How to work on daily routines.

We are going to work on daily routines through these two videos, first we will watch the first and practice the vocabulary; we will also take the opportunity to make sentences and use the present simple tense. Then, we will watch the second one which is a short video about a girl's routine and we will try to write the sentences, maybe some other day we will use the Mozilla Popcorn Maker to write on top of the video what the girl does.

Some exercises to work daily routines and the present simple:

• English Exercises.
• Enjoy English
• Learning Chocolate
• British Council.

Did you like the activities proposed to practice the daily routines? What do you do in your classes?

My students' work, part 4

2ºB's class

In the second term, we have worked on the Word of the Day project of which I have already told you. I show you some of the examples. For me, the most important thing is that my students get to expose their works in public and in English!! Thanks to all of them!!

Did you know these words??

My students' work, part 3

We have been working in the second term on how to present and learn new vocabulary, so my students chose a word and explained it to their mates with the support, digital or not, that they wanted. On this day, @SergioVeil presented the word leader with the help of a powerpoint presentation.

What do you think of it?

My students' work, part 2

 

Another infographic to present the uses of "There was/were", this one, done by Rocio with the Piktochart tool too. Congrats Rocio, good work!!

My students' work. Part 1.

Around the world in 80 days

We are finishing the course, and it is true that we, teachers have worked a lot, but I am very happy to say that some of our students have worked hard too. I am going to present you some of the works that my students have done, starting with @Nerea_Lobo and @MariaAlonso1998. They accepted the challenge of imagining how Phileas Fogg would travel today and also of using a digital tool to present it, you can see the result on top, and if you press the link, you see it completely. Good work girls!!!
What do you think of their work? 
Please leave your comments and say!!

Model composition: Who was Sara Montiel?

Sara Montiel together with James Dean (photo taken from Rohmerin's blog)

Just five days ago, two very well-known women (for different reasons) died on the 8th April. The two of them may be quite unknown for our students, one of them was Margaret Thatcher and the other was Sara Montiel. We can take advantage of this and practice the past simple to talk about life events, as we did with Jane Austen or Frida Kahlo.

Sara Montiel was born as Mª Antonia Abad in Campo de Criptana in 1928. When she was just 15 years old, she took part in a talent show and won. She started making films in Spain and, very soon, she decided to go to America to start making films there. In 1954, she made her first Hollywood film called Veracruz with  very big actors like Gary Cooper. She came back to Spain and became a great diva and star.

At the beginning of the 1970s, she decided to stop making films in Spain and dedicated her work to singing. She has been married four times, the first in California, the second in Rome, the third in Palma de Mallorca with her great love, Pepe Tous, with whom she adopted two children and the fourth a few years ago with a Cuban men much younger than her.

Sara has sung together with her own son and other Spanish artists and has conducted two TV programmes in Spain. She wasn't ill and her death took everybody by surprise even though she was 85 years old.

Did you know her? Have you seen any of her films?

Practising English with Apps 5: Irregular verbs Sergeev Sergey

Google Play Store

Today I want to present you another app related to the learning of the irregular verbs, I have thought that this one is better for students of Bachillerato, rather than the other one I presented which is for younger students, or even for adults who want to review them.

This app has a much more serious interface and many more verbs, we can start reviewing verbs right away or we can open the menu in which we have 4 possibilities:

1. Word groups: we can set the app to work on different types of groups of verbs in terms of difficulty or different  coincidences in the forms of the verbs.
2. Word list: you can choose the verbs you want to work on.
3. Preferences: you can set limits of time or number of questions and other settings.
4. Additional: here you find additional information on the author and about the paid version.

The dynamics is very simple, when you start, a verb in Spanish appears together with three gaps for the base, the simple past and the past participle forms; you can type directly the answers, however, you can also listen to it, choose from 4 different options or directly check the answer of a particular form. At the end, you are given a percentage of right answers.

What do you think of this app? Do you prefer this one or the other one (Irregular verbs 2)?

