Pocoyo

Using these Pocoyo's videos in class is a very cool way to engage your younger students and increase their interest and motivation. Are you ready to do it?? Let's go Pocoyo!!!

LET'S GO POCOYO

Songs and lyrics to work with teens

AEROSMITH - I don't wanna miss a thing.

THE BEATLES - Here comes the sun

THE BEATLES - Twist and shout

ADELE - Someone like you

TAKE THAT - Back for good

JUSTIN BIEBER - As long as you love me

GUNS AND ROSES - Sweet child o'mine

World book day

Enjoy this wonderful clip and remember: the most amazing adventure ever lived is the one you live with your favourite book.

Blogging in the Primary classroom

Get your Primary children to use a blog to practise and improve their writing skills. Sílvia Castelló takes us through the stages of setting up individual and pair writing and a video group project. 'Writing tasks will never be the same again!' says Sílvia.

Author: Sílvia Castelló Masip

Why use a blog?

Projects are usually a successful way of motivating pupils by providing a stimulating and authentic context to showcase their language abilities. However, the extra effort required only really feels worthwhile if the aim is more than just getting a good mark. In third cycle, for example, pupils are able to produce accurate, well-written texts, but usually these go from pupil to teacher and back to the folder with nobody else admiring their work. To avoid this, we usually display them in the classroom or in the corridors. But now we've got a new, effective and highly motivating way of showing the world what we do: a blog!

1 Creating a blog

There are many places on the Internet where you can start a blog. Just type the words create and blog into Google and you'll find over sixty million hits! If you have a Gmail account, it's very simple to create your own blog account with the Blogger tool. Also, your Autonomous Community's Department of Education website may well contain helpful information. In Catalonia (where I work) you can go to http://blocs.xtec.cat

2 Editing your blog

Blogs work like journals; every new post appears on the screen above the previous ones. Editing them is as simple as editing a Word document but with the possibility of including sounds, pictures or videos in every post. You can also change the appearance of the whole page including typeface, colours, backgrounds, images and the information you wish to display.

3 Things to think about

Be careful about posting videos showing your pupils' faces. Each school has its own rules about this issue but it's advisable to find alternative ways to show pupils' work to avoid problems. Another important thing to consider is time. Organising, planning work and effective management are all essential. For example, if you decide to record your pupils reading something they have written, divide your class time in half and work with half the class at once, making sure that the other half have an activity they can do by themselves. It's also a good idea to request the collaboration of the IT teacher so that some of the work can be done in that class (eg typing, editing pictures, scanning, etc).

How to use a blog

You can use your blog to post all kinds of activities related to all the skills. Here are two examples with suggestions for procedure. 

An individual or pair writing activity

• One of the easiest ways to set this up is by taking a writing activity from your coursebook. This means you don't have to find extra time to include something from outside the syllabus and you can also use it to assess skills that are usually difficult to evaluate.
• Set your pupils a clear task and fix a deadline for  handing in a draft of their work. This will give you time to do some individual work with every pupil, correcting and improving the text. A second deadline can be set to hand in the final version (including pictures).
• Once you've collected in all the texts, you'll have to scan them or take photographs of them then upload them on to the blog. You can still put them on the classroom walls later, adding to the existing exhibition. If you can get your pupils to read them out loud, even better. This is a great way of getting other classes involved and it's good for the younger ones to see older children's work and vice versa.
• If you place a link to the English class's blog on the school web page, parents will easily be able to have access to what their children do. And it's amazing the expectation that a Coming Soon! announcement can generate among parents and pupils alike! The blog can also be a good tool for self-learning as there can be some selected links to useful ESL pages.

A group video project

Once or twice a year, you may like to try out a more ambitious activity that can involve the whole class or even two classes. A group video project using a multimedia programme such as Microsoft Movie Maker is hugely rewarding and a great way of developing several skills at the same time.

• Choose a topic, such as a story you have read in class.
• Create groups of 4-6 children and divide the story into as many parts as you have groups. The logistics of combining two classes works fine, as the advantage of group work is that not everyone needs to be working together at the same time. 
• Assign each group a part of the story and get them to draw a picture to explain it. This will help them visualise more clearly their part of the story.
• Depending on the level of the group, you can either get students to write their part, or if the main objective is having them telling the story, you can type it yourself. Alternatively, you could do a mixture of the two by leaving out certain words or phrases so that they have some input.
• Take photos and edit them (using a programme such as Photoshop). Then add the text (older pupils could do this during their IT class). 
• Make sure you've prepared a task that the class can do silently while each pupil in turn comes up and reads their sentence for you to record. You won't need too much sophisticated equipment, just a very simple microphone and the Windows recording tool.
• Use Windows Movie Maker or any other home video editing tool to put everything together. With very little practice you'll see that it's just a matter of dropping and dragging pictures, sound and text. Once it's complete, depending on the type of blog site you have, you might need to upload it to YouTube first (if you've never done this before, YouTube itself contains some tutorials) and then embed it into the blog as a YouTube clip.

