Celebrating Easter in the first cycle of ESO

My first ESO students do not really know that Easter is not celebrated in all parts of the world in the same way. That is the reason why we are going to watch this great video to see the differences between Spain and the UK. Topics such as the Easter hunt, the Easter bunnies or the Easter eggs are unkown to our students, so we will be working on that through the use of different worksheets found in this page called Activity Village

I hope you all have a Happy Easter!!!

5th November: The Gunpowder Plot

Blog de TIC en lenguas extranjeras

We have ben talking in our 1st Bachillerato class about Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot, we do not have much time in class so, for me, it is a great pleasure to see that the Blog de TIC en Lenguas Extranjeras, offers a great article by Mª Jesús in which she makes a link to a fantastic webquest that she has done called Bonfire Night. The Gunpowder Plot.

Guy Fawkes was the head of a catholic plot against king James I, the attempt was to explode the Houses of Parliament and have a catholic heir in James I's daughter, if you want to know more, do the webquest.

Go and have a look at the blog and the webquest I am talking about, then, come back and leave your comments!!!

Learning vocabulary: the family.

I like to teach and review family vocabulary with my students through a genealogical tree, as the one you can see in the image. When they understand the diagram (it may be difficult for those on 1st ESO), it is easier for them to remember the names of family members. We see this diagran and then I ask them to draw their families and we see what their families are like, this usually makes them feel well and it is a good activity to do in the first days.

We also see other famous family trees, like that of The Simpsons and we make sentences of the type: "Bart is Lisa's brother", so we  revise the Saxon genitive too.

We also play other games like this one I found at English Flash Games to Learn Vocabulary, with three different levels. My students like it very much. We do this in class with the help of WIBs.

Have you tried doing these things? Do you learn vocabulary better this way?
Leave your comments and tell us!!

Welcome back!!

Marina de Cudeyo's Corner

Hello my dear students!!! I am looking forward to tomorrow, to have you in class and start a new course together. This year I am very happy because I continue at the same High School and I am going to have some of my students from last year for sure! ;) If nothing happens I will be tutoring a 2nd year group, so I may have some of my students from last year and others as well as I will be teaching in, at least, three 2nd year groups. I will also have my dear 4th year students of last year in English as 3rd language in 1st Bachillerato!! I am excited because of all of this.

However I am also a bit sad because I will be teaching more time and will have less time to prepare classes and correct at home. I will also be teaching French (which I love and have also studied hard) but I will need more time to prepare these classes too. I say this, because I will probably have less time to write to you here in the blog, but remember: I love your comments and will try to solve your questions, comments or demands as soon as I can.

Ready for tomorrow?? I hope you are. Here is a sentence that may inspire you at the beginning of the course:

I invite you to enter!!!

Bend it like Beckham: Watching a film in class.

 I want to recommend this film for educational purposes, Bend it like Beckham is a film which came out in the year 2002 by the female British director Gurinder Chadha. This film won some minor awards and was nominated for Best Film (musical or comedy) in the Golden Globes of the following year. Gurinder Chadha is of Indian origin and that background also appears in the film.

What is the plot of the film?

Jess (Parminder Nagra), a Hindi girl who lives with her parents and elder sister in London, loves playing football and is very good at it. During the process of engagement of her sister, her dream of becoming a professional footballer  (just like her admired Beckham) is about to be fulfillled. In the way, she finds problems because of the traditions and customs her family has about what a girl should be and act like. She finds herself in the middle of two worlds, her family's and the one her new friend Jules (Keira Knightley) and her trainer  (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers) represent.

Why in a class?

There are many reasons to watch this film in a class, first of all, it is funny, students laugh while watching it, there's a love story and there is football too!! Also, the setting is London!! Besides, it is a good way to open up discussions about some topics we may come across in our classes, like:

1. Cultural contrasts.
2. Masculine and feminine roles in society.
3. Discrimination.
4. Parents-children relationships.
5. Effort enhancing.
6. Homosexuality.
7. Inmmigration.

Watching it in English?

I think that this film can be watched by students from 1st of ESO to 2nd of Bachillerato (if we had the time!!)  . Watching it in English in lower courses would be difficult because of the Hindi (especially) and British accents. With lower courses I recommend watching it in Spanish and may be taking only two or three scenes in English to work deeper with.

Have you seen this film? At school? Did you like it? Do you agree with me?

Leave your comments!!!

