PIXTON COMIC

To celebrate Women's International Day my school organized different activities. One of them was a comic competition. Students had to create a comic where they had to think over the relationships between boys and girls and how girls should not be under the control of men. The English teachers decided to work the comics in class with our students in a way to learn how to use a new application, to practise the language and to reflect on the topic in question. 

I carried out this activity with my 3ESO  year students. The students worked in pairs in the classroom using the portable computers we have at school. These were the steps followed to carry out the activity:

- The students could decide who they wanted to work with. 

- I explained what the activity was about (the topic, the application we were going to use, the deadlines and the aim of the activity).

- Before the students started working, we went through some vocabulary that they could use to talk about the topic in question.

- Then we went through one example of a comic that I had earlier prepared using the Pixton application and I explained a little bit how this application works.

- The students spent one lesson working on their comic, which we later sent to the teachers in the competition board and they decided the winners.

- The winning comics are now shown in the screen we have in the school hall.

The students enjoyed using this application as they could practice with the many different possibilities that it offers. Even the students who are not very interested in the English subject were able to create their own comic and they did it with eagerness. The students were encouraged to create many different characters and situations and to imagine how they could use Pixton to transmit their message. It was a good task, even though none of my students won the competition in their level of studies ;)

This is the comic that I prepared as an example to my students.

INTERACTION

I have made a comment on Silvia Serrano's blog and I have liked her Genially activity, so I have planned another Genially activity with my 4ESO students. In this activity the students had to write the timeline of an important person in the English speaking world. To carry out this activity I followed these steps:

- I presented a list with many different important British and American people.

- Each of the students chose the person they would like to talk about (they could not repeat the person).

- They had to prepare their presentation (using Genially or any other presentation application) with important dates in the life of the person they had chosen. They could also use photos or any other material to illustrate their work.

- They had to send their presentation to the Classroom task.

. They had to present their famous person to the rest of their classmates and they were evaluated according to this presentation.

- The other students asked questions to the student presenting.

It was a good activity because the students learnt about important people who they had never heard about. And using applications like Genially is motivatin for them.

This is the link to one of the presentations made by one student.

https://classroom.google.com/g/tg/NjIyOTQxMzIzMDAw/NjMwNDk3NjM3NjY2#u=MTY4MzY3NDM0NzU1&t=f

 

                                                                   EDPUZZLE

I wanted to work school life in the United Kingdom with my 1ESO students so that they could see the differences between British schools and Spanish ones. I found this video on Youtube, which explains very clearly the content I was looking for and with a way of speaking quite understandable for first year students.

I use Google Classroom with my students, so this video has been one of the activities that I posted on Classroom so that they could do it at home. They had to watch the video and they had to answer the questions in it. Once the students had done the activity at home, we have talked about the video in class to check what they have really understood about it. It has been a different way to work cultural aspects and I think it has worked quite well because most of the students did the activity. They have liked it because it has been something very different to what they are used to. I guess from now on I will use this application more often with my students.

This is the link to my Edpuzzle activity:

https://edpuzzle.com/media/67be44cdf038e065bc89c8fb

TIMETOAST

 

             TIMETOAST ABOUT FEDERICO MAYOR ZARAGOZA

I work at IES Federico Mayor Zaragoza in Sevilla. Mayor Zaragoza was an important Spanish politician, educator, scientist and writer. He died in December 2024 and that's why the teachers at the school named after him have decided to honor his person in different ways. Each group of students has been requested to prepare one activity and the two groups of 1ESO have been told to create a timeline with the most important dates in Mayor Zaragoza's life. And I have been the teacher in charge of it. I've been lucky to be involved in this course and to come across with an application like Timetoast because this way the timelines that the students have prepared will be shown on the screen that we have in the school hall.

To do the activity I followed these steps, organized in two sessions:

Session 1

1- I asked the students if they knew who Federico Mayor Zaragoza was and why our school is named after him. We brainstormed ideas.

2- We read a text about Federico Mayor Zaragoza's life and important facts in his life. The text that we read had been prepared by one group of students at 3ESO. The students asked questions and I explained different things about him.

3- I explained to the students that in the next session they were going to prepare a timeline with the most important dates in Federico Mayor Zaragoza's life. I also explained that they were going to work in groups of 3 and that they were going to use an application called Timetoast. 

4- I explained to the students how Timetoast works.

Session 2

1- I brought different laptops to the classroom, one for each group of students. I had already opened an account in Timetoast in all the laptops so that students could start working with the application straight away.

2- In groups they had to look for the dates they were going to include in their timeline in the internet. 

3- After taking notes of the dates and the information they were going to use, they started writing their timeline.

4- When they finished the timeline, they had to copy the link in the Classroom task that I had already opened and send it to me.

