Happy holidays!

The ESL Times board wants to wish everybody a happy holidays and Merry Christmas.

Thanks to all participants in this collaborative project, we'll come back next year 2014.

E-Twinning Project: Celebrating Together

As a part of our e-Twinning Project: Celebrating Together we have celebrate the International Day of the Rights of the Child. We did different activities, you can have a look to them in the blogs of two of the Spanish teachers:

• Mi Primer Año en Red XXI: 20th of November. Internationala Day of the Rights of the Child.
• SGAguilar Javier Ramos: 20th of November. Internationala Day of the Rights of the Child.

The final product in the three European Schools was to create a video in which the students said one of the rights of the Declaration of the Rights of the Child (1959). 

Here you can see the final products of this activity. 

Year 5A from Colegio San Gregorio (Aguilar de Campoo, Spain)

Year 5B from Colegio San Gregorio (Aguilar de Campoo, Spain)

Students from Holy Trinity Pewley Down School (Guildford, England)

Students from Zespół Szkolno-Przedszkolny nr 3 im.Jana Pawła II (Rybnick, Poland)

WE HOPE YOU LIKED THEM!!!

For further information about the project you could have a look to our blog:

e-Twinning project: Celebrating together

YOU AREN'T ALONE

Título: You aren´t alone.

Centro: IES Jaime Gil de Biedma (Nava de la Asunción. Segovia)

Sección:Storytelling

Etapa educativa: 4º ESO

Autores: Rialta Castán Marigómez

JFK

Fifty years ago, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald while riding in a motorcade through downtown Dallas, Texas. Although his life was cut short, his legacy of supporting civil rights and American technological advancement still resonates today. 

This week's Do Now conversation is framed around how President Kennedy inspired a generation of scientists with his mission to be the first country to go to the Moon. 

Does your generation have a “Moon mission”? And if so, what does it look like? If not, what should it look like?

You can view the Do Now here:
http://blogs.kqed.org/education/2013/11/22/what-is-this-generations-moon-mission/

To respond to the Do Now, you can comment below or tweet your response. Be sure to begin your tweet with @KQEDEdspace and end it with #DoNowJFK

Brought to you by PBS NewsHour Extra.

PODCASTING AT CPR LOS CASTAÑOS

Hi, everybody.

Year 4, 5 and 6 CPR "Los Castaños" have recorded some podcasts with English talks. 

First of all, we made the talks in the class. After that we worked in pairs to record using the app SPREAKER.

You could find in our classroom blog ALPUJARRING and in our spreaker's account.

Greetings. 

Alberto Molina Cervilla

Native Americans

Thanks to the students from 2 ESO, Groups B and C, at IES Vicente Medina, Archena (Murcia), for this excellent article about Native Americans.

American History

Have a look at these great popplets by the 2 ESO students from Group D, at IES Vicente Medina, Archena (Murcia).
Thanks to their teacher, Inma López, for sending their outputs.

My Dream Classroom

Have you ever wished to have a jacuzzi in your classroom? Or, maybe a tennis court, a piano, some clothes shops and, of course, plenty of computers and mobile phones everywhere?
Students of ESO1B at IES La Zafra in Motril have had the opportunity of designing their ideal classroom. Most of them are in Hawaii, but we also have classrooms in New York, London and even...Jupiter!!! Five to ten students per classroom as average and most of the times, with no teachers. (...)
They have even been allowed to chose the subjects taught in those Dream Classrooms and, of course, the winner is: Wassap. One hour everyday, followed by lessons of tuenti, shopping, football, and, of course, PSP, XBox... No need to have a recess as you can sit comfortably in the huge sofas placed everywhere or have a swim in the huge swimming pools that you can find in almost all of our classrooms. And, believe it or not,  in mid november, in Motril, most of the classroom didn't forget to install... Air Conditioned!!
You can find more details about the process of building those classrooms as well as the evaluation rubric on our CLASSROOM BLOG
And here is a little sample of our work so far:

MY DREAM CLASSROOM on PhotoPeach.
Enjoy!!

How Should We Address Poverty? Do Now as a class!!!

How should the U.S. treat people who are living in poverty? 

What would an anti-poverty agenda look like? 

Devise one piece of legislation that could make a difference.

