Glogster!

This website it's an interesting tool to teach our learners any subject!

According to the English subject, not only it can motivate the students but also teachers can promote the Speaking, Listening, Reading and Writing skill. 

Use it to introduce a new topic, to create a mind map, summarize the content or to attract your learners' attention. In addition to that, the students will be able to use it to create their projects and, in this way, they will be developing their creativity, increasing curiosity and interest and developing the technolgical competence.

We'd like to share our glogs with you!

Marta Gómez - Reading strategies glog!
Marta Cortés - Wanted glog! 
Álvaro Domínguez - Thinks I like glog!
Miriam Gallardo - Elephant and friends glog!
Aurora Capablanca - Belly dance glog!
Marina Chamizo - Music that I like glog!

Other websites or resources similar to this one are: PREZI, CREATELY, FREE MIND.

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?

http://www.teachervision.fen.com/classroom-management/behavioral-problems/26200.html

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?

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...

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

The little red hen

Chicken Little

Mr. Bunny's carrot soup

The little rooster

Lemonade girl

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?

CLIL

Diagram: Main concepts about CLIL

CLIL in Physical Education class:

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,...).

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! 

http://www.podcastsinenglish.com/index.shtml

http://www.public.iastate.edu/~volkerh/projects/podcasting/01sample_podcasts.html

http://www.eslpod.com/website/index_new.html

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!

http://www.saberingles.com.ar/movies/index.html

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!

http://www.esl-lab.com/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/general/sixminute/2012/03/120301_6min_bush_house.shtml

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.

http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/songs/over-the-mountains

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.

http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/songs/flying-the-sun-the-stars

Álvaro Domínguez

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.

http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/short-stories/my-favourite-day-eid-al-fitr

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.

http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/kids-news/picnic

Miriam Gallardo

http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/songs/the-scary-skeleton

http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/short-stories/the-haunted-house

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

http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/kids-talk/do-you-cooking

http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/songs/chocolate-cake

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

http://www.whatsyournews.com/

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.

http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/grammar-games/adjectives

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.

http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/tongue-twisters

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.

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.

What Is Scaffolding?

Do you want to improve your teaching? Are your students achieving their learning goals? Do you want to know some tips to achieve an effective learning?

1. SCAFFOLDING'S CONCEPT

The concept of scaffolding (Bruner, 1975) is based on the work of Vygotsky, who proposed that with an adult's assistance, children could accomplish tasks that they ordinarily could not perform independently. Scaffolded instruction is "the systematic sequencing of prompted content, materials, tasks, and teacher and peer support to optimize learning" (Dickson, Chard, & Simmons, 1993). Scaffolding is a process in which students are given support until they can apply new skills and strategies independently (Rosenshine & Meister, 1992).

Carol Read says in her article: “Scaffolding children’s talk and learning”: “Scaffolding is the metaphorical concept used to describe the interactive verbal support provided by adults to guide a child through the ZPD and enable them to carry out a task that they would be unable to do without help.” “Scaffolding refers to the particular kind of help, assistance and support that enables a child to do a task which they cannot quite manage on their own and which brings them closer to a state of competence that will enable them to carry out other similar tasks independently in the future.”

2. SOME BENEFITS OF USING SCAFFOLDING

Some features of scaffolding are:

-          Scaffolding helps the teacher to motivate their students, taking into account their needs.

-          Scaffolding can be used at any level of education and in any discipline, but it requires detailed planning on the part of the teacher.

-          An effective scaffolding has the following features; Creating children’s interest in the task; simplifying the task; reminding them the goal; pointing out key things to do; showing the child other ways of doing; controlling the child’s frustration; demonstrating an idealised way of doing the task.

-          As the result of the scaffolding which has taken place, the child has achieved a greater level of competence and independent functioning.


3. UNDERSTANDING THE NOTION OF SCAFFOLDING

 

4. DO YOU WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT SCAFFOLDING?

-         http://www.ehow.com/facts_5162695_scaffolding-teaching.html

-         http://www.carolread.com/articles/s%20talk%20and%20learning.pdf

-         http://www.niu.edu/taconnections/2008/fall/scaffolding.shtml

-         http://www.cec.sped.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Scaffolding&Template=/TaggedPage/TaggedPageDisplay.cfm&TPLID=24&ContentID=4703

-         http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w715UYLOvCk