The students have found this application very easy to use (although at the beginning they had problems with the type of information they had to include in each gap and they asked a lot of questions) and they have felt comfortable and happy using it, especially because it has been something new for them. The only thing I would change if I were to use this application again is making the students work in pairs and not in groups, especially with 1st-year students because the bigger amount of people there is in a group, the easier it is for the students to lose attention.

The use of Timetoast has helped me in the following ways:

- Get the students involved in the activities organized to commemorate the person of Federico Mayor Zaragoza in a more permanent way. The original idea was to create the timelines on paper and hang them on the walls at school, which would have meant their gradual disappearance. Having the timelines shown on a screen may be forever.

- Let the students know who the person after whom their school is named was.

- Let the students learn about new applications that they could use in other subjects in the future.

This is the link for one of the timelines:

https://www.timetoast.com/timelines/3151670

                                     MINI-PROJECT GENIALLY

This is an activity that I have done in both my 1ESO groups. They had to write a recipe in pairs and then they had to explain it to the rest of their classmates.

I explained to them all the different steps that we were going to follow to do the activity.

1- I explained that they were going to make a presentation using the Genially application (some of them used Canva or PowerPoint instead) about any recipe they would like to cook, then they were going to upload it in Classroom and finally, they were also going to tell it to the rest of their classmates. I also explained that they were going to do the activity in pairs.

2- I had my own recipe presentation as an example and I explained to the students how I had done it. I explained very clearly all the information that they had to include in their presentation: introduction where they had to talk about the origin of their meal, the main ingredients and when they usually eat that meal; all the ingredients and the different steps to get the meal ready. They could use as many slides as they wanted for each of the parts of the recipe.

3- I then explained the different steps in the process:

- the students decide who they want to work with and the teacher takes notes of the different pairs

- the students decide the meal they are going to write about and at home they look for information about the ingredients and about how to cook that meal.

- the students write the recipe on a paper in class and hand it to the teacher on the date fixed beforehand

- the teacher corrects all the written recipes and gives them back to the students so that they can start working on their presentation

- the students upload their presentation in Classroom. The deadline for the uploading is fixed by the teacher.

- the students present their recipe to the rest of their classmates on the day fixed by the teacher

4- Before starting working on their own presentation, we revised and learnt useful vocabulary, especially verbs, and I explained how they had to write the ingredients (use of numbers and “some”) and the different steps (use of verbs in the infinitive) on their presentation.

5- Before presenting their recipe to the class, we spent one lesson explaining the aspects I was going to focus on when marking their presentation and what they should do when presenting and what they shouldn’t do. We also went through difficult words to pronounce and they practised their pronunciation.

This is the link to my recipe:

https://view.genially.com/65a2b9b429757a0013d3306e/interactive-content-my-recipe

These are the links to some of my students’ recipes:

https://www.canva.com/design/DAGeK3RHfRU/CoI_JGOr_6nNzHeeazHfsg/edit?authuser=0

https://view.genially.com/679a52ed1ac4a137b413b003/interactive-content-receta-interactiva?authuser=0

https://www.canva.com/design/DAGeEs27nJI/fHNcWFWh0Tf371UhuY1QgA/edit?authuser=0

Using an application like Genially or Canva is always something positive because the students find them interesting, motivating and different to what they are used to doing in every day lessons. The aim of using an application like these ones was as a prop for the students when having to speak in English in front of their classmates. When they were talking, their presentation was seen on a screen, so whenever they felt lost, they could have a look at it. And most of them did it with flying colours!

REFLECT OF READING HABITS

For me reading is one of the best pleasures one can enjoy in life, and the people in all the pictures seem to be enjoying this pleasure. Libraries and bookshops are one of the best places where one can spend a lot of time. That's why I feel really identified with the first photo (that of a library) because it reminds me of the time that I used to spend in a library when I was younger, both in Spain and in the UK or the USA where I spent some years of my life.  However, there was a time when I somehow lost this habbit because of a lack of time, but then I took it back when I started going to the library with my children (a 14-year-old son and a 10-year- old daughter now) so that they could choose their own book to read or I could read to them when they weren't old enough to read on their own. How many hours have we spent in libraries! And how relaxing it is reading to your children in a place where silence is everywhere...

Trying to make my students and my own children love reading the way I do has been and is one of my main goals in life. I think I have managed to do it with my children because my son is an eager reader (in fact I'm pretty sure some day I could find him reading like the person in the last picture) and my daughter is on her way too. And a way to achieve it has been spending lots of hours reading to them (as we can see in the picture where the woman is reading to the girl). In fact, my 10-year-old daughter still wants me or her father to read to her outloud from time to time and we still buy two types of books, those for younger readers, which we read to her and those for older readers, which she reads on her own. Reading to my children has given me lots of happiness and I know I will miss it when my daughter doesn't want me to go on reading to her. 

