activity that tells the story of an Islamic party, as in this case.
I chose this second activity because I found very interesting because I didn’t know the existence of infantile news. Besides it shows them simple and familiar situations to children such as game or picnic.
Miriam Gallardo
As halloween is coming soon, I have chosen these listening
activities to celebrate the eve of this day. At the beginning of both
activities the children have to do a puzzle. the first activity is a song
called ”the scary skeleton”, in which children will revise some parts of the
body and some action verbs. The second activity is a horror story called “the
haunted house” and with it children can revise some vocabulary like different
parts of a house and animals.
I recommend asking students to wear halloween costumes and decorate the
class with halloween staff the day you are going to do these activities in
class, it will be a very funny and scary morning!
Marta Gómez
I suggest using these listening tasks, because I think they can be very useful and dynamic in an English class. They are related with the topic of food, so I have chosen the “kids talk” video to introduce the topic to the students. I think it can be a good point, that learners listen to others English children, thus, they probably awaken interest to know the new language to meet new English friends and, also, they will be aware of the importance of know other languages in order to understand other people.
Also, I’ve chosen a song, because I think it can be a fantastic way to
learn different meals, in an enjoyable way. We can change some verses of
the song and sing other meals which children like it.
Marina Chamizo
I think that it is a good
resource for the children. With it they will developed the skill of listening.
In it the children can see and send videos of the children’s news and they can
play games and watch clips. The page is very visual and it makes children their
attention.
Moreover I choose that resource because the children have to develop
writing and reading skills. In it the children will have to construct
sentences, learn vocabulary or read texts.
Aurora Capablanca
http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/short-stories/my-secret-team
I’ve chosen this activity because in my opinion the topic is very attractive
for children and at least it is a bit different. In this one they listen a
story and also can read it. In addition, there are more activities.
With this activity they can play and practice pronunciation in a funny way.
we can use the tongue-twisters to improve and encourage the use of the
language making a play and comparing with spanish ones.
Thursday, 25 October 2012
What do you think?
We have found some pictures on the internet.
What do you think about them? Are you agree or disagree?
It is probable, we need to be aware of the importance of change traditional methods of teaching English. Students can learn the rules, grammar, vocabulary, etc. through the use of the language and through interesting activities. It is not necessary doing boring tasks which do not motivate our students.
What do you think? We want to know your opinion!
Note: Click on the pictures to make them bigger!
Classroom Language!
Hiiii everyone! I saw some pictures about classroom language and I'd like to share them with you!
I hope you like them :D
Like you can see, the sentences are very simple but very helpful to use in class.
RAP
CREATE A RAP WITH STUDENTS
Would you like to sing a rap with your students? It's possible!!!!!!!!!!!!
Check this out!
This is a fun way to teach 'phrasal verbs'.
Wednesday, 24 October 2012
TWIDUCATE !!
In this post we introduce a resource that we found quite interesting. Nowadays, social networking is something that interests many students and teachers, so this resource allows us to communicate in a space which is similar to a social network but in a controlled manner.
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This resource introduces a Twitter-like tool designed specifically for teachers. This is a way for students and teachers to be communicated inside and outside the classroom, taking the advantage of social networking interaction with our students and with the guarantees of privacy that demands any educational social network. It allows for easy management of content by the teacher and the proper administration of the network to share content and resources to students.
Now we show you some pictures of the resource, so you can see how it works:
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