Bat and friends

The story of cats

Can we use a screw to move things up?

This is a screw

Do you think that we can use a screw to move things up?

Check this video on how screws help us moving things up.

Fantastic!! Isn't it?
In the next video you can see how to build your own Archimedes screw.





Enjoy!!

Simple machines

Sid the seed

Parts of a plant

Vertebrates and invertebrates

Food: vocabulary

Los nombres de las siguientes comidas no van a ser evaluados en ninguno de los cursos, pero está bien que los de primero se familiaricen con alguno más y que los de tercero le peguen un repaso.

Do you like...?

Is it healthy or unhealthy?

Healthy Unhealthy Food Quiz

Healthy habits

Remember that healthy habits are:

-HEALTHY DIET (eat healthy food)

-EXERCISE (move your body, do sports)

-HYGIENE (wash your hands; have a shower…)

-REST (Sleep well)

-POSTURE (sit properly)

The healthy habits Song

Respiratory system

The respiratory system exchanges oxygen and CO2 by inhaling and exhaling air.

The respiratory system is part of the vital function of nutrition because we need oxygen to use the energy.






Your respiratory system

Para el proyecto de fin de unidad. Siguiendo los pasos de este vídeo se puede construir un modelo de caja torácica con pulmones. El globo de abajo hace las veces de diafragma haciendo vacío para que los pulmones se hinchen. Al soltar el Globo/diafragma, la presión se recupera y los pulmones se vacían.

Digestive system

THE DIGESTIVE SYSTEM

Watch these videos on the digestive system.
Remember that the digestive system is involved in the vital function of Nutrition.

The digestive system breaks down food into nutrients.

Nutrients are small substances that give us energy.

Nutrients also give us materials to grow and repair the body. 

To finish you can try to build a digestive system with the following game: Build-a-body: digestive system

Further ICT resources

Today I've hung a few ICT resources that the teachers of St. Mary's university (London) recommended me as a really good way to help shy children to speak. Most of them consist on some sort of digital puppets you can make talk.

The teacher's criteria to choose the apps are:
-It must be easy to use.
-It must be easy to share.
-It must be free (not having to pay for it).

I would , personally, add two more criteria:
-It has to be free (as in free software) if possible.
-It has to run in as many platforms as possible.

Unfortunately, many of the apps that they recommended are for Apple (ipad/iphone mainly) though not all of them.

GO TO THE ICT RESOURCES SECTION AND SEE THEIR MAIN FEATURES AND WHERE TO DOWNLOAD THEM.

Nursery rhymes at the Natural History Museum

Nursery rhymes can be useful for developing a cross curricular approach too!!
Last week, while visiting the Natural History Museum, I found a new version of Itsy Bitsy (or Eensy Weensy) Spider in which the kids can learn to appreciate their beneficial role within a house environment.

Here you have the original version of the song (one of them)




And here the Natural History Museum's cover.

In case you cannot read it properly, here is the whole lyrics:

Insy-winsy spider didn't climb up the spout

She fell into the sink, now she can't climb out

If a thougtful person were to set this spider free

She would catch more household pests -and eat them eagerly.

English schools

I am participating in an exchange program between Spanish and English students so I can get to know the English educative system. So far, the experience has been really good. I have seen how things can be done in a really different way (specially when you don't lack human and material resources). I will try to post regularly about my experiences here (obviously without telling you the name of the school or any other information, which is of course confidential). In addition, I'll try to post some photos (without children) so you can see how their classes look like.

So far, the most remarkable thing I've seen is that for this children (for most of them anyway) getting to read a book is a reward rather than a punishment. This is very telling of what is the result of a very well done jog in reading promotion. My most sincere compliments to the teachers, specially those in the first years, that managed to seed such love for books in the children, instead of making them hate them.

A BROKEN TELEPHONE

This is a good pre/post-activity that can be easily adapted to nearly any story you can think of. First of all, you have to divide your class in groups, 2 to 4 depending on the amount of pupils and the way you normally work with your group. Here you have some tips for that. Once it is done, choose a phrase which has something to do with the story, e.g. "Goldilocks was very hungry and she walked into the kitchen". Tell the phrase to the first person of each group so they can whisper it to the next. The last student has to say it aloud. If he or she is right, they would have won the round. After every round, the students who had received the phrase from the teacher will have to go to the back of their group, ensuring a proper rotation.

