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?

Assessment: Videos

Hi again! This time we want to share with you our ideas about the videos that we had to see!

Oral Interaction Rubric

Oral interaction rubric

Open publication - Free publishing - More english

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,...).

Multiple intelligences

Do you already know what the multiple intelligences are?

Inteligencias multiples on Prezi

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:

http://www.esolcourses.com/topics/learn-english-with-songs.html

2. Visual intelligence

Click to see a visual dictionary!

http://visual.merriam-webster.com/

3. Interpersonal intelligence

http://www.teflgames.com/gamesa.html

4. Intrapersonal intelligence

http://www.5minuteenglish.com/

5. Bodily/kinesthetic intelligence

Let's go to make a play:

http://www.cuentosparachicos.com/BIL/teatro/index.htm

6. Logic/maths intelligence

Do you like maths?

http://www.adaptedmind.com/Math-Worksheets.html?type=hs

and crosswords?

http://iteslj.org/cw/

7. Naturalistic intelligence

Games about nature and science:

http://www.outdoor-nature-child.com/nature-true-false.html

8. Existential intelligence

This article can help us to improve the existencial intelligence:

http://www.mindbodygreen.com/0-1631/Meditation-for-Kids-4-Ways-to-Start-Kids-Meditating.html

9. Verbal intelligence

Read the news!

http://www.studyenglishnews.com/elemuknewschoosestory.html (easy)

http://www.studyenglishnews.com/advuknewschoosestory.html (difficult)