If I were president, I would...

This week we have had our local elections in the class of 4th of ESO. First, all my students wrote a composition with the title "If I were president, I would..." Then, I corrected them; all of my students had very good ideas to overcome the crisis we are in, a bit populist and inmature but very well organised. We set a date for the election and they prepared themselves to give a speech and persuade the rest of their mates to vote for them.

Picture of Manuel's poster.

Many rhetorical devices were used, such as repetition and parallelisms, just like in real political speeches!!! They enjoyed very much their mates oral expositions and I really liked this activity because it fosters speaking in public and, as they were really into getting the votes, they became less anxious about their English and more aware of what communication is all about.

Montse's presentation.

All of them had great ideas and exposed them in a fantastic way, that is why I wanted to thank them, not only for this activity, but for the amazing course that we have had together. I hope next year we are together again. So thank you: Marina, Antonio, María José, Miguel, Ana, Anabel, Francisco Javier, Ángela, Alba, Beatriz, Montse, Javier and Manuel.
If you want to see how I have treated the conditionals in the blog in other ways, check the following:

• What if...?
• What would happen if bees disappeared?
• What a wonderful world.

You can also leave your comments, you know I love them!!!

Collaborative music quiz with Google Docs

 We have been working on types of music and musical instruments  in the class of 1st ESO. The idea came up to me to make a quiz similar to  the one we had in our Swith 1 by Oxford University Press classbook; so my students wrote a question each and I used Google Docs to do the quiz you can see here.

I hope they like how it came out in the end and send the answers and enjoy their own music quiz.I dedicate this post to my students of 1st of ESO C, they are the ones I am tutoring this year and I really appreciate all of them. This is for you!!!

Comparative and Superlatives: Monsters competition

Monsters, Inc.

For my classes of 2nd of ESO, I ask my students to draw a monster, each of them, at home and to write a small description of how they are; not only physically, but also how they behave and so on, using adjectives of all sorts, such as soft, aggressive, tall, thin, shy, brave...


We start by making sure that they know when we need a comparative (we compare two items or two sets) or a superlative (we compare an item or set with a group of items or sets). Then, we divide adjectives into short (one syllable -strong-  or two syllable ending in -y -pretty) and long adjectives (two syllables -narrow- or more - interesting) and explain them that short adjectives take a suffix to make comparatives and superlatives; whereas long adjectives use a periphrasis. To say the set that we are comparing with, we use the preposition in (in the class, in the school...).

	short	long
comparative	adjective +er than (taller than)	more adjective than (more difficult than)
superlative	the adjective +est (the tallest)	the most adjective (the most difficult)

 Finally, we point out the irregular form of the adjectives good, bad, far and old (for families use mainly):

	comparative form	superlative form
good	better than	the best
bad	worse than	the worst
far	farther than/ further than	the farthest/ the furthest
old	elder than	the eldest

 To end up, we make lots of exercises comparing the pictures the students have made. We may also use activities from the net such as the ones in English-zone.com1 and English-zone.com2, or we may play with the IWB this fantastic game by marks-english-school.com or this one by Kids ESL Games.


We can start comparing the monsters in the image above. Do you remember their names?
Leave your comparisons in the form of comments!!!

What were you doing...?

The Simpsons

What is the past continuous?

It is a tense verb that is formed with the past tense of the verb to be, that is was or were and the   -ing form of the verb we want to use. To form the negative we use the forms wasn't and weren't and we use the verb to be as the auxiliary to form the interrogative putting it before the subject, then the subject and then the -ing form of the verb we need.

To see it more clearly:

Affirmative	Negative	Interrogative
I was eating.	I wasn't eating.	Was I eating?
Mary was sleeping.	Mary wasn't sleeping.	Was Mary sleeping?
They were listening to a CD.	They weren't listening to a CD:	Were they listening to a CD?

When do we use the past continuous?
We use the past continuous with non-stative verbs, that is, verbs that, due to their meaning do not accept well the progress, such as know, have, and like and many others. We use it mainly for three things:

• To talk about something that was happening in the past at a given time. 
• To describe a scene in a narration.
• To talk about something that was in progress and interrupted by another action (which would be in the past simple).

We also use it to talk about things that were happening at the same time in the past. If you want to practice the past continuous, you can go to Perfect English Grammar or English Grammar Secrets.

Ok, now that we know more about the past continuous, can you tell me what were the Simpsons doing at their last Thanksgiving dinner? Leave your comments and tell us!!