Leave a comment and tell us!

Practising English with Apps

Practising English with Apps 4: Irregular verbs 2

Irregular verbs 2

Now that we are on holidays, we are going to continue with the apps' series. This time, I am presenting you one to learn English irregular verbs. When you open the menu, you find a list of the verbs which are in the game and you can listen to the three forms (base, past and past participle). You also find an Options button, if you click there, you can change the amount of verbs you want to play with in each game.

 You find the game by clicking on the Practice button. You see three chests and one of the three forms of the irregular verb; you also see four keys accompanied by the other two forms and other similar ones; besides, you can listen to the three forms if you do not remember them. You click on Check and you see if you are right; at the end of the game you can replay the wrong ones only, so that you can learn them better.

What do you think of this app? I think it is very good, especially for the first cycle of ESO because it does not have many verbs.

Practising English with Apps.

Practising English with Apps 3: ML Phrasal Verbs

ML Phrasal Verbs

This is the third of the series of Apps I am presenting you, you can have a look at the other two here. I think this is a great app to have in your mobile device and use it every now and then. As you know, I hate lists as a way of learning vocabulary, but I do think repetition is a good way to learn new words if there is some kind of reelaboration and this app is great for that.

In the main menu, we have two different parts:

• Reference.
• Phrasal Verbs Games.

In the Reference part, there is a list of up to 1,063 phrasal verbs with their meaning in English, an example and the translation to Spanish. There is a star next to each phrasal verb so that you can make your own list of phrasal verbs (just in case you need to revise some for an exam, for example), it is difficult to click on the star, though.

In the Phrasal Verbs Games part, we find three different types of games:

1. Verb by Meaning: you have the phrasal verb and an example and you have to choose a synonym phrase or word in English.
2. Meaning by Verb: you have the synonym phrase or word and you have to choose the phrasal verb (no examples in this one).
3. Anagram: This is my favourite!! There are disordered letters on screen that you have to put in the correct order to form 2 or 3-word phrasal verbs. If you press the word CUE, you get a synonym word or phrase. I like this one because I think it gets our brains to think which word can it be with the letters you see and I think that mechanism in the brain makes it easier to remember the phrasal verbs.

This is a very goog way of learning phrasal verbs and it is totally free, (you get ads, but they do not interfere with the game), so I strongly reccommend it. You can download it through the link under the picture and have fun!!!

What did the Three Wise Men bring you?

In Spain, the tradition is that during the night of the 5th to the 6th of January, the Three Wise Men bring presents to those who have behaved well. In my house, we often leave our shoes so that they know whose presents they have to leave at our place.
Getting back to work is hard for adults, but even more for children and students who have had some days off after a great last effort, so we should try to have some interesting and entertaining ideas for the first class.
They love talking about what they have received and about what they have done in the past days, so we should take advantage of that:

• Give them some vocabulary to talk about the presents they have received and some minutes to organize themselves and ask structures or vocabulary; then ask them to make a conversation of two friends that meet on the 6th and tell each other what they got.
• Ask older students to choose the best day of the holidays and talk about it in the past.
• For younger stuedents it is easier to use prompts of the things they have received and help them to make a short description: I got a big/small (present) to play at home/in the street, to play alone/with friends...

If you are a student, say what activities would you like doing on the first day?

If you are a teacher, say what activities do you like doing on the first day?

Remember to vote for me if you have not already done it, that would be my best present this year!! ;)

Practising English with Apps 2: Johny Grammar's Quiz

British Council

As I told you, I am going to show you another app . It is called Johny Grammar's Quiz. This is a very fun and entertaining app also designed by British Council. In this app, you can practice things we see in class in a very easy way. You have a menu subdivided into three:

1. Spelling quiz
2. Grammar quiz, and
3. Vocab quiz

In the spelling quiz, there are two stages: in the first one you say which word is correct; and in the second one, you have to point out the one that is wrong and rewrite it again correcting it. The grammar and vocabulary quizzes are divided into three different levels: easy, medium and hard. The grammar quiz has got four different cattegories depending on the level you choose, for instance modals or conjunctions (on the hardest level), infinitives or gerunds (medium level) and irregular verbs (easiest level). The vocabulary quiz has got ten different categories including phrasal verbs, idioms, food, small talk and so on.

