Bye-bye 2019

The end of the year brings many things like changing seasons, holidays, and reflection on events that occurred during the year. 
It has been a busy year but when the work involves helping our students, families and friends, it isn't tiring but instead energizing. That's why now, when almost whole world is preparing for upcoming New Year celebrations, I want to say thank you for your support and wish you all much happiness and good health! I do wish you the warmest welcome to 2020, may it be filled with sweet madness!

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2020!

Merry Christmas to everyone !

Christmas is a time where you spend time with family and friends. It's about creating happy memories that will last a lifetime. I'm sure that you all will have many happy and cheerful moments and other ones where you will have free time. Here you have a good opportunity to get in contact with English.

Click on the Christmas cards and you will find some Christmas games!

Winter starts Today!

Hi there,

today is the very first day of winter. That means that we have some free days along the winter holidays and I have a proposal related to English for all of you. Click on the pic below and improve your English level by practicing different skills.

Ready to start December!

This is a cute and lovely Advent Calendar that you can use in your lessons. Hope you like it. Tap on the image and enjoy it!

Happy Thanksgiving Day!

American people celebrate the most important day in the year today. Children do not go to school because everybody celebrates this day with family. They want to be thankful for many things. For that reason, I am taking time to reflect on all the things that I am thankful for:

I'm so thankful for my family, my friends, my colleagues, my health and ... I'm specially thankful for the oppportunities that I have everyday to learn from my students. I also want to take a moment to thank all of your support. It means so much for me! If you click on the picture below you will find an activity for working phonetics!

Diving into plants

Hi there, another school year to participate in European projects! This time, the one I am talking about is inside the eTwinning network and it works around plants.

That means that we will learn a lot by doing and by making our school greener!. Children will plant basil, mint and parsley seeds and they will learn about how they grow.

So, we needed to introduce some vocabulary about the topic and this clear and easy ppt. Hope you find it useful for your lessons.

Are you a dinosaur?

Hi everyone, 

year 3 students are involved in a Dinosaur project and I introduced a story around dinosaurs. After that, we practised some structures. Here you have them:

Thanks eTwinning team!

No matter how good you think you are as a teacher. The most important thing about teaching is to have the humility to try always your best. And from time to time, it's always nice that your work is recognized ;D

Happy Halloween!

Hi everyone,

we celebrate Halloween today!

If you click on the image below, you will find a quizlet to introduce, check and play with some words related to this celebration.

After that, your students and you will be ready to have fun singing a halloween song. Click on the image below and go to a lyricstraining activity. Remember you can choose between the choice or the write mode.

eTwinning Quality Labels!

 “It always seems impossible until it is done.” ~ Nelson Mandela

A website with lots of resources

European Day of Languages

We celebrate the European Day of Languages today! Each year I do different actions to engage my students with languages. This time, I want to make them looking for different English messages  in the city we live. As examples, here you have some of them:

Those messages make English a useful language for understanding what they want to communicate us. If you do not pay attention to them you are losing information. So, be aware and do not lose what English offers to you in the city you live, wherever it is.

Climate change week

If you do something special every day about taking care of our planet, you make a difference.

 People around the world are becoming more conscious of the urgent need to reduce pollution and save our green and blue planet.

By the way, here you have two scientists who talk about the atmosphere as well as the oceans. Also you can learn some actions for saving our planet.

Starting a new School Year

Hi you all!
It's been a long time since I wrote a post in this blog but summer

 is finishing and we have to say hello to another school year.

Are you ready?

 It's time to keep in touch with English!

Click on the picture below and refresh school vocabulary!

Avatars everywhere

Hi there, I am doing a research about on line resources for next school year. I try to look for those apps and tools that maybe will make the English lessons time to have fun and to learn at the same time. Also, you know that I have just finished my request for the eTwinning Quality labels and, because of that, I am diving into those resources that can help us in a European project. So, today I will pay attention to presentation tools. Here you have the easiest and coolest links:
Funko offers to you a way to design a peculiar avatar. It can be fun for your English lessons because after creating the avatars, children can describe them and practice writing skills.

Pixton is a cartoon tool that allows to create awesome comics and also you can design your avatar.

Avatar maker is another free tool where you are able to create an avatar.