Its main advantage is that, besides being an amusing game enjoyed both by children and adults, it can be adapted to any level and background and therefore it should be challenging and motivating without being frustrating.

Dramatization of a story

It is an interesting technique as it makes the students work and exchange information between them three times: firstly as they prepare it, secondly as they do it and thirdly when they talk and reflect about what they have just done. I think that this is an ageless activity, provided that any sort of scenic fear or shame has not been already developed in the children.

Tongue twisters: she sell seahells...

Tongue twisters are another excellent activity to for a lively English class. They are an enjoyable way of improving phonetic awareness while having fun. This was the very first activity I created for this class based on the fairly well known tongue twister: She sells seashells on/by/at the seashore.

Firstly, we started forming a train and imitating its sound using the sounds we produce in English for S and SH. S-SH-SH-SH-SH  S-SH-SH-SH-SH  S-SH-SH-SH-SH S-SH-SH-SH-SH  S-SH-SH-SH-SH

Once we gain familiarity with the sound we change to a different pattern, that of the tongue twister itself
SH-S-S-SH-S-SH    SH-S-S-SH-S-SH     SH-S-S-SH-S-SH   SH-S-S-SH-S-SH.

After playing for a while with the sequence we are ready to attempt the tongue twister.

The following pictures can be used if we want to paint a few shells as a post-activity.

As a general consideration when using tongue twisters, we must try to make them challenging, but not frustrating. For instance, in the picture you have an extended version which is slightly more difficult and can be used once the children domain the previous one.

An example of progressive level in a tongue twister:

Easy
Three Swedish witches
watch three Swiss watches.
Which Swedish witch
watch which Swiss watch?

Medium
Three Swedish switched witches
watch three Swiss Swatch watches.
Which Swedish switched  witch
watch which Swiss Swatch  watch?

Hard
Three Swedish switched witches
watch three Swiss Swatch watch switches
Which Swedish switched  witch
watch which Swiss Swatch  watch switch?

And as a final thought: is this or or is this not a much nicer way of learning English phonetics?


If you liked it, the British council offers a selection of them to be used in your class.
And her you have a few more.

Activities related with special days or dates:

Quite often we are able to use special days, celebrations, the change of the season, etc. as a topic to link a sequence of activities. The fact that we are talking about something that is happening here and now makes it motivating and relevant to the children.

In our class we did several activities related to autumn such as:

Autumn rhymes

Autumn acrostic poems

I must say I've never particularly enjoy this kind of activity. I find them as boring as I did as a child. However, there are several authors, such as Gianni Rodari, that recommend this kind of activity to promote creativity. This is a selection of what was written in class.

Created with Padlet

Created with Padlet

Halloween activity

The last one is the one I really liked here are a few tips to organize it:

1-Introduction and motivation:

                Halloween e-card. 

In the following link you will find an amazing Halloween e-card. In addition, you here it is a compilation of pages that gives you tips both for digital and classic Halloween cards for children.

                Pumpkins, candles and further atrezzo.

This kind of elements help you to create expectation. Use them for introduction and motivation and use them to link with the next activity by means of lighting them and asking for a spell.

You can create other elements to provide background such as magic potions (with soda powder, vinegar, a bit of soap and cupcakes colourant) which as you will see later on in the video can be used for amazing tricks that can be related with your science class.

2-Writing spells

                Children have to write their spells and hung them on a Poplet wall, for example:

Frog leg and owl feathers or

Wolf fang and skin of snakes

Cast a spell over this `potion

That will charm you anyway.

Later on you can put them all together like we did here.

Created with Padlet

3-Reading the spells aloud around the candles while we watch the potions.
This is a good way to work things as stress, rhythm and other phonetic aspects of the language while doing something fun. The teacher might start reading aloud so the children are presented with a quality input to replicate and later on different groups or individual students will recite their own spells as well as their mates.
At the same time this works really well as a context for the following activities.

4- We finish up with the first chapter of Meg and Mog  which is available as a normal video or with texts to read.

There are many pre and post activities related to Meg and Mog available. Here it is what we prepared for the 4th grade children of La Salle.