The issue comes up as the US Census Bureau announced that the US poverty rate has remained roughly at this same level since 2011. 46 million Americans — 15 percent of the population — are now counted as living in poverty.

The main resource is an interview of  Robert Reich who talks about “Inequality for All,” a documentary about the former labor secretary’s personal crusade to explain to Americans why everyone should care about the nation’s growing economic disparity and divisiveness. 

There is also a great comic infographic that defines poverty from KQED's The Lowdown (under the More Resources section).

If you are teaching B2 - C1 lessons, join Do Now and get in touch with lots of students and teachers around the world at the same time as you make your contribution on current issues through social networks, from an educational point of view.

Here's the Do Now: http://blogs.kqed.org/education/2013/11/01/how-should-we-address-poverty/

To respond to the Do Now, you can comment below or tweet your response. Be sure to begin your tweet with @KQEDEdspace and end it with #DoNowPoverty

Create a Comic with Marvel

Every kid knows Marvel characters: the Avengers, Captain America, Spiderman, Ironman, Thor, and so on, but now you can you use them in your classroom, break creative and have your students write their own Marvel comics, and all that, online.

Visit Marvel and start creating. Either a whole book or just a strip, your students will surely love it, have fun and at the same time, practise their writing skills in English!

 

Great for Primary Education Storytelling Lessons!

Let's cook to celebrate Halloween

Year 2 of Primary School

San Gregorio School.

Last week  one of my collegues gave me a big Pumpkin and we decided not only to decorate it for Halloween day. We decided to COOK IT! We cooked Halloween Cream. 

1. First of all we wrote down the Recipe in our notebooks. 

2. Then we needed to check if we had all the ingredients and the materials.

3. Let's follow the recipe. Peel the potatoes and the pumpkin.

 

4. Chop the pumpkin and the potatoes. And then put everything into the pot.

5. Let's boil it for 1 hour. (Mari Luz, our school cook, helped us with this). And then we had to blend everything with the cheese.

6. Then we set the table (We used the school library for it).

7. We ate it and IT WAS DELICIOUS!!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN FROM 

CLASS YEAR 2B OF SAN GREGORIO SCHOOL !!!

I hope you like it and you had found it useful for your lessons.

Javier Ramos Sancha

@javiramossancha

SGAguilar Javier Ramos

Halloween VoiceMail

Enjoy receiving voice messages through SpeakPipe?

What about spooky Halloween voice messages?

Halloween is just around the corner, so we built a public Halloween voicemail board for recording, listening to, and sharing scary Halloween voice messages.

Visit the board here.

Go ahead, record your spooky messages and share them with others.


Don't be shy - you can become a Halloween spooky-star!

MY SUMMER HOLIDAYS BY YEAR 2B

MY SUMMER HOLIDAYS

BY YEAR 2B

Colegio San Gregorio.

At the beginning of the school years we wanted to start with our Portfolio we decided to tell everybody what we did along OUR SUMMER HOLIDAYS.

We drawn a picture about the thing we have liked the most of the holidays. Later, we learnt the past tense of the verb go. We wanted to put into words where we were and who were with us. So we write a sentence in our pictures using the past.

These have been our final products:

My summer holidays  on PhotoPeach

We hope you liked it and if you want let’s do it with your students.

Javier Ramos Sancha

@javiramossancha

http://sgaguilarjramos.blogspot.com

EUROPEAN DAY OF LANGUAGES AT CPR LOS CASTAÑOS

Hi, everybody.

CPR "Los Castaños" have celebrated the European Day of Languages through an Etwimming Project. 

This project consists on an exchanges of "Greeting Cards" between the countries which are partners of  it. These were written in the mother tongue and English. 

Schools from most of European countries have taken part in it. We have received in Pitres cards from England, France, Portugal, Sweden, Island, Ukraine, Slovenia, Poland, Italy, Greece, Denmark, Ireland, etc.

After that, we have been working on looking for information about these countries and each pupil has done a small presentation to their partners of this country.

Of course, we have also sent our "Greeting Cards" to schools.

You could find the post in our classroom blog.

Greetings. 

Alberto Molina Cervilla

Who is to Blame for the USA Government Shutdown?

This week's Do Now focuses on the government shutdown… And this is the question, Who is to blame for the government shutdown?

At Do Now, they are featuring a great video from PBS NewsHour with lots of excellent classroom resources from NewsHour Extra, the Lowdown, and the New York Times. These resources can help students better understand the complexity of our government.

