LITTLE MOON

Today is a special day in Callosa de Segura. Other cities around Alicante, like Elche, celebrate today the "partir la vieja" day. The meaning is to celebrate the middle part of the Lent ( "Cuaresma" in Spanish) that's the middle of a period of a Christian festivity. The literal meaning is "to divide" ( partir) "the old woman" ( la vieja"). During this day people or schools from the town show a pair of old fainted people dressed as old people, called "viejotes". In a big poster people write some critic saying about society, related to education, council fails, etc.  Look at our "viejotes" and the poster. 

This is a useful extra-material, the minicards or miniflashcards. It is a sheet which includes all the vocabulary of each unit (7-8 words).  How can we use it?  - Memory game - Different cards game: odd one out, for instance. - Copying the vocabulary on the other face and repeating the words. - Making pairs. - The teacher says a word and the students raise their hands showing the corresponding card How can we adapt it? This material is inclusive by itself, but just in case we need to personalise it for students with special needs, as it is my case, here you are some ways to do it. - Give students new ways of writing: filling the blanks in the same face of the picture; copy the name of the object in capital letters and below that draw lines enough to copy the full word. - Ask the student to repeat with you: some students need your help more than others. Meanwhile the group-class is playing with the cards, ask him or her to come to your table and repeat what you say, showing the...

If you want to prepare an easy but suggestive activity for your school on the Valentine's day, here I've got an idea.  You can prepare in large white paper a photocall with the title "I ❤ ENGLISH" and some handmade decorations around. But the most interesting of this game is that you are going to involve the whole school community including parents.  Display the photocall at the hall or in a place where everyone can see it.  Then ask other teachers to advice their students about the schedule for taking photographs, depending on your school timetable and previous organization. Another point is to ask students to wear for a day, that's the 14th February, a T-shirt with a message written in English. It will be very funny to see lots of pictures with your students wearing English language messages and some of them even will have amusing comments.  I will show you mine in the next days! Have a good time! 

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...