Art museum in the English classroom

Why not bringing some real art to the English classroom?

Well, here's how I did it: 

1st - I set up an art museum in the classroom. Flash cards with copies of  paintings by the most famous painters were displayed on the walls all over.

2nd - Kids went on a tour and asked each other: "Do you like this painting?" / "What's your favorite?" 

            Expressions like "Oh, that's beautiful!"; "I really like it"; "so, so"and "not so much"                   were practiced before. 

3rd - In small groups kids chose one of their favourite paintings to copy themselves with brushes and paint. 

The surprising choices were:  The persistence of memory by Salvador Dalí 

And The son of man by René Magritte

4th - While painting, there were speaking activities happening. 

           My "language plan" for that lesson included talking about school material, colours and              the use of the present continuous. For that reason, structures like, "What are you        using", "What are you doing", "Do you need more yellow paint?"... were used on purpose.

5th - And the paintings were displayed in the classroom.

Reading Corner in 4 steps

It's very important to create a good reading environment for the class. And it is even more important to let the students take an active role in the creation of such environment. 

Here is a suggestion of something -really nice- I did with my students some years ago.

As for the process, here it goes:

1 - Select an inspirational image, project it onto a large fabric and let your students draw it on pencil.

2 - Prepare a space at your classroom which you won't need too much for the next month or so (remember, it's a large picture)

3 - Use fabric paint and let your students be creative :) I would usually let the "fast finishers" to go paint first.

4 - Hang their Master Piece at the reading corner. Get a nice carpet and some cute pillows to go along :)

Enjoy the "story times"!     

 

ps. This "curtain" was also hiding a - quite boring - archive. Let's say it as a beautiful 2 in 1 :) 

The Old House - Story project 2012

In the summer of 2011 I flew to Norwich to participate in the course "Literature in the Language classroom". (I might have mentioned it before...)

It was a very rewarding course and it later led to this project:

While teaching 5th graders I decided to put in practice some of the techniques I had learned in the course and so I developed a project based on the story "The Old House". It is a mystery story that comes with the student's book: "Way to go". Usually the so called extensive reading is left behind because the curriculum is extensive enough to get us busy for the entire year, but when we think about extensive reading as another way to teach the curricular topics, it comes handy.

The students read and explored the story in class with my help, and after that they actually built the house which was the central part of the story.

Was it also an arts project? Yes, of course it was! 

The funny thing is that in order to build the house right they had to understand the story well...

This led to some nice conversations among the students as they were arriving school with their wonderful projects. "The house was yellow, not green!" ; “ It had two floors, not one!” or " It is too beautiful, it should be ugly because it was an old house"... and this went on and on until the day the school's director and the teacher responsible for the library (where the exhibition was held) had to decide which house was the winner.

Yes, it was a contest! With prizes! 

It wasn't mandatory, maybe that's why kids were so engaged. They weren't working for grades; they were working for a prize.

I really recommend this kind of projects because they:

• get students engaged in learning;
• get parents working with their children at home;
• allow kids who aren't that brilliant at languages to show their teacher that they are much better in arts;
• allow interactions with other places at school rather than the classroom;
• boost students' self esteem (by watching their work at the library's spotlight);
• create a much better image of the English lessons and for that reason = MOTIVATION
• ... 

  

The course where I learned techniques to work with literature in class took place at NILE (Norwich Institute for Language Education). It was integrated on a Comenius program supported by our national agency: PROALV. 

PowerPoint - My House

Here is my last creation. I don't want to seem arrogant but it is really GREAT!! hehehe
It is a PowerPoint presentation about the parts of the house and some furniture!
I hope it is useful. Don't forget to comment! It really makes me happy when I read what people think about my work.