You can find this week's Do Now here:http://blogs.kqed.org/education/2013/10/04/who-is-to-blame-for-the-government-shutdown/

To respond to the Do Now, you can tweet your response. Be sure to begin your tweet with @KQEDedspace and end it with #DoNowShutdown

EUROPEAN DAY OF LANGUAGES AT SAN GREGORIO SCHOOL

Year 5 students and their teacher have created an e-Twinning project to work on it along this school year. It is titled:  "Celebrating Together" (You will find more information following the link)

In this project we are working together three european schools:

• Holy Trinity School (Guildford, England)
• Zespół Szkolno-Przedszkolny nr 3 im. Jana Pawła II (Rybnick, Poland) 
• Colegio San Gregorio (Aguilar de Campoo, Spain)

Our main aim with this project is to work on the calendar of International days. So each month we will have a special celebration of one chosen day. (European Day of Languages, International Day of the Enviroment, Day of Europe....).

The first activity was the celebration of THE EUROPEAN DAY OF LANGUAGES on the 26th  September 2013. Here you can see the activity we did at San Gregorio School and which the teacher published in the own blogs: 

• Mi primer año en Red XXI: European Day of Languages
• SGAguilar Javier Ramos: European Day of Languages

This has been the final product of the activity at San Gregorio School. 

Year 5A

Year 5B

This is the final product of the celebration which took place at  Holy Trinity School in Inglaterra:

And this is the final product of the celebration which took place at Polish school:

CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL OF YOU. 
IT'S A MARVELLOUS JOB!!


LET'S VISIT OUR WEBSITE FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THE e-Twinning PROJECT.
"Celebrating together"

Julián Sanz Mamolar (@julisanzmamolar/Mi primer año en RedXXI)

Javier Ramos Sancha (@javiramossancha/ SGAguilar Javier Ramos)

48 stories for English Tenses

Today we want to show you a good recourse if you are learning or working grammar topics.

It can be very useful for teachers and students because can practice all 12 English tenses (simple present, present progressive, simple past, future perfect...) as well as reading, writing, sentence structure and comprehension. 

http://www.really-learn-english.com/english-grammar-tenses.html

It's an easy way to learn and teach grammar through stories.

Here it is:

• 4 illustrated stories for each of the 12 tenses (for example, 4 stories to practice the present perfect, 4 stories to practice the future continuous, etc.)
• 48 stories altogether
• Short and easy stories
• Each story comes with a set of exercises and an answer key
• Available online, and as downloadable/printable worksheets
• Absolutely free to use.

Thanks to Heidi J Bai one of the teachers behind the web http://www.really-learn-english.com/, sharing this work with us.

Comenius Visit to Poland

Here I want to show you a video summary of the last visit we celebrate the last school year to conclude our Comenius Project: Travelbroadens the mind. Let’s travel together!

We were hosted by families of our partners schools: Zespół Szkolno-Przedszkolny nr 3 im.Jana Pawła II in Ribnyck (Poland). In this visit we were six 10-year-old students and two teachers. We were really happy because with this visit our students changed their mind and knowing another culture they really enjoyed. What at the begging was just OK at the end it was amazing for them.

Here you can see some video summaries about that visit:

Following this link you can have a look to all the presentations the students did about the visit.

BlogViajando con Nubi: Visita a Polonia de los alumnos.

We hope you like it.

Javier Ramos Sancha

@javiramossancha

http://sgaguilarjramos.blogspot.com

Is Health Care a Human Right?

This week's Do Now asks students if they think that health care is a basic human right and if all people should, regardless of wealth, have access to quality health care.  This issue is back in the news since open enrollment in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace, popularly known as Obamacare, begins October 1, meaning that people will soon be able to sign up for government-subsidized health insurance programs. The House GOP has also launched a shutdown battle by voting to defund Obamacare.

Here's the link to the Do Now:

http://blogs.kqed.org/education/2013/09/20/is-health-care-a-human-right/


whitehouse.gov

To respond to the Do Now, you can comment below or tweet your response. Be sure to begin your tweet with @KQEDEdspace and end it with #DoNowACA

Create a Google style classroom newspaper

We are sure all of you have some time used various tools to create digital newspapers and paper ones, too.
Our first tip for teachers focuses on creating a newspaper using Google Docs, a very simple tool which allows us to easily design attractive, collaborative and successful papers written by any grade reporter.

