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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.
Shopping roleplay
I find roleplays to be a great idea for recycling vocabulary, grammar structures and set phrases. Shopping is an everyday interactive situation which provides a real context in which all of these can be practised.
The following activity works very well with 9 to 11 year olds. Each pupil has their own shop containing various classroom objects such as books, scissors, pencils and rulers. They have to make a list with prices (for spelling practice) and each has their own money (plastic counters) and their own wallet or purse so that they can each buy from different shops. They take it in turns to be shopkeepers and customers. They have to act out the following mini-dialogue (A is the customer and B the shop assistant).
A: Good morning!
B: Good morning, sir or Madam! Can I help you?
A: Oh, yes! I would like an English book , please.
B: Here you are.
A: How much is this book?
B: It costs twelve euros fifty.
A: OK, here you are.
B: Thank you.
A: Bye bye
It’s an activity that can work over and over again, recycling different lexical sets, and after a very short time the pupils tend to have the structures and the order memorized. It’s amazing how authentic they sound once this happens!
Susana Sánchez Parrales, CRA Las Villuercas, Deleitosa, Cáceres.
Make it easier for them!
Even though we use many resources in our everyday teaching such as books, computers, digital white boards and dictionaries, the blackboard continues to be one of the most useful tools in our classrooms. However, we don’t always use it as effectively as we could. We tend to write up every word our students ask about, plus the solutions to exercises without following any special rules and very soon the board looks like a battlefield. We forget that the blackboard is the main reference for our students. They believe everything they read on it! That is why we need to pay a little more attention to how we organize it. Firstly, our handwriting must be clear. Secondly, we have to rub out anything we no longer need. And thirdly, it’s very useful to keep one side of the blackboard to write all the new words and the rest of it to the correction of exercises. If we do it in this way, our students will get a clear reference of what they are looking for and become used to this routine. Once they get used to it, they even remind you to keep these rules. It’s a very simple way to make the class easier for your students!
Mª del Prado García-Cano Lizcano, IES Sta Mª de Alarcos, Ciudad Real.
Using cartoons
A sketch or drawing, usually humorous, symbolizing, satirizing or caricaturing some action, subject or person makes a very resourceful tool for our everyday teaching. It is a very friendly warm up activity to introduce a lesson topic, vocabulary, grammar point or a discussion topic. Students not only will learn more grammar and vocabulary, but can also improve their cultural awareness and their critical thinking, apart from the fun they have when the meaning is disentangled. Moreover, it is a great way to decorate your handouts, to fill all those empty blank spaces, to make your notes more visually attractive, captivate your students’ interest, awaken their curiosity and most important of all, promote and encourage reading in the foreign language.
My favourite web page is http://www.cartoonstock.com/ where you can download loads of cartoons for free. The web itself has its own search engine, so you can look up for the topic you want. There is such a great variety that it will be difficult to choose just one.
Susana Gómez, The University of Valladolid.
He has terrible tusks, and terrible claws...
...and he’s recently been immortalized by children from four schools from Villarrobledo in Albacete! All pupils in Years 2 to 4 from CP Jiménez de Cordoba, CP Diego Requena, CP Virgen de la Caridad and CP Virrey Morcillo recently took part in a competition organized by English teacher Lola Romero Garcia in conjunction with Macmillan ELT. They were invited to draw a picture of the Gruffalo after completing activity sheets from the www.gruffalo.com website (contributed to the site by Lola and her colleagues) and attending a reading of Julia Donaldson’s acclaimed story in the local Casa de Cultura. The competition attracted some fantastic entries and the seven winners all received Macmillan goody bags of books and computer gadgets. They were Maria Almansa, Esther Clemente, Irene Charco, Juan Dinarc, Lucia Nieves, Manuel Ortíz and Alicia.
Here are some of the winners:
(copy 1)
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