Note: this is a message from the year 2008... I  discovered that I had accidentally turned it into draft, so now I'm republishing it.
(If somehow the  PPT doesn't open please try this new link: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/40110390/TF%20downloads/house%20parts1.pptx )   in : 18/04/2013  

Pumpkin art :D

It all started like this:Then the kids gave it some colour:
It was fun!! The pumpkin is finnished and hanging on the wall of my new classroom. (I forgot to take a picture.. ;( sorry... )
Anyways, I'm teaching primary now... (not english...) only Portuguese, maths and Science. Even so, we had to celebrate Halloween :D
Kids love it and so do I :D

"English Tea Break"

Last June 1st was a very special day at school! Besides being the world's children day, I took the chance to develop a special activity with my students. It was called "The english tea break" . With the help of 2 other teachers, I took the students to the canteen and they baked some scones. While the scones were cooking in the oven and the water was warming up for the tea, I talked about the 5 o'clock tea tradition. The students learned some curiosities such as that it was a Portuguese Princess (Catarina de Bragança) who started this tradition in England.

At 5 o'clock, the tea was served! A bit later came the scones right from the oven. We put some jam on them and then it was the most delicious part of the activity!!! EATING!!!

Ps. It was a hell of a job.. but very worth doing!! Specially when I got back to the classroom and read a message the students' had left for me on the board : "Thank you for today's lesson!" I guess that my stress went all way when I read that!

Responsible student award!

As my pen-paling project develops, I felt the need to create a special award to those students who had been very responsible and were able to meet all the deadlines established during the project.

I think that it is very important to motivate good behavior and responsibility! The students who didn't receive the award felt jealous and I liked that reaction! It means that next time they'll probably do better in order to get an award themselves!

New patches for old - Story

Hello everyone!

I'm here to tell you about a story.
I've used this story with my 3rd graders! They loved it!They were curious all the time, wanting to know what was hidden in the next pages.
It is a great story to tell when we are teaching clothes. The main character is Hasan he bought new trousers for a special celebration but the trousers are too long. He asks his wife, daughter and mum for help. What happened??
You must read the story ;)
It is funny!!

Poster about clothes.

Hi there everybody!

My students have built this poster about clothes. They coloured and cut the clothes. Now this poster is hanging on the wall and the students can change the doll's clothes every time they want, the way they wish. There's only one rule. All clothes must be placed above their "word" labels  This way the kids can play and still associate the words with the pictures even without knowing they are "studying".

I prefer this kind of "pro-active" posters to the "static" ones.

Clothes - activity

Here is a new activity which I used with my students today:

First, there were a boy and a girl on the board.

Then, I told the kids that we should dress them according to the weather...

I put the clothes on the board and as I did so, I asked the kids: "What's this?.."

After we've been through all the clothes, I asked some kids - one by one - to come to the board and follow my instructions. For example:

"Put the red skirt on the girl".. they had to look for the red skirt and stick it on the girl...

With this activity I explored vocabulary about the clothes, about colours and about the weather.

It was very nice to see all the kids wanting to participate and to help the ones who were having some doubts.

Notes: The pictures (boys and clothes) were taken from "THE TEACHER'S MAGAZINE"

The frames I've used here were taken from the great blog: http://rocha2goretty.blogspot.com

Farm-Jungle Animals. Animals to colour

Here you may see my blackboard again!

Today, as a final activity about the unit " Animals" my students had to fill these boards with animals from the farm and from the jungle.

Each student had a different animal. They were asked to colour and cut out the animal. After that, they would present themselves as if they were the animal they were holding. For example: "I'm a snake. I live in the Jungle."

I'll leave you here some of those animals as well. I got them by searching on Google.

Birdies video.

I've made this video so that I can make a revision about the names of some birds with my students.

During the video you'll see: Pigeons, Eagles, Peacoks, Roosters, Robins, Turkeys and Owls. These may not be the kind of animals we usually teach to 1st graders but as I've seen they liked them so much at the cartoon, why not?

Activity - Animals

This is how the blackboard of my 4th grade class looked like yesterday.

I've made a kind of a guessing game with my students. I just wrote these sentences and asked them to copy. They had to complete the sentences as they wished, without knowing the meaning of what was written there.

