Monday 20 April 2020

WORLD BOOK DAY - A COLLABORATIVE READING IN CONFINEMENT -

WORLD BOOK DAY - A COLLABORATIVE READING IN CONFINEMENT



Even while living in confinement, we have to find the way to work with our students the different skills they'll need in the future. This is one of the reasons I've prepared some material to work reading for pleasure in a collaborative way. These are the steps of our task for this week in our Google Classroom:

  • I've chosen two different adapted novels according to my group levels. 
  • I've divided the pages into the students in each group. So they know which pages have to read aloud.
  • Some tools and apps for revising their pronunciation and entonation have been provided.
  • The task consists in recording a video of themselves while reading aloud the excerpts that have been assigned to them.
  • After that, they'll send me the videos and we'll have a collaborative reading of the same book.
When I've posted the task on Classroom this morning, I've also included an evaluation guide, so they know how I'm going to grade their readings. I've only considered three criteria to grade this task, with three levels each one:


The task deadline is on Friday, so they have five days to prepare properly, the part of the book they have to read and record.

Finally, I've given to them some recomendations on films about these novels, and I've invited them to participate in a Kahoot Challenge, about Literature in English:


I hope they definitely start loving literature!!!!!

World Book Day | High Green Primary School
Pic taken from http://highgreenprimary.co.uk/2020/02/world-book-day/


Thursday 24 October 2019

HALLOWEEN STORIES

Resultado de imagen de halloween stories
Taken from http://www.yalsa.ala.org/thehub/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/scary-stories-for-halloween.jpg
HALLOWEEN: LET´S CREATE SOME COLLECTIVE STORIES

Are you bored of working with the same activities in the classroom every Halloween?. One of the ideas that works for me is to create collective stories. I give students some prompts so they can choose one of them and start making up different stories. What they like the most is working in groups, so the story is written between all of them.

Some of the prompts you can use are:

  1. You have had a strange feeling for a few days now. Today you’ve been feeling very energetic and tired at the same time. Your arm has been itching. It’s killing you now. You look at your forearm and see it for the first time. Something is moving under your skin.
  2. You open your eyes to complete darkness. The last thing you remember is the dog running out into the road, the brightness of the day light, and your car headed off the road. Then you realize that you are hanging upside down. 
  3. Your driving on a country road. It is late at night. You are far from home. You realize, as you check your mirrors, there is a man you do not know, hiding on the floor of your back seat.
  4. It’s 3 am. Your room is dark, but you can see that there is someone, standing at the foot of your bed. He or she is wearing a clown costume, and it has a knife.
  5. At 3 am you wake up out of a very sound sleep. You hear the ice cream truck outside of your house. And you realize, the sound that woke you up, was the sound of your 4 year old daughter.
  6. You are running late. After quickly getting ready, you rush out of the house and to your car door. A sound gets your attention, there is a fully grown male lion, just a few feet from you. Your car door is still locked.
  7. The worst cramps you have ever had set in on your biceps. It came on so suddenly. You drop to your knees, looking through your bedroom window, you see the full moon. You hear a little voice behind you, “Mommy?” 
  8. You are frozen with fear. You open your eyes, the tent is dark. But you can feel the heavy weight of a large tarantula covering one eye. Through the other eye you can see the shadows, from the moonlight, of other spiders covering the tent.
  9. The man leans into you. There is a dark red almost black color to the whites of his eyes. He is so close his nose is almost touching your nose. You can feel his breath when he says, “We all have it in here. We are all infected."


Resultado de imagen de HALLOWEEN
Pic taken from https://static.anuevayork.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/19195739/Co%CC%81mo-celebrar-el-Halloween-en-Nueva-York.jpg

Monday 7 January 2019

LET'S REVIEW RELATIVE CLAUSES!!!!

IMPORTANT THINGS TO REMEMBER:

RELATIVE PARTICLES:
  • We use relative pronouns and adverbs to introduce relative clauses.
  • They have the same form than interrogative pronouns.
  • They are also conjunctions since they are used to join sentences.
  • They refer back to nouns and pronouns which are mentioned before. 
  • These nouns and pronouns are called the antecedent.
  • Relative particles are positioned close to their antecedents.
Resultado de imagen de relative pronouns
Image taken form https://twitter.com/MissValeria2008

  • "That" is not used in non-defining relative  clauses.
  • "Who, that, and which" can be omitted in defining relative  clauses if they are not the subject of the relative clause.