Face.co similar to the previous one, what do you think?

and there are many more that maybe you already know: 

Face your manga is a social application which allows to create a Japanese style avatar. Judge for yourself

or voki where students can choose a different avatar. Also they can customize what they say.

So, we have many free resources that can make our lessons awesome and unforgetable. I encourage you to use them when you want to introduce writing skills. They are going to engage kids in a flash!

16 years today

I do not why but our brain usually goes back in the past of our lifes. The one today is a memory to one of my bravest situations I have ever lived. Nowadays I can say that all is alright but it was difficult to recover myself. When you lose someone important to you, it can take time to adjust and learn to live your life. There is no right way or wrong way to grieve and it can take time. Difficult situations require it. No matter what the problem is, there will always be an opportunity here for you to either make a connection with someone, to discover something new, to explore a new path, or it might provide you with the opportunity to make a decision that could one day turn into an unexpected fact.

Personally, my family and friends were crucial and they helped me a lot. After that, I was a new person. Nowadays I am able to understand people who lose a child because I have been through that experience and you feel guilty. This is a normal part of losses. However, talking and sharing your feelings encourage you moving through your future life and, at the end, you are the one who decide to follow up because, in fact, you have a wonderful life. 

Homage to illustrators

Why this post? As many of you know, I am a children books' lover. At the very beginning I did not know why a book liked to me, but a long the years I have been aware that not only the story was important, but also illustrations were crucial for choosing a book. I follow many illustrators and I thought about writing this post due to Guillermo Mordillo's death, a famous one. When I listened to that sad new I reminded of all of those artists who had stolen my heart:
To start with and as a homage, Mr. Mordillo who was famous for his trademark noses.

Alicia Borges: she is an illustrator and a designer.

She has a webpage where you are able to follow her productions. Also you can contact with her. Once, I did it to congratulate Alicia for her productions. Also I suggested her the possibility to draw her particular and personal Alice in Wonderland, I would like a lot ;D

Anna Llenas. It's sure you have seen her most famous drawings around "The colourful monster"

Roser Capdevila. Famous because she is The Triplets' stories author.

Núria Aparicio. She has "La Pendeja" as a nickname

Charles Santore. You can read this "50 years of art and storytelling"and you will see his special way of understanding art and illustrations.

The Italian Flavia Sorrentino. Click on the picture below and you will find a lovely surprise.

Mary Blair. She was born in the early nineties and she started to work for Disney. Later, she met her husband and they worked together.

Sempé

Rébecca Dautremer. She illustrated Alice in Wonderland giving a personal point of view that I share. She says that she rather prefer drawing than speaking. 

Asking for a quality label

"Teach me yours" has been another eTwinning project where different European Countries have shared their own language at a basic level, bearing in mind multilingualism. Through the eTwinning net, we organized and planned a task per month and our students collected, learnt and recognized the most important words  around different topics: Greetings, Months, Days, seasons, weather, colours, jobs and food as the most important. After that, they compared the languages and they were able to realize that many languages have a lot in common and some of them are absolutely different. They made a difference between Roman and Germanic languages. 

Now, it's time to ask for a quality label. I wish my school could have its first one!

Another eTwinning project is finished!

"Once upon a time, the game" was an opportunity for children to discover the games in the past through a family research where parents and grandparents were able to remind their childhood moments. Some of those games perhaps are going to be forgotten today, but it was also a moment to get to know cultures from different countries through the games.

By enhancing some traditional gaming experiences, which recall memory to experiences that have marked the childhood of parents and grandparents,  children were offered the opportunity to learn, to experience and to reflect on recreational moments of the past that can still be re-proposed for their rich formative function.

The games of the past, in fact, stimulate communication and socialization, imagination and sense of adventure, creative ability through the use of different and maybe primary materials.

The main objectives of the Project were these ones:

• to encourage integration through games, offering valuable opportunities to respect the rules in each game, 
• to develop collaboration, 
• to stimulate the capacity of creativity by creating materials for our partners.

Here you have a link where you will find all the information related to this eTwinning project.

For ending, just to say that we have enjoyed doing this project. We played a lot and we were able to learn and to fix vocabulary by preparing materials for our partners as well as improving language and pronunciation when we prepared our videos.