Nevertheless, making my students love reading is a more difficult task. I keep on trying it, but I think that if their parents don't sail in the same direction, it is very hard to achieve this goal. And the truth is that most students' homes are almost empty of books and since I'm teaching them a foreign language, if they don't have the habit to read in their own language, it is even harder to make them enjoy reading in a foreign language. I don't feel identified with the photo of the concentrated students reading in class, which could happen in a Spanish lesson but not in an English one, as in an English lesson the teacher must guide the reading process, so it would be almost impossible to have students reading on their own taking all the different levels in the foreign language into account.

Talking about me, I would like to comment that I read the same type of books in both Spanish and English, although it is also true that lately I read more in Spanish than in English. I basically read novels and drama and I never read in a digital format (when I read on a screen I feel I'm losing some part of the story) and I usually read at the end of the day when I've finished with all the tasks of the day and my children are already sleeping (or at least in their room).

ENGLISH AND MY BLOG

 

Some things about me and my blog:

1. I am a teacher of English at a high school in Sevilla.
2. I've been teaching English in Madrid for 21 years, but in the year 2023 I came back home.
3. Since I was very little languages have been a hobby for me and I've been very good at them.
4. When I finished my university degree, I spent one school year working as a Teaching Assistant at a college in the United States. It's been the best year in my whole life.
5. My big challenge is to make my students see the importance of learning a foreign language as a way to broaden their mind.

So the main aim of this blog is to present English in a different way as in the classroom, I will use it

to get the students know about the many English-speaking countries around the world, not only the       UK and the USA, and to try to practice the grammar and the vocabulary of the language in a different    way.

And to do this, here you can find three different websites that you can use to practice and improve your English:

LEARN ENGLISH KIDS

LEARN ENGLISH TEENS

AGENDAWEB

IMPORTANT BRITISH AND AMERICAN PEOPLE

 

           ¡¡¡Hello, my students!!!

Here you have the list of popular British or American people who have done important things in their field of work. Reach an agreement among the members of your group and decide who you are going to make your timeline about.

                        

                   FAMOUS BRITISH PEOPLE FAMOUS AMERICAN PEOPLE

                        - William Shakespeare - John Fitzgerald Kennedy

                        - Agatha Christie - Martin Luther King Jr.

                        - Jane Austen         - Malcolm X

                        - Winston Churchill - Abraham Lincoln

                        -Queen Victoria - Pocahontas

                        - Charles Darwin - Al Capone

                        - Isaac Newton - Mark Twain

                        - John Lennon         - Rosa Parks

                        - Margaret Thatcher - Louis Armstrong

                        - Ernest Shackelton - Marilyn Monroe

                        - Guy Fawkes         - Michael Jackson

                        - King Henry VIII - Charles Chaplin

                        - Florence Nightingale - Elvis Presley

                        - William Wallace - Henry Ford

                        - Diana, Princess of Wales - Bill Gates

                        - Queen Elizabeth I - Muhammad Ali

                        - Queen Elizabeth II - Michael Jordan

                        - Oliver Cromwell - Billy the Kid

                        - Captain James Cook - Benjamin Franklin

                        - Alexander Fleming - Barack Obama

                        - David Beckam - Walt Disney

                        - King Arthur - The Wright brothers        

                        - J.K. Rowling - Nikola Tesla

                                - Amelia Earhart

                                - Paul Newman

BBC Irregular verbs

¿Cuántas veces te han mandado estudiar esa interminable lista de verbos irregulares en la clase de inglés? La BBC te puede ayudar a aprender los verbos, y muchas cosas más. Echa un vistazo a su cuenta de Twitter.

 IRREGULAR VERBS WITH B

Teacher Auxiliadora

ENGLISH SPEAKING COUNTRIES

 ¡Hola! Bienvenidos a mi blog. Como buena profesora de inglés que soy, desde este blog pretendo inculcar mi amor por los idiomas, y por el inglés en especial. Hablar un idioma te abre puertas, puertas que te llevan más allá de tu país, ciudad, pueblo o barrio, puertas que te llevan a conocer otras culturas, otras ideas, a otras personas, y que te abren un mundo de posibilidades para conseguir las cosas que te propongas.

Además, hoy en día el inglés es el idioma internacional. Se usa en muchas profesiones como nexo de unión entre trabajadores de diferentes partes del mundo. 

Pero también es la lengua materna en muchos países del mundo. Y como muestra de ello, os invito a conocer algunos de ellos a través de este vídeo. 

Espero que os guste. ¡¡Y que no os dé miedo aprender un idioma extranjero!! ¡¡Vosotros podéis!!

Teacher Auxiliadora