Steps:
1. Explain what Google Docs is if you are about to first use it with your ESL students, as well as what it is for and how it can be a nice writing collaborative tool. Students are bound to grasp everything quickly and it should not take over an hour to get them going.
2. Choose an adequate template to design the newspaper: Student newspaper is a good one.
3. Let students pick up their roles as reporters and decide on the newspaper sections, number of issues published, frequency, and so on.
4. Allow some time for students to gather information, search for pictures, draft their articles and contribute to the newspaper. Do not forget that it is important to respect licences and quote sources for images and any other multimedia elements that you may include in your publication.
5. Arrange self-assessment, peer to peer assessment and finally your own assessment. Rubrics are a nice means for the three kinds of assessment. You might like to use Rubistar to compile your own rubrics.
6. If needed, do some final editing, download it as a pdf file and hand it out to everybody at school. Youpublisher also provides you with the chance to have a digital publication.

The final output might look something like the example below, an idea by Laura Chesebro: The Baseball Gazette.

Source: http://www.thethinkingstick.com/the-classroom-newspaper-google-docs-style/

Ready to put this tip into practice in class?

Why don't you compile your own classroom newspaper? We'd love to gather your newspapers here, all your contributions are welcome! 

Just make a comment here or mail us with the output you designed with your students after having followed the steps of this tip.

Good luck!

Talk like a Pirate Day

 

September, 19 is the International "Talk Like a Pirate" Day. 

Maybe, this doesn't say much to anybody in a non-British context, but it can be a good opportunity for English teachers of any level to try and play pirates with their students as they learn  new vocabulary and expressions, listen, talk, write... Let's have a look at some of these possibilities: 

- The official TLAP site (http://www.talklikeapirate.com/) has lots of activities like a pirate's personality test or a Pirate's Name Generator, but as it is designed for native speakers, it  might be difficult or not very suitable for beginners. 

- The Pirates Theme Page of Enchanted Learning on the other hand, has plenty of crafts, activities, word puzzles, etc. designed for the young ones; and although membership (some 17€/year) is required to download and print the original worksheets, you can surf and find ideas to adapt yourself to your specific needs. 

- There's also a Facebook Page for the event and a TLAP Wiki with easy tips to celebrate a funny TLAP Day (don't miss the video about how to change normal words and expressions  into 'pirate' language)

- Last but not least, here comes the music. Nobody would think of a real pirate party without a song. This may be a good opportunity to learn and sing the famous Drunken Sailor, either with the original Irish rhythm...

...or, why not, in the Spanish version by "Celtas Cortos" :-)



One way or another, Enjoy TLAP Day!!!...  and tell us!!

Follow me!

Have you got a twitter account?
Not yet? Well, it's about time to open one, isn't it?
And if you already belong to the blue bird tribe, or even if you're a twitter addict, are you sure you're taking the most out of your timeline?
For example, do you use twitter to improve your English? Let us give you some advice on that topic, and most of all, leave the door open to know other people's opinions and choices in order to make our own  "bank of twitstars" :-)
To begin with, obviously, you can follow us, that is, @theesltimes and, if you want, the teachers who hide behind this project, @capileiratic, @Anna_Soroya, @mjgsm, @julisanzmamolar, @teacherojeda
Here are some more teachers, students, organizations... which, in my opinion, are worth to follow, but perhaps the most interesting part of this post is still to come and it is the possibility of including, by means of a comment, your own choice, the suggestions of your "Musts"
Do not hesitate in writing comments with your favourite followees. We will share anf follow them too.
Here the list to start with:
Inglés al día ‏ @inglesaldiaSpeak & Fun Idiomas   ‏@speakandfun
Trinity College SpPt ‏@Trinity_SP_PT 
Muro de los Idiomas ‏ @MuroIdiomas
English on the Rocks ‏ @EnglishOTR
Bilingual Times ‏ @bilingualtimes
Learning English ‏ @EnglishBlogCom
Real Life English ‏ @RealLifeEng
Oxford Dictionaries ‏ @OxfordWords
English Trackers ‏ @EnglishTrackers
iT's for Tweeters ‏ @itsfortweeters
Teaching English ‏ @TeachingEnglish
EnglishClub ‏ @EnglishClub 
EnglishCafe.com ‏ @_EnglishCafe 
Pilar Pamblanco ‏ @englishteach8 

We look forward to reading your comments!!
 