After they've finished, we had a blast with some of the sentences. "The rabbit flies", "The snake is sweet" etc.

Students knew that this was the purpose of the activity. Having some fun.

At the end I explained the meaning of the sentences ad they wrote the words in the correct places.

Activity - My favourite pet

I've used this activity with all my classes and it worked really well!
First you must have flashcards (A4 if possible) and quite a lot of adhesive gum.
Then you ask the students to take a pencil or a pen cap (the lighter the better).
You ask them individually, "What's your favourite animal?" They will answer your question and then mark the animal with their pencil.
When all class has finished marking the animals, you can explore the results.

• Which one is the champion?
• How many students voted for the snake?
• How many votes did the dog get?
• Which is the animal with zero votes?
• ... and a whole lot more of questions....

Spring Watch - Cbeebies

Enjoy Spring!!!

For a better quality video and a Karaoke version just click http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/springwatch/song.shtml

I love this song!!

Take a look at Autumn Watch as well. It's a great song to use at the beginning of the year with 4th grader for example!!

Father's day - suggestion

For the Father's day I've made this certificate with my 1st grade students. I would like to make something more elaborated or even use some recycling for the activity, but my lessons are only 45 minutes long which makes it hard to do some kind of crafts.


I found the original "Certificate" online by searching on google. Then I just made some changes on the text. Instead of a Portuguese "Best Dad's certificate" I made an English version.


Either way, I leave here both versions of the certificate. If you still have time, you can use it with one of your classes!

Frisbee - Course book

I think I've never written about this book.. Well, I'm not really a fan of english course books for primary school. Most of them are restricted to a few short topics and activities. I really like it better to create my own lessons most of the times with my own materials and Ideas. However, this course book as caught my attention three years ago. Not by the book itself but by the audio CD that comes with it!

The songs and chants are really great! The kids learn them fast and they always ask me to repeat them. It is a combination of nice songs with comic and dramatic voices.

I do think it is worth buying the project just for the CD! The activity book is also good. If I was forced to pick a course book for my students this would certainly be my choice.

Here in Portugal we can order the book from Santillana's site www.santillana.pt . I guess in spain it's the same... I don't know about other countries but I can tell you that the original publisher is Riachmond.

Pair work - Likes and dislikes!

Dear everyone,


I've recently been teaching Sports and Hobbies.

As those are topics which pupils learn really fast, I've decided to develop some pair work activities to practice speaking.

I've elaborated a table where the students would mark the answers they got from their friends.

The questions would always start with "Do you like...?" and they had to ask a list of 10 sports or hobbies to their partners. They would take their table and write "Yes" or "No" according to their answers.

I've noticed that most of them respected the rules and spoke English all the time.

The environment in that class was very pleasant. I could see that they were actually working and having fun at the same time.

My idea was to follow this activity by making a graphic in class showing the most "liked" sports among the students but unfortunately time was too short for all ...

Do you usually use pair work and group work in your classes?

I do use group work a lot and I think it's the best way to make the kids comfortable to speak as they don't feel as exposed as when they work individually.

Memory Balloons - activity

Whenever I'm finishing a topic and starting a new one, I usually make this activity with the kids.

I draw several balloons on the blackboard and ask them to try to fill each memory balloon with one word from the last topic we've learned.

For example, yesterday I wrote Food on the board and started drawing the balloons. It didn't take to long before the kids filled all the balloons.

After we do this together on the board, the kids copy it to their Portfolios. With this activity they recall vocabulary and they keep an organized bank of words on their Portfolios.

Big friend, Small friend, Good Friends! - Story

This morning I've used this story with my kids. It is taken from "The teacher's magazine" - which I recommend to all ESL teachers.
I've scanned the 8 pages of the story, added sounds and effects and it ended up in a very nice power point presentation.
If you want, you can download it by clicking on the image.
With this story you can explore the adjectives "huge" - "Tiny" , "Big" - "Small"... As well as the morality of the story which is : "No matter how different we are, we can be good friends"