You can practice for hours with this free app for Android. You can also enjoy yourself at the same time. Try it and tell us!! Please, those of you who downloaded the Wordshake app and are literally hooked on it, leave your comments so that your mates know it is true!!

Remember, if you like the blog or this post and think others will like it too, they will find it easier if you push the g+ bottom below or on top right. Thanks!!!

Practising English with Apps 1: Wordshake.

British Council

In a few days (just 5!!!), we will have much more free time. That is the reason why I am presenting  you this new serie of posts: Practising English with Apps.  In this serie, I am going to show you apps that I have come across and that I think are very good to practise English in a fun and entertaining way and/or apps that treat a specific issue, such as vocabulary, grammar...

I am starting today  with Wordshake, this is a free app that you can find at Google Play and it consists of building words of more than three letters with 6 or 9 random letters in a given time (1 or 3 minutes) depending on the level you choose. You get more points the longer the words are. This is a fun way to learn new vocabulary because when you finish, the app makes a list of the words you built but also of all the possibilities that you had, so you see many new words or revise many that you already know but did not have the time to see.

It is quite fun and takes so few time that you can play with it almost everywhere!!

Do download it!! Then, tell me, how many points did you get?

If you liked this post and/or the blog, please remember to g+ at the top right of the page so that more people get here!!! Thanks!!!

Improving reading comprehension in secondary education(ESL)

@AnaGarciaTeacha

We are having our Reading Comprehension tests next week, I know, it is such a pain!!! But I am going to give you some tips to work on them.

What should you do first?PREDICTING!!!
Have a look at the title and any pictures that accompany the text, also count the paragraphs. The title normally tells you the topic of the text, pictures give a lot of information which is not in English!!!! Each paragraphs brings up a new idea on the main topic. Now that you have some information, think about what ideas will come up and better than this, what words, expressions, even grammar and textual features...

What should you do next? UNDERSTANDING!!!
Read the text one paragraph by one and try to understand the main idea of each one and how it relates to the main topic (understanding a text has a lot to do with understanding what it is talking about, that is the world to which it makes reference). Don't worry about the words you don't understand, try to figure them out; two good ways are: trying to relate it to a word you know (whether in English or Spanish) or trying to fill the meaning gap - this can be fun, teachers should practise this in their classes more often. It is also important to take into account textual references such as those of personal pronouns and others.

What should you then? GET DOWN TO WORK!!!
Now it is time to read the exercise you have to do in order to show that you have understood. What do you have to do? There are different types of exercises which go from the fill-in gaps to the question answering or from multiple choice questions to finding synomyms or opposites... Depending on your level, your teacher will ask you to do different tasks. Many teachers ask students to answer questions, so it is important that you know your wh-words!!! Go back to the text and look for the information you need.

You can get deeper information on how to develop reading skills in your own language and others if you go to How to improve reading comprension. You have many corrected instances at English for Everyone.

Will you follow these tips? 

MODEL COMPOSITION: Describing a place - SEVILLA

sevilla.org

We are starting to make compositions in 1st of Bachillerato classes and, one of  the first things we do, is organising the information into paragraphs. In order to write a composition describing a place, we have said that we are going to use three paragraphs: introduction, body and conclusion. 

In the introduction, we are going to include the information related to the name of the place, its location and its population, besides from saying why we have chosen to write about that place if we have been given the opportunity to choose. In the body, we can write about many things, mainly the history of its people, their way of life, sightseeing highlights, activities that can be done  particularly in that place and any other thing that we would like to write about. In the last paragraph, we should write about our personal opinion and we could also add a recommendation to visit the place with the reasons to do so.