Organising a make-up show.

Mac Cosmetics

The majority of the girls like to make up, the majority of the boys hate waiting while the girls are making up...
In the same way that we have organised a fashion show, it occured to me that a good way to practise  colours and  parts of the face could be to organise a make up show in which boys could be the make-up artists and girls their models; in this way, we could teach them several issues that have to do not only with grammar (present continuous and "going to" for plans, adjectives before nouns...) and vocabulary, but also with education on values.

What values can we promote with this activity?
We can teach girls to make up in a more natural way, help them with their self-esteem besides working on inner beauty as well. We can teach the boys patience and understanding for the girls.
Moreover, we can give a second turn and change roles so that all of them are also made-up in different forms, such as tigers, dinousaurs, skulls, butterflies and so on. Doing so, sympathetic values would emerge.

You can teach students how to paint their faces at the YouTube channel called Face Painting with Karina.

If you want to practise a little more your present continuous, go to Tolearnenglish.com.

What do you think of this idea? Would your class like a make-up session just for a day?
Leave your comments and tell us!!

Model composition: What did you do last weekend?

Helping and motivating our students to write is part of our work as teachers of a language, it is hard work because it implies correcting and assessing lots of compositions...

A good way to make it easy is to give them  a model composition, and then, ask them to follow the model with their own information. Here follows an example that answers (in part) the question in the title:

Last weekend I had a great time. On Saturday morning, I went to Córdoba with my family by train. First, we went to the train station and bought the tickets. Then, we got on the train and arrived at Córdoba very quickly. After that,we visited the Mezquita. Next, we went to a very famous restaurant and ate very well. Finally, we took the train back to Seville. It was a fun and interesting day!

Depending on the level of our students, we can give them the model taking out more or less information; we can give them the verbs they would need or the sequence connectors and so on. Thanks to the Digital Interactive Whiteboards we have in our classes nowadays, we can directly erase the information in class, in this way, it is more visual for our students and therefore, easier to rememember what information  they need to complete their compositions.

Students usually like to write about real, personal topics, it is easier for them because they do not have to imagine anything. In addition to this, they get to know and respect  their mates when they are allowed to read or listen to their mates' compositions.

There is a nice story-maker at the British Council for kids.

So, what did you do last weekend?
Leave your comments and tell us!!!

What if...?

What if...? on Prezi

Next week we are going to start working on the three types of conditional clauses. In this presentation we have almost every possibility, nevertheless we will focus on the most used and needed at our level.

We are going to work a lot on them so that you can see and produce the differences in use; we will be doing the exercises in our textbooks, but you can also use several pages in internet like this one or this one, which is easier.

Remember, if you have any problems, doubts, or whatever need, you can always leave your comments!!!

Relative clauses

Relative clauses on Prezi

My students of 1st of Bachillerato asked me if we could use the PDI (Pizarra Digital Interactiva) they have in class now because one of their mates has an injured foot, and they are now in a 2nd of ESO class. Therefore, tomorrow I am going to explain the relative clauses though a Prezi with the help of the PDI.

When we finish, we are going to do some exercises in the book, but also in the PDI, in different pages:

• English for you online.
• English Exercises.org.
• Agenda web.

I hope they enjoy it and appreciate my hard work. 

I also hope they work a lot on relatives and send me a comment to tell me how they have done or ask me any doubts!!

Organising a fashion show (Learning clothes vocabulary)

Clothing Kid

One of the funniest ways to learn vocabulary is to use it in combination with the present continuous form of the verb "to wear" as if the students  in the class were in a fashion show, parents can also do this at home.

In this way , we would have a presenter or two who would say what their mates are wearing, "s/he is wearing..." or only presenting the models and have the models say: "I am wearing..." Remember to use the colours before the clothes items and, for higher levels, the clothes patterns.

It is also fun to prepare this fashion show; they have to decide what clothes would they wear, what the order of the models is, how long do these models have to be on stage... in this way, they use the second language for a communicative purpose and also develop other competences such as learning to learn, social competence, mathematical competence...

You can also find many worksheets and activities on the internet, I leave you some examples I have found which I think suit my students, but there are many more:

• Boggles Worl ESL to download directly in your computer.
• 
  
• Kids in English
• 
  
• My English Printables

Those of my students who send me a commentary describing the children in the picture, will get a reward, so leave your comments!!