Other ideas we've included in our blog are a video guide to our town, presentations of new language and our pupils singing a song with a matching video clip. Please feel free to visit; the address is http://11septemberschool.blogspot.com/ . Knowing that their work will be published has a highly motivating effect on most children. Once you've started, you'll quickly see how popular it becomes. Writing tasks will never be the same again!

Sílvia Castelló Masip teaches at CEIP Onze de Setembre in Sant Quirze del Vallès, Barcelona.

Ten ideas for using flashcards

Flashcards can be used in many ways to introduce and practise vocabulary, as well as consolidate, recycle and extend children’s language. Here are ten ideas to have up your sleeve!

1 Mime the flashcard

Hold up flashcards in turn and say the names. Children do a mime in response, eg they can pretend to eat a particular food (if you are using food flashcards), imitate a particular animal (animal flashcards) or put on clothes (clothes flashcards). Then do mimes of different flashcards yourself or invite individual or pairs of children to take turns to do this. Children watch and call out the names.

2 Flashcard instructions

Stick a set of flashcards on the walls around the classroom. Divide the class into groups. Give each group instructions in turn, eg Group 1. Walk to the elephant. Group two. Jump to the lion and children respond.

3 Repeat if it’s true

Stick a set of flashcards on the board. Point to one of the flashcards and say the name. If you have said the correct name, children repeat it. If not, they stay silent. This activity can be made more challenging if you say sentences, eg It’s a red tomato.

4 Guess the flashcard!

Stick a set of flashcards on the board. Secretly choose one and encourage children to guess which it is by asking you questions, eg Is it red? No, it isn't. / Is it blue? Yes, it is. Invite individual children to the front of the class in turn and get them to secretly choose a flashcard while the others guess in the same way.

5 Flashcard charade

Divide the class into groups of three or four. Give each group a flashcard, making sure that other groups don't see. Explain that children must think of a way to mime their flashcard. Give them a minute or two to prepare this. Each group then takes turns to do their mimes to the rest of the class and guess each other's flashcards.

6 Ball game

Have a soft ball ready for this activity. Stick 8-10 flashcards on the board. Children stand in a circle. Hold up the ball, say One, two, three ... and name one of the flashcards on the board, eg grasshopper! as you throw the ball to a child in the circle. The child who catches the ball repeats the procedure and names another flashcard. The game continues in the same way until all the flashcards on the board have been named.

7 Threes!

Sit in a circle with the children and divide them into two teams. Lay three of the flashcards out in front of you and elicit or remind children of the names. Then turn the flashcards over so that the pictures are hidden. Change the postions of the flashcards on the floor so that the children can no longer easily identify them. Invite a child from one of the teams to name one of the three flashcards. This child then tries to find this flashcard by choosing one of them and turning it over to reveal the picture. If it is not the flashcard they named, the three flashcards are turned over and moved around again and a child from the other team has a turn in the same way. If it is the flashcard they named, they keep it for their team. You then need to introduce another flashcard to make up the three in the game. The game continues in the same way with the children on each team taking turns to name and turn over the flashcards. The team with most flashcards at the end of the game are the winners.

8 Team game

Have ready two sets of word cards for the same flashcards for this game. Divide the class into two teams. Stick flashcards (as many as there are children in each team) on the board or on the walls around the classroom. Give one word card to each child in both teams. When you call out the name of one of the flashcards, the child in each team who has the corresponding word card gets up and goes to touch the flashcard and hold up their word card as fast as they can. The child who gets there first each time wins a point for their team.

9 Board pelmanism

Use 8-10 flashcards and word cards for this activity. Stick the flashcards in jumbled order on one side of the board, facing inwards so that children cannot see the pictures, and number them. Do the same with the word cards on the other side of the board. Invite one child to choose a flashcard, eg Number two, please! and, as you turn it round to show the picture, to say what it is, eg (It is a) hat. Then invite the same child to choose a word card in the same way. If the flashcard and word card chosen by the child match, remove them from the board. If not, turn them both round so that they are in exactly the same position but facing inwards again. The game proceeds with different children taking turns to choose a flashcard and word card in the same way, trying to match them from memory until they are all removed from the board.

10 Classify the words

Draw two or three large circles on the board and write the topic words at the top of each one, eg animals, food, clothes. Children take turns to come to the front of the class, either individually or in pairs, read a word card that you give them and stick it in the correct circle.

Note: The above suggestions are compiled and adapted from Read, C. & Soberón, A. Superworld 1 & 2 Teachers’ Books, Macmillan.

Don't forget it!!!

Magic English, Magic English!!!

For my little Disney's fans!!!

Old McDonald!!!

Hello children!!! Do you like animals?? I really LOVE them.

In my school, my younger children are learning this funny song. Enjoy it!!!!

This old man (numbers, infant education)

HI CHILDREN!!!

Welcome to my new blog! I hope you enjoy it!!