Timetoast: Moments of my life

 Hi everyone!

A few days ago I visited "My class is fun" blog and I found a really interesting task to carry out with my students. It was a timeline about a famous artist (Ed Sheeran) in which students had to use the past simple tense of verbs. The activity was developed by using Timetoas.

My version about this activity has been designed to be carried out by 6th Grade students, also working on past simple tense of verbs. In this case, they will have to make a timeline about their own lives, focusing on their school experiences.

This task is aimed to improve our students correct use of the past simple tense, as well as to work on social and affective aspects of education, which are also essential to their emotional development.

You could see an example by clicking on the link below. I hope you like it!

https://www.timetoast.com/timelines/3168070

Genially: My pets

Hi everyone!

This is an example of the activity I could carry out with my First or Second Graders by using Genially as an oral presentation tool. In my opinion, this could be very complex to work with children at this ages, but I think it could be a good option to involve the families by the use of interactive groups.

I will divide the task into the following stages:

1. Stablish the groups and choose the pets they are going to present.
2. Select and organize the information they want to include in their presentation.
3. Work on the speeches by writing what they want to say.
4. First assessment to correct the possible mistakes they have made.
5. Prepare the presentation in Genially with the help of families.
6. Present their work in front of their classmates.

The class will be organized in groups of three and they will have to decide which part will be presented by every member. Nevertheless, they all will have to know the whole presentation. The timing on each stage will depend on how decisive children are in developing every activity. This first time, I will decide on the components of every group so that they are as heterogeneous as possible, but in the future they will be able to decide it themselves.

During the presentations, the other groups will be given an assessment chart in which they will take notes about different aspects related to the use of vocabulary, the accuracy, the pronounciation... This will be a good option to get them involved in the whole process and avoid boredom.

To see the sample presentation in Genially, click on the following previsualization.

Story Jumper: Poppy goes to the beach

Hi everyone!

Today I am sharing with you a book created with Story Jumper. It is a very interesting tool to encourage our students' writing skills by creating their own books.

This book is aimed to work on the third person singular of verbs and it has been designed for First Grade of Primary.

Using this tool with Primary students could be very challenging for teachers because it needs a lot of previous work to get the students familiarized with the tool, but once they know how to use it, it could be very motivating to develope good writing habits.

Read this book made on StoryJumper

Counting with The Very Hungry Caterpillar

Today I am going to share an activity to work on numbers in the First Grade of Primary. This activity is aimed to reinforce the relationship between the oral and the written form of numbers.

I have chosen "The very hungry caterpillar" because it is a very attractive tale for young learners. Also, it provides an easy way to internalize numbers by following a natural sequence.

All questions have been placed at the end of the video as an oral comprehension test. Also, they have been written in the order of appearance in the video so that pupils can relate numbers with their natural sequence. A more challenging version of this activity could be showing the questions randomly, without following the natural sequence of numbers.

In the first session, students would have watched the full video and worked on new vocabulary (food and days of the week) and, obviously, on numbers. Another option could be sharing the video with families so that students could watch it previouly (flipped classroom). This could be very useful to encourage our students to share their learning process with their relatives.

In the second session we would develop the comprehension activity itself.

In the third session, I would tell the story by using a real book with children sitting on the floor. At this moment, it would be important to encourage students to speak by completing some of the sentences I read.

From my own point of view, this could be a really motivating task for my students. I will see which aspects need to be improved at the moment I put it into practice.

Timeline: Let’s count!

In this post I am going to show you a timeline I created for my English classes. As a first cycle of Primary teacher, it is very difficult to develope an activity in which my students create their own timeline. This is why I decided to create it myself to work on numbers with my first graders and on days of the week with my second ones. You can see the timeline by clicking on the image below.

The aims of this timeline is to reinforce my student’s knowledge about numbers, as well as get them close to new basic vocabulary such as days of the week and food. Also, it is aimed to encourage my student’s interest in reading through a traditional English story book: “The very hungry caterpillar”.

Timetoast is very useful to achieve these aims because children can experience both numbers and days of the week as a sequence of words. It eases the acquisition of the new vocabulary.

These are the steps I followed to carry out the activity:

1. Present the real book to my students and find out what they know about it.
2. Read the book in front of the class with my students sitting on the floor.
3. Present the timeline by using the digital board.
4. Check what my students have learnt through different activities, both individual and group ones.

Although, in my case, my students could not do their own timelines due to their age, I think this kind of activity could be developed by second cycle students with our guide and by third cycle ones on their own. If we use timeline from early ages, pupils could get used to this format and feel curious about how to create their own ones.

Evolution of my reading habits over the years

I started reading very soon in my childhood. At the age of 4, I used to read short texts in TV advertisements and showed myself very curious about reading. It was clear that I was born to be a reading lover for life.

My reading habits have changed a lot as I have gotten older. When I was a child I read everything that fell into my hands. I loved when I got a new book for Christmas and I read it time after time. I kept every single book as a treasure because reading was my favourite pleasure. My favourite books were traditional tales compilations.

Later, during high school, many of the books I read were intended to get some califications in different subjects. Nevertheless, I didn't lose my interest in reading for pleasure and I started reading long fantasy novels (e.g. The Lord of the rings, Interview with the vampire...). At the same time, I discovered my first books in English: those chosen by my English teachers focused on encouraging my reading skills. They were short books with a pile of questions to answer in their last pages, so that I could learn a lot of English. But, to be honest, I preferred to read and translate song lyrics from my favourite rock bands. This was the main source of real knowledge about English language, since it brought me the opportunity to learn in a real context that was directly connected to my interests.

Once I started university and, later, when I started working, my free time decreased dramatically, and the same thing happened to my reading time. It took several years to rediscover my love for reading and, nowadays, I can enjoy again the pleasure of reading. As a teacher, and also a 4-year-old mother, I have to be very careful with the type of books I chose. I need to select not very long and easy to read books since my time to read is very rare in a normal day. I still enjoy reading paper books, although I also read on my e-reader, and many books I read are about psicology and/or parenting. However, I still enjoy a lot a good novel (like the 'Blackwater' saga). 

Now, I also enjoy the moments in which I read books to my son and I feel I'm providing him with very useful tools to get involved in reading as I did in my early years. Some of the books I read to him are those 'treasures' that I have kept from my childhood. The fact of reading my old books encourages him to learning to read.

To conclude, I would like to underline the importance that we have, as teachers, to create good reading habits in our students. If they perceive our love for reading, and we give them the correct reading context, it is very likely that they also become reading lovers.

Interesting websites

(Spanish below/Español más abajo)

Here you have some interesting websites to learn and practise English. Click on the images below to visit them.

1. Super Simple: A website full of songs and free printables to work on their contents.

2. Word Rerefence: A complete online dictionary with contextualized examples of the uses of English.

3. Liveworksheets: A website full of worksheets to practise English online.

Enjoy!

                      

Aquí os dejo varias webs para aprender y mejorar vuestro Inglés. Para visitarlas, solo tenéis que pinchar sobre cada imagen.

1. Super Simple: Una web llena de canciones y fichas para imprimir gratuitas mediante las que trabajar los contenidos de las mismas.
2. Word Reference: Un completísimo diccionario con ejemplos contextualizados.
3. Liveworksheets: Una web llena de fichas para practicar online.

¡Que las disfrutes!