GETTING TO KNOW YOU:Classroom Activities for Starting off the School Year

Cockroaches and Ladybugs: GETTING TO KNOW YOU:

As a new school year begins, teachers and students renew relationships after the long summer break, see new faces, and establish their routines for the year.

My City, Project Based Learning or Content Based Learning in the ESL class

One of the most important topics in the Primary Social Science Curriculum at Cicle Mitjà and Cicle Superior is the city, the town or the village where the students live.

The city landscape of Vitebsk

Knowing the city is a way to know many aspects of the social, cultural and civic around us. But it is also a way to know about museums, interesting places, monuments, history, famous people, unique buildings and curiosities of the town.

In this project, students will conduct a research on one or more aspects of their city (or another one, if we consider it more appropriate). The main aim is to develop a graphic support with varied information to orally show in front of the class and to make a display in the school corridors.


These are just some examples of outputs produced within the project. Power Points and scaled models are probably the most used resources among primary students, but they also used Prezi, Glogster or Issuu.

My city project from Enric Calvet

And this is the complete Unit Plan.

Unit plan my city from Enric Calvet

If you want to know something else about this project, the proposal, the basic skills it covers, or to download a Rubric for the assessment of communication, a peer assessment or a self assessment grid, please visit ARC (Aplicació de Recursos al Currículum). The project is fully published in this link: My City.

This project has been developed by TLEinC. ICE UAB Teacher trainers group work, 2013. Authors: Núria Biosca Perich, Enric Calvet Tomàs, Ana M. Esteban Nieto, M. Emília Masdeu Chimeno, Manuela Moledo Nores, M. Carmen Pérez Martin, Antonio Orihuela Lechuga.

Summer Homework? A suggestion...

Cockroaches and Ladybugs: Summer Homework? A suggestion...

What can we do about English? Is there any way we can help our child? “I do not know much English but, I would like to help my children maintaining  the language learnt in the school...”

These, and other worries, are typical among parents when Summer is coming and they have to face a “long leisure time” with not much homework to do.

What can you do with clothes?

Cockroaches and Ladybugs: What can you do with clothes?: Today I like to share with you all some activities I use when I am introducing and practicing the topic “ Clothes ” to my elementary ESL students.

Fashion show in primary esl class from Enric Calvet

 Read more about at Cockroaches and Ladybugs: What can you do with clothes?

Film English: innovative and creative use of moving images in language learning

Cockroaches and Ladybugs: Film English: innovative and creative use of moving images in language learning:

Today I want to suggest an essential resource for English classes: Film English , the website of the English teacher Kieran Donaghy.

Do not miss it!

Get the most of videos in the ESL Class

Cockroaches and Ladybugs: Get the most of videos in the ESL Class

There are many things we can do with videos in the ESL class to actively involve children into the language learning.

A cooking workshop in the ESL class

Cockroaches and Ladybugs: A cooking workshop in the ESL class

Carnival is a festival of immense cultural and historical significance:   “There are many advantages in holding a nursery or school carnival ...

You must strongly think on the idea to do some cooking projects in English. They are a great resource of vocabulary and grammar in a rich context, full of motivation, fun and hands on activities.

The power of music when Teaching English to Very Young Learners.

How can ELT be made enjoyable and effective in Kindergarten?

Song, a combination of music and lyrics, possesses many intrinsic merits, such as a kaleidoscope of culture, expressiveness, recitability and therapeutic functions, which render it an invaluable source for language teaching.

Read more about at Cockroaches and Ladybugs blog.

Ice breakers, knowing each other and five minutes Activities for Interaction

Back to work, back to reality! 
Ready to start back?

There is nothing most intimidating for teachers that coping with a large group of children who you don't know at the begining of school year. And this can be very scary for the children, too!

Getting students to feel at ease in a new classroom usually takes a bit of time and work. English language teachers are always looking for "good communicative ice breakers" that breaks this initial "ice", between us and the children.

We need ice breakers to reduce tension in a particular group, to help children to get to know know each other's names (and you to get to know them, too), to involve them into oral language production, to facilitate conversations between individuals, to allow interaction in the groupand to encourage friendships.

I have listed some good ice-breaker activities and games web sites, and other materials I use with my students.

Find them in Cockroaches and Ladybugs: Ice breakers, knowing each other and five minutes activities for Interaction

Explore by yourself!

How to facilitate speaking in the ESL classroom

Upper Primary Level. 

How difficult is to teach conversation in the ESL classroom! How difficult is to stir spontaneous speaking!

Repetition kills motivation!

If you are using a textbook you will realize that the material found in ESL textbooks are dry and lack the variety and authenticity of real-world conversations. Teachers need something that can stimulate students and get them motivated to speak English in the classroom.

A good way is using video clips as a conversational prompt. They provide students with authentic situations in which the English language is used and can help them speaking in the classroom. 

First problem:  To find one that is appropriate. Just ask you few questions:
Is the content suitable for the students?
Does the content appeal to the students?
Is the length of the clip too long?

Clips shorter than two minutes may not provide enough substance from which students can create a narrative. On the other hand, clips more than five minutes in length may be too challenging for upper primary students.

Second problem: Where to find suitable video clips? You can search popular video sites such as YouTube.com, Vimeo.com or Google videos for the video clips.  In these sites, video clips are abundant and are easily accessible in the classroom (type "animated short films" or "animated commercials"... you will get some good stuff to use in the ESL class).

Personally, the ones I like the most are: the YouTube Pixar channel and Ringling College of Art Design channels in Vimeo. 

I recently used this video from the YouTube Pixar channel in Year 5, just after reading the Heinemann book "Castles. King Arthur Treasure"

Third problem: What to do with it? It is a good idea to create a worksheet that has sections in which students can write down ideas, single words, new vocabulary, actions (verbs), and things they don’t know or they do not understand, that will later be used in speech. At the bottom of the worksheet, just add a few lines so that students can write a short narrative, both in L1 or L2, depending on the level.

My students usually work in small groups. I distribute a specific worksheet and introduce briefly the video to them. Take care to not give away what is happening in the video, otherwise they will not have much to write and later narrate. Simply inform the students of what are they going to do, the name of the video and some clues to watch it.

Lets talk about clips

View more documents from Enric Calvet.

The first time I play the video, I ask children to do nothing: just watch and listen. The second time I ask them to write down, on the worksheet, what they see in the clip.

This video is from the student gallery of Ringling College of Art and Design.


Carrot Crazy! from Ringling College of Art + Design on Vimeo.

Once the video clip has been played I ask some questions regarding the clip:

What did you see in the video clip (objects, places,)?
What was happening (actions, verbs…)?
What emotions, do you think, the actors felt (feelings, adjectives…)?
Why did the characters do this or that?
…

Now, here it comes the most amazing part of the activity: students are asked to write a small narrative that will accompany the actions in the video. 

Students can write the narrative in the third or the first person: just they are different ways of expressing what is happening in the video.

Play the video again without sound. Give ten minutes to groups to come up with a narrative for the video clip. While students are writing, walk around and assist as necessary. When the groups have completed their narratives, choose alternative groups to narrate the video clip while it is being played.

Make sure each student from the group has a chance to read a few lines of the narrative.

You can conclude the session by asking their opinion, comment or just giving an adjective for the video.

With a little extra work you can add the narrative to the video by using Overstream or another subtitle adding app.

Watch an example in vimeo