Thursday 24 May 2012

Los Pistoleros de la Paz

Do you remember Den Haag, Netherlands, 2009?
Do you remember our visit to the International School of The Hague?
Do you remember as well our handsome "teacher guide" in there, and how many thinghs did we learn from him?

Berenguer Gaston has made a dramatic change in his life full of Rumba flavor. He left the school last year and started a new "life project" in which he is has been involved for many years. Now is time to listen to their outcomes.

Los Pistoleros de la Paz come to infect us with their sound full of different musical influences. A cultural mix that explodes with ritmo latino. The band formed early 2008 as an initiative to be part of the festival "Pieter van der Doesstraat" held in Amsterdam in order to unite the diverse cultures prevailing in the Netherlands. The idea caught the attention of several friends who joined the group to continue the goal of the festival, as a band. Catalan, Colombian, Venezuelan, Ecuadorian and Dutch, making the best of their worlds, reflected in their music. Los Pistoleros de la Paz, carrying the flag of hope in the air with as always their motto: Smile, and things will be better!

Find them in Facebook
Find them in My Space



Berenguer Gaston (saxophone) and Genis Navarro (trumpet), both exalumni. How proud!

Crossing the river

-Resources: A picture or flashcard to represent each vocabulary item or selected letter of the alphabet.
Time guide:10 minutes

Preparation: create some space across the middle of the classroom.

Activity: Use the cleared space in the classroom and place the flashcards in a line on the floor with the pictures facing up.
Divide the class into two teams, with one team standing at each end of the line pictures.
If necessary check that the children know how to play ‘Rock, paper, scissors’ by practising this with the whole class.
Each student stand opposite another child with their fists clenched. They both move their fists up and down as they count 1, 2 3 together and out loud. On the third count each child chooses between showing rock, paper or scissors with their hand.
One child wins , rock beats scissors, paper beats rock, and scissors beats paper. If the same gesture is chosen by both children, they simply repeat the game until one of them wins.

 The first child from each team walks along beside the line of pictures, each starting at opposite ends line. They have to take turns to say what each picture or letter is as they reach it. The rest of their team can join in by saying each item.

When the two players meet the play’ Rock, paper,scissors’. Whoever wins stays where they are, and the other player goes to the back of their team’s line.
The next player in the losing team now starts walking along the line of pictures saying what each picture is,and the winning player also continues. When they meet, they play ‘Rock,paper,scissors’.
This continues until one team member manages to cross the river, in other words, reaches the opposite end of the line of pictures. A point is scored for each child that crosses the river.

The game can end when all of one team reach the other side – but that could take a very long time! Or you can play for a set period of time, stopping when choose, and the winning team is the one with the most points or with the player furthest along the line.

Play with me!!!

Play with me is a Comenius Project which involves four countries from the European Union: United Kingdom, Italy, Greece and Spain. In Catalonia this project is been leadered by Melin Masdeu, one of our teacher members in our ICE group of work.

The main intention of this project is to know and share traditional games from their countries, while they are experiencing other languages and cultures.

They want to develop the children within the partnership schools as fit and healthy individuals who enjoy playing traditional games as much as plugging themselves into computers. Through a range of hands-on enjoyable activities they can experience other cultures and be given a European dimension to their learning. A Comenius Club is developed in each school where skills learnt can be used further.

Different types of traditional games are shared across the countries. They are evaluated and also support teacher professional development. It enables teachers and students across the network to network and create further learning opportunities.

Parents and the wider community are involved in collaborative work across the projects. Ultimately it will lead to the development of a learning platform where teachers and learners will be able to keep all members aware of the progress being made towards the final outcome.
 

Thursday 10 May 2012

Concentration. A five minutes warm up activity

"Concentration" is a 5 minutes warm up activity to foster concentration and to involve children into oral production. It is a very good way to start the class when you need to focus in one particular topic, working out abilities such as listening and social skills.

Depending of the level you can increase difficulty by demanding the right phonetics, working out grammar items (adverbs, prepositions...) or increasing speed.


Sunday 6 May 2012

Three minutes teacher

"Three minutes teacher" is a warm up activity that can be done in upper primary ESL class. It is an activity to promote speaking, oral autonomy and interaction.

Once a week a student presents the class for 3 minutes. Voluntarily, she or he prepares a warm up activity to get into English. For example, asking questions about the weekend, showing a picture, telling a story or any personal information, a song, a chant, a video…

Any possibility is fine. They have to tell the teacher in advance what they are going to do. We can record the presentation or take a picture of him/her being a teacher.