 

MEG AND MOG

Ø  Activity 1: Brainstorming.

What do you know about witches?

1.      We ask the children to say aloud words that they know about witches. 

2.      We draw a table on the blackboard and we organize the words in groups.

WITCH’S THINGS	WITCH’S PETS	WITCH’S BODY	WITCH’S CLOTHES
Cauldron	Frog	Wart	Hat
Broom	bat

3.      We teach them to build a mind map with it by using a popplet.

http://popplet.com/app/#/1420658

Ø  Activity 2: Introducing the characters.

We show the children the following flashcards and we ask them questions about them.

JESS	TESS	CRESS	OWL
BESS	MEG	CAT

~        What is this? Is it an animal? Is it a witch?

~        Is it a cat? Is it an owl?

~        Is she Jess, Tess, Cress, Bess or Meg?

~        Has she got a frog? Has she got a spider? Has she got…?

Activity 3: Guess who.

1.      With the questions we organize a ‘Guess who’ game in groups with the information about the witches. It has the only purpose of teaching them how to play. To do that we ask one group to leave the class. We choose one of the flashcards. When the pupils come back into the class they have to make questions to guess the flashcard that we are talking about.

2.      Once they’ve learned how to play we start a new game using new questions and with the pupils in the class

What’s she wearing?

Is she tall/ short?

Has she got long/short/ curly/straight hair?

Activity 4: Reading.

We read Meg and Mog’s book.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56KgadehXg8

 Video.

Now, in small groups the children have to take the video home and record their voices as if they were the characters.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ti_9JEHTZZs

Activity 5: A cauldron party.

In a circle, each student will have to say what she/ he is going to put in into the cauldron.

‘As I’ve been invited to this cauldron party, I’ve brought this_____ in case we get hungry hahaha’ (flashcards with strange animals)

Activity 6: Role play.

There is a witch in the village and she’s putting spells on the village people. We need to catch the witch together before she puts everybody under her spell.

Characters: A director (the teacher), a witch and the rest are the villagers.

Rules of the game: We sit on a circle and we deal a card to each player, one of the cards is the witch and the rest are the villagers.

This is an amazing dynamic to practice conversation. It allows children to speak to each other, as they have to decide who the witch is in order to try and execute it.

Some of the structures they can practise are:

‘I think that she is the witch because’...         ‘She spoke first’...    ‘she didn’t speak...

‘She is the witch because’...    ‘she moved’...            ‘she is silent’..

Once everyone has their card the director (or teacher) will ask everybody to go to sleep, so everyone will look down. Subsequently, the director will call the witch to wake up, put a spell on a villager (by means of pointing or looking to its victim), and get back to sleep. Then the villagers will wake up and the director will inform the victim of his or her condition. Immediately after, people will speak against each other for a few minutes- For instance Pedro may say: ‘I think that Manolo is the witch because I saw him moving a little when the witch was cursing’. And Pedro might reply: ‘I think the wolf is Pedro because he accused me first’. After a while there will be a poll. Whoever is voted witch will be executed (loses the game), and therefore will turn his or her card facing up. If it is the witch (the real one,) the round is over and we shall assign new roles. If the person chosen is a villager, the whole process will start again.

We can adapt the background of the dynamic to whatever text we are working with. The characters could be animals, villagers, courtier, or whatever suits us; in the same manner the witch could be any antagonist that appears in our story.

 And this is the video of what we finally did.

Many of my classmates did their activities base on Meg and Mog for different grades within the same school. Here there are a few videos on what they did.

I particularly like the one my mates did for nursery school children because despite having too far too many children for the activity they are performing, they successfully maintain their attention at all times while they manage to make them say the names of many ingredients.




On the other hand I must say I didn't like that much the final activity they did based on this one as I did not really grasped what the whole point was, besides making a brownie. In this sense, I have observed that too often (not this particular group, I'm talking in general) the input that we are offering the children is wrong (e.g. talking about a cooking receipt instead of a recipe) and that makes me wonder what is the use then. I mean that I might be doing and amusing activity in which the children are going to relate certain concepts with its representation in English verbal language through and input that we are providing. But if the input is not correct, the children are learning something wrong and we might be creating problems for the future.