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d.holmes(at)macmillan.es or fax 93 209 99 49. All contributions will receive a reply and we will send a selection of Macmillan readers to your school if your tip is printed.
Assessing infants
Here’s an idea for assessing very young learners. On a sheet of paper, create a design reflecting the main topic areas to be covered such as animals, a rainbow, a house, etc and print one for each child. Next to each picture, write a sentence explaining what the child can do related to that topic, for example ‘I can say the colours’ next to the rainbow or ‘I can sing the Animals song’. Your pupils can personalize their sheets by colouring them and then take them home at regular intervals so that their parents can be kept up to date with what they have achieved.
As well as their progress, pupils’ behaviour also plays an important part in the assessment process. Behaviour charts are quite common, but one variation I’ve found that works well is to make a big picture of a poor boy dressed in rags. Depending on how they behave, he will turn into a noble prince! It’s a good idea to set objectives at the beginning of the term and reward the more difficult ones with something special such as a heart or a crown for sharing things with each other. Items of clothing can be added or taken off according to how well these objectives are met and kept to. This way, each new addition symbolizes something concrete and acts as a visual reminder of the kind of behaviour you expect from them.
Myriam Malo Lara, Castilleja de la Cuesta, Sevilla.
Five-minute fillers
Every teacher knows how useful a stock of short filler activities can be when your lesson plan has run its course and you have those tricky five or ten minutes left at the end of the class. Here are five activities to add to your repertoire.
1) Odd one out (Primary): Write three words on the board or say them out loud. Pupils have to decide which one is the odd one out and why.
2) Phone call (Infants and Primary): Give a pupil a piece of paper with four numbers on. If you have a toy telephone, even better. Call the pupil, who answers by reading out the number. Use the ‘phone conversation’ to ask questions such as ‘What’s your name?’ or ‘How old are you?’ etc.
3) I bet you can’t! (Infants and Primary): Challenge pupils by saying ‘I bet you can’t count up to 20’ or ‘I bet you can’t name five wild animals’. You can even use ‘currency’ such as counters to bet with!
4) Picasso dictation (Primary): Tell your pupils to draw something simple like a table and give them instructions such as ‘Under the table draw a basket’, ‘In the basket draw a cat’ , ‘Next to the cat draw a ball,’ etc. The language can be adapted to the level.
5) Look in your book! (Primary): Tell your pupils they have 15 seconds to look for something on a particular page of the coursebook. For younger ages it could be a picture, or for older ones a part of speech.
Victoria Rosales Fernández, Award, A Guarda, Pontevedra.
Has your school been involved in any special English language-related event? Here's this term's selection of featured schools. Click on the photos to enlarge them.
English show
May 9th 1958 may not be a date most of us are instantly familiar with, but on this date a concept was born which shaped the world we live in today: the European Union. Every year, pupils at Colegio La Salle Buen Pastor in Jeréz de la Frontera host their ‘English show’ to commemorate the event. This year’s programme consisted of The magic elves, Goldilocks and the three bears, Where are you going? and Let’s play! performed by 1st cycle pupils, while those in 2nd cycle put on their version of The Emperor’s new suit and in 3rd cycle, The life of Saint John the Baptist de la Salle, Count Dracula’s castle and Treasure Island.
Magdalena Duran, Colegio La Salle Buen Pastor, Jeréz de la Frontera.
Bugs bookmarks!
Primary pupils at Col.legi Sant Josep had fun making and colouring their own Bugs bookmarks. It’s amazing how much more fun reading can be when you’ve got Colin, Lucy, Spike and Gracie to mark your page! Here’s an example from one of our Year 6 pupils.
Fina Vendrell, Col.legi Sant Josep, Navàs, Barcelona.
Have they got news for you!
This year, a group of 4th ESO students from IES Barrio de Loranca in Fuenlabrada made a successful venture into the cut-throat world of journalism. So much so that their newspaper, La Lente de Loranca, won first prize for the Autonomous Community of Madrid in the annual El País de los Estudiantes competition and made it to the national finals. The competition was set up by El País in 2001 to encourage journalism in Secondary schools. The students from Fuenlabrada included interviews in English, carried out in press-conference style with four well-known figures: two ACB basketball players, Tom Wildeman and Chris Hernández from Alta Gestión Fuenlabrada basketball club, British Labour Party MP Murad Qureshi and Dutch Egyptologist Robert Pronk. The students themselves helped to organize the interviews, which were videoed and can be viewed at: http://www.educa.madrid.org/web/ies.barrioloranca.fuenlabrada/pais.htm .
Alberto Hidalgo, IES Barrio de Loranca, Fuenlabrada.
Stars in their eyes!
Do you ever wonder where the next generation of talented X Factor hopefuls might come from? Well, you need look no further than IES Utopia in Fuenlabrada! For the last five years, students at the school have been meeting in their free time to rehearse karaoke versions of their favourite songs, which they've performed in concerts both at their own school and others in the area. The idea has been so successful that two years ago the school organized an exchange with a music school in Turkey through the European Comenius Pop Stars project. Here are some of our young starlets in action.
Paz Parrado, IES Utopia, Fuenlabrada
Academia Blue Door – onestopenglish triple winners!
Congratulations to Academia Blue Door in Córdoba for winning the Macmillan onestopenglish website’s ‘lesson share’ competition three months in a row! Head teacher Paul Ashe first submitted a winning entry five years ago and was quick to introduce the site and its competition to staff at Blue Door after taking up his current post. In fact he included it as an important part of the school’s teacher development programme. His new colleagues wasted no time in submitting their own best 20-minute lesson plans and didn’t have to wait long to receive recognition. So well done to Paul and to Bronagh McLaughlin, Gabby Hewitt, Fari Greenway, Lisa Dold and all the other teachers at Blue Door. Keep sharing your fantastic lesson plans with us!
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