    RELATIVE CLAUSES:

    Resultado de imagen de relative clauses examples
    Image taken from https://www.theschoolrun.com/what-is-a-relative-clause

    • We use commas to separate a non-defining relative clause from the main clause. 
    Let's check what you can do ...



    Saturday 13 October 2018

    MORE ABOUT STORYTELLING...

    Resultado de imagen de STORYTELLING
    Image from https://barsocialmedia1.wordpress.com

    In my last post, CLICK HERE to read it, I dealt with an activity in which our students have to create stories from images or different prompts.

    Today, I'd like to set some important aspects about this kind of activity, and analyse why storytelling is an ideal resource to develop and improve EFL students' skills.

    Why is STORYTELLING such a amazing activity?
    Resultado de imagen de storyteller
    Taken from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cr7-v2FdQw0

    Telling stories in our digital era has turned into a powerful tool for our EFL classroom. There are many benefits which justify the use of this unlimited resource:

    • It provides students with motivation, fun, curiosity, and favourable skills for the learning process.
    • It helps us establish connections between contents, and also organise information.
    • It promotes a great amount of values to be worked on in the classroom.
    • It encourages the critical thought from story reflections.
    • It develops social skills such as the active listening and empathy.
    • It allows students to pay more attention and to get a higher concentration level. 
    • It generates a link between the teacher and students, by facilitating a more fluent communication and bidirectional interaction.
    • It contributes to a relaxed and participative work environment.
    • It stimulates students' creativity and imagination.
    • It causes an emotional involment which allows messages to be interpreted faster and in a deeper way.
    There are many websites that can help us prepare a storytelling activity. However, I've listed what I do to make sure the activity to be a succesful one:

    Resultado de imagen de how
    From https://medium.com/

    BUT HOW?
    • Draw a grid on the board and then write one word in each box. The more complicated you want the activity, the bigger the grid will be. You can use vocabulary to be reviewed  together with new words. Try to include a mixture of words of any category to help students enrich the text.
    • Let students know that the activity goal is to create a story using all the words on the board. They can use whatever they want, but make sure they include all the written words.
    • The first time you do this kind of activity you ca use a model to be followed.
    • If students are high level, they will be able to generate their own vocabulary grid from textbook or classnotes.
    • This is an ideal activity for pairing.
    WHAT ELSE?

      • Students can vote on the best stories at the end of the lesson, labelling different categories, such as
        •  the most creative story;
        • the most interesting story;
        • the funniest one;
        • the best-told story, etc.
      • They can also rewrite other groups' stories as a radio drama.
        • These can be recorded to be published as postcats.
        • Or be performed as a short play.
      Resultado de imagen de feedback
      Image taken from https://www.burkert.com/en/Contact/Contact/Feedback


      EVALUATION AND FEEDBACK

      After listening all their stories, I like to give students feedback on every aspect of the activity. I always write down anything they have to improve or correct, regarding, not only formal part of language, but also any aspect of performing.

      They get some notes from me after the first exposition of the story, so they can correct any aspect before the final recording or performing to an audience outside the class.



      I hope you and your students enjoy the experience as much as I do!!!!


      LET'S CREATE A STORY TOGETHER!!!!

      Resultado de imagen de CREATE A STORY
      Image from https://bactheatre.org/classes/oaklandwinterPP


      Reading is a perfect activity to learn vocabulary, but why not to play to be writers o strorytellers?

      Recently, I've been brooding on how to make you, my students, create your own stories, and finally, I've come across a website which I've loved from the first time I saw it. 

      So, definitely, it was love at first sight!!!! 

      Resultado de imagen de emoji enamorado
      Image from http://www.stickpng.com/es/img/iconos-logotipos-emojis/emoticonos/emoticon-enamorada


      This activitiy can be done to practise both, written or spoken language.

      Please, click HERE to visit this marvellous website, and we can then start to enjoy the amazing world of creating new stories!!!!!

      "WRITING IS EASY. ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS CROSS OUT THE WRONG WORDS."
      - MARK TWAIN.


      Wednesday 21 March 2018

      PBL (Proyect Based Learning)

      Resultado de imagen de project based learning
      Pic from https://blog.trello.com/project-based-learning-with-project-lead-the-way


      I've just finished a very useful training course on PBL, and I have only wonderful words about the different things I've learnt to do.

      Although I've already used this type of methodology before, I didn't know exactly how it worked as a whole.

      So, I've made a decision and I'm going to make use of this methodology with some of my groups next term.

      I've prepared a type of handbook to have all the information close by.

      Resultado de imagen de good luck












      https://drive.google.com/open?id=19ADY7uEAV8aEzdBlWludZJLzofXeyLfj