Holidays for the whole family.

Hi there!!
Easter break is here and kids are at home, enjoying their free time with their families. So, I think there's no better occasion than this to celebrate our first day of holidays singing and dancing with our families. After all, they are so important... Enjoy!!

Happy Father's day!!

Hello again!!

We celebrated Father's day yesterday. It's a great opportunity to marvel our dads with a little gift to remind them that we love and cherish them. Of course, attractive for kids as they can be, crafts are not really a main goal in an English class. But if we use them wisely, they can be a good exercise to practice speaking and listening (now and then). You must give them instructions they have to understand (in order to follow them). You can practice a lot of vocabulary related to crafts (materials, tools...). And it's funnier and lighter than other kind of exercises for kids (remember, breaking the routine is a good idea...provided you don't do it too often!!).

These are some examples of the crafts we carried out at school. The first one is a cup (to the best daddy in the world). It consists of two cardboard glasses (you know, coffee glasses, you can get them in any 99-cent shop) painted, decorated (with glitter, cotton, stickers...) and then sticked together. We made two holes in each side with a punch, so we could introduce the wire to make the handles. It was a long process but it wasn't difficult at all and they managed to accomplish almost everything on their own (except sticking both glasses together), which is great, considering they are just 5 and 6 years old.

The second example is a card. It's a little bit more difficult, so I recommend you to try it with older kids. First, you must cut a piece of black card the size of a A4 paper. When it's ready, you fold it to create the two parts of the jacket. If you open it again, you'll see a rectangle the right size for the shirt (made of white paper). You cut the shirt and stick it to the jacket. After that, you close the jacket (you'll have to use some stickers so it keep closed, we used their initials and their dad's) and you fold the two lapels. Finally, you can complete the card with a tie and maybe a handkerchief or a flower (made of silk paper). As an option, you can write and draw something for your dad in the shirt (before you close the jacket, obviously).

We had a lot of fun carrying out both crafts and I'm sure their parents really liked them, so I strongly recommend them to you. Enjoy!!

The benefits of working together.

Hello again!!

Reading some reports about speaking classes in Spain, I got the most disturbing information. Our kids just talk an hour and a half each year!! That's because there are too many students in a classroom and the method we still use is teacher-lead. So students are just expected to answer certain questions...that's all the talking they really do. And it's not nearly good enough.

This is a difficult and delicate situation, but there are some things us teachers can try if we want to start changing things. Cooperative teaching and learning is one of them.

For example: there's an exercise I really like called "find someone who". Each student receives a list of questions and he/she has to ask as many of his/her partners as possible, trying to find someone who answers those questions saying yes. This way, kids practice vocabulary, structures (questions and answers), conversation skills (in a very basic way, but it's a necessary training if we want them to reach the next level)...not to mention the liveliness of the activity. Kids get up, walk around the classroom, ask and answer questions and feel completely self-sufficient (even if the teacher has to be there to help them and check they don't cheat....for example speaking in their mother tongue if they think they won't be heard, and I can tell you, they try).

There are lots of examples of a "find someone who" related to telling the time and daily routines, but you can make your own exercises and adapt them to any vocabulary or structures you want to practice. It's really worth the try.

Enjoy!!

Little Diors

Hello again!

It's raining again and children can go out and play. So it is our duty to provide entertainments so they don't die of boredom!! I'd like to share this activity with you, we tried it yerterday at school and it was even better than I had previously imagined!!

You know kids love manipulative stuff. So I went to the nearest Primark and I found a little box with the label "Felt dress up". It contained a little felt doll (a girl) and lots and lots of  felt clothes and accesories (and just for 1,50, which is great!!). My students had a great time dressing up the doll: the chose the different items and they had to describe the result of their dressing to me, so we practiced clothes vocabulary as well as structures. Here you are some of the amazing designs they made up together.

I really recommend this to you. It's perhaps better for small groups (if there are too many children they will have to wait and they will get restless), or even for home, if you want to have a funny and quiet time revising English vocabulary with your kids.

Enjoy!!