A new school year starts!

Welcome back everyone! I am sure you all had a very well deserved holidays. Now it is time to think about the new course and get fresh ideas for our lessons. If you are a teacher, here you have an excellent web page to recommend your students to check grammar when they play...but, if you are a student and you want to practise a little bit of grammar, click on the picture below and have fun with lots of activities. Pay attention on the left and decide if you want to play with nouns, adjectives or verbs among others. Click on the one you choose and have fun!

Lyrics training

Hi everyone!
If you are a follower of this site, you know that I am a lyricstraining lover. If you are not familiar with it, I would say that it is a site with easy access for children. It's a gap-fill exercise which can be motivaing for them in a flash giving different levels of difficulties. They can use it to learn and practice their English.

I have chosen lyricstraining web page today to celebrate the transition between winter and summer with a song that I love.

 Little darling, it seems like years since it's been here....
   

Click on BEGINNER. You can press the BACKSPACE button to listen to the last sentence again and type it correctly !

Happy Thanksgiving Day!

Thanksgiving is here! 

I want to take a moment to thank all of your support, whether it’s helping children, FOLLOWING this English blog, or giving your support. It means so much for this teacher of English!

Although this tradition is not a catalan one, I wish all of you a very happy Thanksgiving!
Whoops! I forgot it! If you click on the picture below you will find a present for TEACHERS: an activity for working phonetics!

Kideos

Hi there,

here you have an incredible web page where you can find different songs for primary children (kids+videos=kideos ;D)

It offers your kids fun and safe videos with themes and music they love.

Click on the pic below and sing with children!

On line activity

Hi there, 

this is a good on line activity to review grammar. 

Click on the picture, read the question and choose the correct answer!

The shirt of the happy man

Hi there,

I had the opportunity to enjoy yesterday an excellent play written by Leo Tolstoy long time ago. It was the Shirt of the happy man story. Zum, zum Teatre has given to that famous story a magic treatement to make the audience enjoy with some special  effects.

Besides that, the leitmotiv of the play made us to think about what happiness is.

An excellent play for everyone!

Some pics

Now that the end of the long second term is coming, here you have a carrusel which shows you some pics I took along these three months.

Stories for children

Hi there,

kids world's fun is an excellent web for everyone, not only for students but also for parents and teachers. I am searching an amazing story to tell my students and I have just met that portal. I want to share it with all of you because, among other important resources, you will find free ebooks for primary students.

Quizlet helps students to become confident with English!

Hi everyone!

Quizlet is a platform where the teacher designs and defines what students need to review using the digital cards that the web offers. The students will check their learnings through different activities.
The only part of this website I don't like is the use of Spanish. As you all know, I would prefer to use the foreign language everywhere.
However, one of the aspects of it that I like most is the "speller" review mode where there is a voice which plays words for the the player and this one has to type correctly.
Anyway,
I have registered today and I have created my first quizlet ;D
Here you have an example:

tap on the pic and practise personality vocabulary.

Question structures

Hi everyone! 

Quasimodo is a fictional character who can help us to remember the order of any question. 

He was the protagonist of the novel the Hunchback of Notre-Dame by Victor Hugo. He was born with a hunchback and feared by the townspeople as a sort of monster.

If you think about the first part of his name, you will never forget the structure of a question:

QUestion+Auxiliary+Subject + Infinitive (....)?

Look at these questions and check the order:

Where do you live?

When do you start school?

What time do you wake up?

What do you like?

Which colour do you prefer?

When did you go to the cinema?

What did you eat for breakfast?

Why did you send me a mail?

and...if you don't use a Question word, you have to follow ASI ;D

Auxiliary+subject+Infitive...?    Yes/No.....

Do you cook?

Did you go to school?

Do you study English?

Do you like pasta?

Did you do your homework?

Plickers

Plickers is an interactive tool that engages everyone in a flash. What I like most about it is that, although you can compare with kahoot platform, plickers do not use devices, it uses cards, an individual card per student. This fact allows the teacher to use the tool with different ages. Pdf cards can be downloaded from plickers.com.

I use plickers for checking learnings in my students. The pic below correponds to the presentation at the UPF last week.

This is a quick tutorial on how to get plickers working in the class.

Riddles

A riddle is a description or a question with a hidden answer.

Students love guessing and language games.

Personally, I use them in my lessons because students have fun and they reinforce writing and reading.

Riddles are going to engage children in a flash.

However, I show some models to students before they start to write their own.

These are good examples:

I have streets but no pavement,

I have cities but no buildings,

I have forests but no trees,

I have rivers but no water.

What am I? 

I have a neck but not head,

two arms but not hands.

What am I? 

(Answers at the bottom of this post)

After that, try to introduce engaging topics to children or the ones they are working in the classroom. Here you have two examples. 

Illustrating a chant

Hi there!

This is an activity that children love.

It consists of giving a chant to students and they have to understand and illustrate it, by choosing pictures and making a movie maker. So, this activity should be done by the oldest pupils and then, the teacher can use the video for illustrating the activity to the youngest kids. The example today is "Mosquitoes bite", a chant about some animals and their most important actions. 
By the way, thanks a lot to those students who wanted to record the chant and to make the movie. 

Nutrition activity

Digest Quest is a free, interactive, online game that guides 5th graders through the function and components of the digestive system. Students love the game's sound effects and cool graphics, which come together to create a fun and engaging learning experience. Click on the picture below and you will find a wonderful quiz game about the Digestive System. You will learn about it through 7 different levels. Enjoy it!

Amazing world!

Hi there,

this post is about a video that was

originally uploaded by the BBC on Dec 7th, 2011 on their youtube channel.

It encourages everyone to take care of our planet. If we defend nature, we are also defending life, and all living creatures in it, including us humans.

What do you think?

Idioms

Hi there,

today I want to introduce some idioms.

I would say that they are a combination of words that have a "figurative meaning".  Here you have some of them related to body:

As a non-native speaker of English, the best way to understand them is to memorize their meanings.

Descriptions guide

Hi you all,

here you have a guide for describing pictures.

It will help students to follow an order when they do an oral or written description.

Talking about likes and dislikes

Hi you all! 
Here you have a good activity for 4th and 5th graders. 
Give them a list of likes and dislikes verbs:

• I like
• I love
• I'm interested in...
• I'm fond of...                                    + Verb -ing
• I hate
• I don't like
• I'm not interested in...

and let them design posters for the classroom and/or for their bedroom.

Look at the example:

A good song for October

This is an old song that tells the story of meeting a new friend at the beginning of a school year. Through its lyrics, it is able to remind childhood.

This is a stop motion that Alison Work made for her interactive media class in high school. Congratulations Alison!

Reading worthy magazines

This interactive magazine for young learners engages students like never before. 

Everyone will find amazing photos and excellent audios.

Click on the picture and then on "read scout"

and remember...
"Students who read in English,
increase speaking, reading, fluency, vocabulary, confidence and much more!"