An example composition about Seville, our city:

Seville is one of the biggest cities in Andalucia, the south of Spain. Its population is of about 700,000 inhabitants.

Seville has been a city for a long time, and many different peoples have lived here, such as the Phoenicians, the Romans and the Moors among others. All these peoples have left many remains of their living here, so we have a great historic city centre with the Cathedral and  the Alcázar, which are part of UNESCO's World Heritage.  Seville is also famous for its impressive Holy Week processions and fantastic April's Fair. Sevillians are people who are used to enjoying life and love doing so in the streets of their magnificent city.

Seville is a great city to visit and walk all year long except for the summer, come and enjoy it.

This composition has got 133 words, which is 13 words more than what we usually ask for (100-120 words); this can be used as a model for you (both students and teachers). Try to get some information about the place before writing and do not copy directly from the source (internet, books...), allow yourself a little time between the reading and the actual writing.

I hope this is helpful for you. Please write comments if it is!!!

Learning vocabulary: diagrams

Diagrams are symbolic representations of information, they are a mixture of pictures and letters organized in a way that they  visualize  information. We usually use diagrams in science classes, but they are a great way to study vocabulary, especially if they are our students' own creations. The one above, which I created for my 2nd year classes, makes it easier for them to remember the contents: verbs that express likes and dislikes have to be followed by the verbs in the gerund (v+ing)

You can practise this structure at English Exercises or at The English Corner by Eva Casals.

We usually use diagrams for vocabulary, like that of the parts of the body or the house, but we should encourage our students to use them for vocabulary and grammar purposes, it is a good way to make their brains work and this will help them to remember the contents more easily.

Do you like diagrams? Do you use them in your classes?

Leave your comments and tell us!!

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!!!

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!!!

New page for families.

As a teacher I feel it  is very important to take into account, not only the students, but also their families. As teachers, we encounter lots of situations in which we have to help families and I think this is also a nice part of our job; it also happens the other way around, that is, we need help from the families most of the time at home but sometimes even at school!!

This is the reason why I wanted to have a part of my little space for them in the internet. Today  I am going to introduce you to the last thing I have prepared. It is written in Spanish because I teach English in Spain and many of the parents of my students have studied French or do not feel confident enough to read in English.

I hope this helps parents and they can also help me through this space where all commentaries will be welcome,   even in Spanish. I have linked it here, though it is at the top where the rest of the pages of the blog are permanently.

What do you think of this idea?
Leave your comments and tell us!!

How to post a comment in this blog?

Many of my students have been asking me how to post a comment in the blog.
As it seems a little difficult for many, I am going to try to explain it with images:
First of all you have to go to the entry and click on the word comment (next to the envelope):

A white rectangle will open where it says Enter your comment:

Write your comment clicking on the rectangle and, especially if you are a student of mine, leave your name and surname and class. (If the comment is not appropriate I can help you  write an appropriate one, so it gets published.)

It is easier if you choose Anonymous for your identification, you can also use your Google Account if you have one or any of the other possibilities, but, as I said, it is easier with Anonymous. If you have a blog in Blogger, the easiest way is to enter through your own blog.

Once you have choosen the profile,click on Publish and a new white rectangle will appear with a Preview, it tells you to write two words, write them:

You have to click on Publish again:

If you have done it successfully, a message will appear on screen: Su comentario será visible tras la aprobación.

This means that I will see it and decide whether to publish it or not, in this case, you can see the comment accepted:

I normally publish all the comments that are sent to to the blog, I will not publish them in the following cases:

• If they have rude or nasty content.
• If they talk about people of the class or other people I do not know and are not relevant to the entry.
• If they do not correspond to the entry they have been published in.
• Any other cases I consider.

I will welcome any comments from other students or also people and friends who want to write on the blog.

I hope this is helpful for you. Let's see how many of you can leave a message...

Please try to leave a message saying: 

I understood!!