Quality labels

Hi everyone!
As most of you know, the eTwinning network is the biggest educational community of teachers and students in Europe. There, you can design and share projects with other countries and you are able to have an administrator or a teacher role. It is supposed that if you have worked rigurosely along the school year, you will want to have your task recognize and this is the reason of this post.
The period for asking an eTwinning quality label is opened till July 7th. The quality label indicates that the project has reached a certain national and European standard. 
For knowing if you are ready to ask for a label, ask to yourself these questions:
1) Does your project shared a plan?
2) Has it finished?
3) Have your students and you contributed to all the activities?
4) Have you and your partners organised collaborative activities?
5) Are your project results visible?

If the answers are affirmative, then I recommend to you to ask for a label. Do not hesitate and do it now! The last advice I would say to those who wanted to ask for it, is to write the description of the project in a document. Once you have collected all the information, then you will be ready to fill in the form in the eTwinning net. I will do it, for sure. GOOD LUCK TO EVERYONE!

End of the School Year!

Another school year has arrived at the end. That means that we have to say goodbye to the big ones with happiness and wishing them the best. Good luck!!!

Ending the school year

Hi there,

we are really close to finish this school year and we are in a hurry finishing projects. Just right now, I have thought of sharing with all of you an idea that can be amazing in your dossiers. This is the WordCloud to summarize some topics you worked in this third term or along the school year. This is an example:

Another idea is to use mind maps, like the ones below:

These two resources have been very helpful for me. I hope you find them useful.

Cheers!!!

Who is she?

Qui és és un joc de taula sobre dones valentes que van canviar el món.

Vaig pensar en tenir-lo per utilitzar-lo a les meves lliçons d’anglès. La meva primera idea és treballar cada dona. Primer, individualment. Després, per parelles i, finalment, per grups de quatre. D’aquesta manera, cada grup coneixerà informació sobre quatre dones. Després, donaré un número a cada grup i en crearé de nous que estableixin una persona de cada grup. Al final, tothom coneixerà algunes d’aquestes dones importants. 

A new poem for children

Hi there, after working adverts with year 4 students, I decided to write a poem to make them aware of our learnings. The strategies that designers use in the adverts are going to be easier to remember  when students learn it by heart. What do you think?

Charles Santore

Hi there,
it has been a pleasure to find this video about Charles Santore, a renowned children's book illustrator. He talks about his "future" project. Now, I can say that I have this book in my hands. Worthy to watch it. 

Girona

Hi there,

Girona fills the city with plants and beautiful displays for a few days every year in May. The visitors as me can find spectacular patios and places where colourful flowers are spread. Here you have a sample of a space related to Alice in Wonderland.

This last one is not from Girona. I took it in the Saxion University in Deventer, in the Netherlands last March ;D

Creative writing

Hi there,

after practicing structures and connectors in the English lessons, I gave an interesting homework to my students. They had to choose three important personal objects and they had to introduce them in a writing activity. 

I had the opportunity to listen to a group of 26 students this morning and the experience has been very cool. All the students have been engaged by homework and they said that they enjoyed doing it. Amazing, fantastic and wonderful. ;D

I think that my students produce and interpret their mates' compostitions in a properly way. The production of a text requires the application of higher order skills (HOTS), following Bloom's taxonomy and that is what we promote in our lessons through topics that engage and motivate them. That's the way that it works.

A long the school year, and always giving some language support, they have written about:

1. Personal descriptions.
2. Their best friend.
3. Their school.
4. Daily routines.
5. Important women in their lifes.
6. Mobile phones and teenagers.
7. BioPoem
8. Three personal important objects.

For tips on encouraging children in creative writing, take a look at creative writing page. Worthy to visit it!

Recommended Cafe in Barcelona

There is a Pudding coffee in Pau Claris Street in Barcelona. It is a place where you will feel like Alice in Wonderland, thanks to its decoration, with giant mushrooms and colored slates. This place goes beyond a traditional café, because you live an experience in which you feel like a child. You can play board games, you can read a book or you can work with your laptop as well.

However, I went this morning with my family and we did not do anything of the activities I mentioned before. Not at all. We decided to enjoy delicious homemade cakes. Personally, I asked a hot chocolate with a homemade carrot cake.