 

History magazine about our city

HISTORY MAGAZINE ABOUT OUR TOWN 

YEAR 6 (Science - English) 

SAN GREGORIO SCHOOL 

One of the last activities we did during the past school year was to invite our students to investigate about the history of our surrounded area and publish and article about it. With all the articles we create a HISTORY MAGAZINE using Glossi. 

Here you have the post we published for them to read and understand the task.

You are going to become a history journalist!!!

After a term full of history lessons. We are going to investigate about the history of our area.  And publish an article and create a  History Magazine in the class.

The article will have five parts:

• Title (It should be atractive, not just the name of the Historical period)
• Historical context of the period, some short information talking about history.
• Documentary about this period. (It should be an storytelling about daily life in this historical period)
• Brief summary about what happened in our area (Aguilar de Campoo)
• The authors and from which websites or books you took the information (the bibliography).

As we have done in all the tasks it is very important to follow the process and the following steps:

1. We will divide the class into 9 groups (most of them will be pairs and some will be threes)

• Prehistory. 
• Preroman times.
• Roman Times
• Visigothics.
• Muslims.
• Christian Kingdoms.
• Catholic Monarchs and XVI century.
• XVIII Century.
• XIX Century.

2. Let's review all the history posts to look for information about your history period. 

SGAguilar Javier Ramos: History Post.

3. Write a short summary for the HISTORICAL CONTEXT  with the most important facts.

4. CREATE a documentary or "storytelling" about life in the historical period:

• My life in the Paleolithic: A Digital Story can be a good example for you. 
• Tips: Remember to create your storyboard and script and show it to your teacher to check you are in the right way.  

5. With the following links INVESTIGATE and WRITE a paragraph about this historical period in our area of Aguilar de Campoo. 

• Prehistory: The nearest Prehistory areas and remains are Altamira  and  Atapuerca.
• Preromans times: There was a tribe along this lands The Támaricos and also is very famous El Castro del Monte Bernorio.
• Roman Times: The Romans founded many cities in our province. Romans in Palencia 
• Visigothics: We can look for information in the village of Mave.
• Muslims: We don't really have remains of them but we can know what happened on Muslim times in Valderredible. 
• Christian Kingdoms: Aguilar was founded in this period. Also we have important Romanesque momuments. 
• Catholic Monarch and the XVI Century: Aguilar had Marquis. Also Charles I of Spain and V of Germany visited our village. And we have an important explorer Juan Martín
• XVIII Century: The Catastro del Marqués de la Ensenada talked about Aguilar. 
• XIX Century: The French troops were here.

6. You will create your article for the Magazine. We are going to use a new app to  create it:

This video will help you to know how to deal with it: 

(It was done by @jferna35)

Your teacher will say to you what page of the magazine you have to do and also the username and the password to enter in your class magazine.

7. Each member of the group will write a post in the kidblog as it was a page of the magazine. And send it to the teacher through the EDMODO. 

8. EVALUATION:

• We are going to have 100 points.
• 50 points will be used by the teachers. (Using the rubric)
• 28 will be used by self-evaluation. (Using the rubric, it is individually)
• 22 will be used by the teamwork. (Give out maximum 22 points to each member of the group)


You are going to create a paper as draft. You have to include:
• Your name and members of your group.
• Your self-evaluation with the rubric. (Maximum 28 points)
• Your teamwork's points. (Maximun 22 points)





HERE YOU HAVE THE RUBRIC

Rúbrica history magazine (para subir) from Javier Ramos Sancha

Here you can have a look about the products the students did after a couples of weeks working on it: Year 6A

Click to view History Magazine About Aguilar de Campoo Year 6 Colegio San Gregorio on GLOSSI.COM

Year 6B

Click to view HISTORY MAGAZINE Y6B SAN GREGORIO SCHOOL on GLOSSI.COM

We hope you liked it and you found it useful for your English or Science Lessons.
Javier Ramos Sancha Julián Sanz Mamolar @javiramossancha @julisanzmamolar http://sgaguilarjramos.blogspot.com http://sangregorio5aguilardecampoo.blogspot.com.es/