LITTLE MOON

From the beginning of the year course I was wondering about what to do with the lack of motivation of some students. And I had chosen their sense of competition to provoke a new feeling towards the foreign language. If we reward their effort in some way, even if it is not something material but a social recognition, we are approaching our objective.  So, I have organized a tournament with my groups of students using a podium with the numbers and letters of the different primary levels I teach. In this way when a group-class has good behaviour or good marks, then they go up into the podium. At the end of each term the reward is a certificate with an Eva-foam cup to show in their classrooms.

A tongue twister is a way of practicing pronunciation for fun. Children like repeating them and they are very useful for enhancing motivation. Christmas Holidays is a good period for asking students to learn some puns. My piece of advice is to ask children to draw a picture which describes the main idea of the tongue twister. For example: - Red lorry, yellow lorry. - If two witches were watching two watches, which witch would watch which watch?  - She sells sea shells in the sea shore. - If you want to buy, buy, If you don't want to buy, bye bye! - I can think of six thin things, and I can think of six thick things too. - Kitty caught the kitten in the kitchen.  More info: British Council http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/tongue-twisters   Download in MP3  http://www.download-esl.com/tonguetwisters/easy/easytongue.html  

The Fishing game is easy to design and enables your classes for introducing any new vocabulary. Motivating them by focusing their attention on what they are fishing helps you to tell any word without strangeness. But, how to create your own material?  The main items are three: the cards of vocabulary, the fishing bag and the fishing rod.  - Fishing flashcards are attached by a metal clip. Depending on the weigth put 1 or 2. - You take a magnet, for instance those we use for board clipping, and pour some hot glue and stick it to a rope.  - Then with a sticky tape you turn it around the woodstick and cover it completely. Remember that we can find tape of different colours.  - The fishing bag is only a hard paper bag for shopping covered with blue paper, decorating it with some coloured fish and transparent plastic.

I'm very proud to attend to the Educational Prizes 2013 organised by PSPV, the Socialist Party of Valencian Community. The event took place last Friday, 25th October in the Exhibition Palace of Valencia , next to the Public University of Valencia . Novadors  was awarded together to other non-profitmaking associations, evenmore it coincides with the 10th anniversary of the former. Other prized communities were: the Public Library in Concentaina, a Public Secondary School in Castelló de la Ribera... As we can see in the photo, there are some of the group components together to @FrancescLlorens the person who collected it and one of the founder members of Novadors, attending to the meeting. The prize was given to public associations in recognition of their services to education, in this case, Novadors was awarded because of its promotion of Technological and Innovative interests. I congratulate from here all its members, including myself. Thanks for your...

This week all the English teachers are worried about how to prepare the classrooms in order to become a Land of terror ready for Halloween. I leave here as an example all the process I followed to turn my classroom into a fancy dress party room. Follow the simple steps and you will have a nice effect with little money. 1- Pile the chairs and tables up in a part of the classroom in which they cannot disturb. 2- Organise the materials in the shelves where they cannot be seen. 3- Seal the Windows with black plastic bags. 4- Cover the big teacher's desks with dark clothes. 5- Decorate it with plumkins, chemical junks like the glass tubes from the science classroom. 6- Switch on ultraviolet lights. 7- Buy liquid chalk to paint some ghosts and letters. 8- Prepare a table with sweets and a poster of 'Trick or treat'. 9- Ask older students to prepare a short dance of the song 'Thriller' by Michael Jackson. 10- Meet all the teachers and ask them to participate. En...

Nowadays there are not so much English teachers who know that there is a new platform for collaborative sharing of teaching and learning experiences. This web is full of resources and examples of activities and issues from different levels and everything is in English! I encourage you to participate and share as I did, I will follow this year course. One of the advantages is that they'll give you a certificate for your school and your students could see their work is important to other people. The main point is that it is ruled by English teachers as me and I have confidence in them because I know them personally. Another strong point is that they give you facilities and tools, also it's free, so think about it and start next september. Link: http://theesltimes.blogspot.com.es/

Happy Summer! I've learned a lot this summer about technologies in general, apps, resources, teachers who showed examples of their jobs, etc. Some of the events I had attended in July had been the following: - NOVADORS '13: UJI (Jaume I University) in Castellón, 5th and 6th of July 2013. http://novadors.org/jornades2013/  It's a meeting point for teachers of all levels, where I acomplished my expectations about learning TECH and there's a good environment. They have ten years of experience organizing this kind of courses and each year is better than before. I promisse I'll never leave it apart! Here you are the most part of the lecturers' presentation, although they are in spanish you'll enjoy their energy and the fruit of their work.  http://novadors.org/jornades2013/?p=406  I have learned a lot from them. - EDUCADIGITAL: UPV (Valencian Technical University) in Alcoy (Alicante), 8th and 9th of July 2013. http://www.novadors.or...

I'm making a list of resources for primary teachers including apps and web pages, if you have any suggestion, leave me a comment. Web pages - Sparklebox -> the most complete web with free-printing material in english with adequate drawings for your infant to primary students. - Jolly Learning -> interesting methodology for teaching phonetics and grammar. Other resources too. Teach your spanish students as they are taught in England with this method. - Communication 4 all -> children with special needs will be supported with this material. Inclusion is the goal. - Smart cities -> high levels info. about smart cities all over the world. - Alexandria lybrary -> free sources created for PDI. ICT webs (create materials, avatars...)   http://avatarmaker.abi-station.com/index_en.shtml      https://storybird.com/      https://www.smore.com/      http://www.capzles.com/      http://www.story...

I have one minute to show you some of the useful classroom language I have displayed in my classroom. I encourage you to do it! I'm using it from 1st to 4th primary levels and they use it daily.

Web origin Here I present one of the last journeys to which I have attended. It was organised by Espiral and it's a well known organization in the Valencian Community. The programming was oriented to education at different levels, from infant to university studies. One of the most interesting lectures was LabHuman , an department belonging to Politecnical University of Valencia dedicated to investigation and innovation specially about augmented reality. Think about a city where you can use augmented reality for visiting it, for tourism or maybe for your students to learn. Could you imagine it? Some of the following projects belong to these part of society who is interested in developing technology and to adapt it to tourism but specially to education. - AVAart --> project about art integrating AR and QR codes. - Illargonauta --> a blog of students of classics Latin and Greek using AR. - Anfore3D --> to enhance spacial skills. - Aume...

You can follow Novadors Open Meeting 2013 celebrated in "Monestir de la Valldigna" on february the 9th, through our web page. Here you can visit our presentations , resources and people who attended to the meeting. You will enjoy it! Here you are our promotional video