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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.
Christmas hangers!
Just before Christmas I like to decorate the classroom with crafts my pupils have created. The most popular kind of decoration from my pupils’ point of view is the Christmas hanger (pictured above). The picture and the amount of text can be adapted to different ages. We display them all around the classroom – hanging from tables, clothes hooks and shelves, then the children take them home at the end of term. They certainly brighten up the room!
Josefa María Rodríguez, CPEI León Felipe, Arganda del Rey, Madrid.
A delicious way to taste English!
Cooking is a great activity to teach children through a content-based approach. At our school we recently set up a cookery project involving our Year 6 children. The children divided themselves into groups and each group took a recipe from a magazine we’ve been working on.
We practised the ‘cooking verbs’ at school (spread, mix, slice, add, pour, chop, etc) through flashcards illustrating each, then each group met at one of the group members’ houses and made their dish. We involved the parents too, asking them to either video or photograph the groups at work. We encouraged them to put these together as PowerPoint presentations where we could again practise the language by labelling each stage. And of course they brought in the food they’d made for their friends to share!
The activity was a great success and provided our pupils with the chance to use the language in a real way. Having mixed flavour and fun, our students digested the language while they digested the food!
Maria J Garcia, CP Pla de Barraques, El Campello (Alicante).
Spelling Bee Game Routine
Do you want to revise vocabulary and improve spelling? The Spelling Bee Game Routine is a great way of doing it.
At the beginning of the year, I tell the pupils about the ‘Spelling Bee’ competitions held in various English-speaking countries around the world, and I put a big chart on the wall containing their names, drawings of bees, letters and questions such as ‘How do you spell …?’
Every day I choose one word from the vocabulary we’ve covered so far, write the lines for each letter on the blackboard and then play hangman with my pupils to discover the word (but without drawing the stick man). The following rules are very important:
• The pupil must pronounce each letter correctly.
• They can’t just guess the word; they must spell it.
• The person who guesses the word must then spell the whole word correctly. If a pupil makes a mistake it is then the next pupil’s turn.
• The pupil who manages to spell the word with no mistakes gets a sticker on the ‘Spelling Bee chart’.
At the end of each term the two pupils with most stickers get a Spelling Bee winner certificate (our most recent winners are pictured above). You can find lots of certificates to be made for different purposes at the following website: www.123certificates.com
María R Medina Marín, CEIP Giner de los Ríos, Murcia
Alibi
Here’s an excellent communicative activity that works well with all age groups. It’s particularly useful for practising the past simple. The class are told that a crime was committed between 4 o’clock and 11 o’clock the previous afternoon. The nature of the crime can be decided by the class. Two volunteers play the role of suspects and leave the classroom to prepare an alibi. They have fifteen minutes to synchronise their stories. They must decide what they were both doing throughout this period of time and try and prepare for their interrogation.
The rest of the class play the role of the police, working in small groups to prepare a set of questions, eg Where did you go after…? , How long did you spend…? or Did you … together? etc. Their job is to try and catch the suspects off guard. When the fifteen minutes are up, the two suspects are questioned individually by the other members of the class. Each must wait outside while the other is being interrogated. If the suspects’ stories coincide, they are declared not guilty and are the winners of the activity. (As there are far more police than suspects, I usually give the suspects two ‘lives’, ie they can afford two discrepancies.) If there are three or more discrepancies, ie they give differing answers to three or more of the police’s questions, they are guilty and the police are the winners of the activity.
The activity is fun, works on speaking and listening skills and the challenge element accentuates the need for real communication.
Yolanda Iborra Bernabeu, Colegio Calasancio, Alicante.
Peter Pan comes to Andújar!
Last June, pupils from Years 4,5 and 6 at CP Felix Rodriguez de la Fuente in Andújar invited families and friends to join them on a trip to Never Never Land, where dreams are born and time is never planned. The idea came about from the unit about Peter Pan in Little Detectives 1, and eight teachers from the school set about writing their own script based on the vocabulary and grammar structures the pupils had learnt from Year 1 onwards. They also recorded a soundtrack which included the ‘Peter Pan Song’ from Little Detectives, the ‘Pirate’s Song’ from Little Wizard plus other well-known pop songs interspersed with classical pieces. These were brought to life by a series of choreographed dances. Thanks to the efforts of the AMPA, the set and costumes provided the perfect setting for a memorable performance.
Enrique Moya Ortiz, CP Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente, Andújar, Jaén.
Catalonia goes digital!
This October saw the first of five Macmillan digital teacher training sessions in Barcelona in response to the Projecte EduCAT 1x1, a pilot scheme run by the Fundació Catalana per a la Recerca i la Innovació inviting 200 schools in Catalonia to introduce digital materials into their classrooms. School taking part could choose between the ‘pure’ option of using exclusively digital materials or a ‘blended’ approach combining digital materials with printed coursebooks for the duration of the current school year. Over 100 teachers from all over Catalonia attended the initial session presented by Macmillan teacher trainers Maria Toth and Dave Holmes in the Hotel Comtes Barcelona.
From Bede to BEDA...
A trip for two to historic Durham and Northumberland was the magnificent prize won by Sergio López Hernández of Colegio Virgen del Remedio in Alcorcón to mark the end of Macmillan’s 2009 BEDA (Bilingual English Development and Assessment) training programme. The prize draw was made at the end of the final training session at Colegio Sagrada Familia de Moratalaz, Madrid on May 25th. The day had special significance as it was, fittingly, St Bede’s Day (el Día de San Beda). In the Venerable Bede’s day, the modern-day counties of Durham and Northumberland formed the Anglo Saxon Kingdom of Northumbria, where Bede lived his whole life. The trip included a visit to the Holy Island of Lindisfarne, where Bede spent some time while practising as a monk at nearby Jarrow Monastery and to Durham Cathedral where he is buried.
Pictured in the photo here (left to right) are Adolfo Martínez, Coordinator of the Programa BEDA de Escuelas Católicas de Madrid), Emilio Díaz, Regional Secretary of the Escuelas Católicas de Madrid, prizewinner Sergio López Hernández and Mick Quirke, Head of Macmillan’s Madrid Delegation.
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