jueves, 31 de mayo de 2012

When a teacher lives up to his reputation


LUCAS

Lucas has been our English language assistant for a year.  Students have had full confidence in him since the very first day in class. Lucas is a nice easy-going  hard-working imaginative young man who always does the best of himself. Don’t ask him for anything; you can take for granted he’ll do it.

Students appreciate his power points, his youtube videos, his recordings of our Drama performances, the stories about his own young life, his smile and his sense of humour. His warm calm voice often helps  active and hyperactive students keep in calm when they become so excited at the end of the day.

What is he like?

Don’t look for descriptive words: watch him!


 However, the end of the school year is coming and Lucas is leaving.  But don’t get in pain, because the students and the English Department will never forget such a good future colleague, such a good clever person, in the true sense of the word. And who knows? Maybe we’ll see him again at school… next year.


 LUCAS

lunes, 28 de mayo de 2012

Class Projeccts in 2º ESO


The aim in our 2º ESO groups has been to make our students participate in a more active way in the process of learning English.  Thanks to our Language assistant they have had the opportunity to interact in class using the English language at their level. Yet, another of our aims was to encourage our students to improve their reading and writing skills.


In order to improve their reading strategies, they have taken part in a project where they have been working with authentic materials related to food. This project was also carried out in 1º ESO.




Also, they have been asked to write about different topics such as music (favourite bands and singers) or about their families or their favourite leisure activities.


In our last project of the year about animals, our students have been able to write in English using the grammar and vocabulary contents of the book and have also proved to be very creative as shown in the photographs.



Students have benefited from the experience of creating their own work and also from watching their classmates´ work by means of enabling them to interact  with the English language .






lunes, 21 de mayo de 2012

COIN, a Reference Oral Communication Course

 

COIN -Comunicación oral en lengua inglesa- is a reference oral communication course at Julio Caro Baroja High School.





In order to achieve the aims we work on a content-based projects in CLIL context, five are the projects we have developed along the present school year: Film Review, Drama Project, Extreme Sports, English Speaking Countries and Food Recipes. 
If you want to see some of the projects made by our students, like Power Point Presentations, Glogsters... go to this website.






As usual, our students have prepared different paper and virtual documents and presented them in the form of Power Point, Timeline, Glogster, Movies... sometimes indiviadually, sometimes in pairs, group work...


Besides, according to the topic, they have also presented them as an Exhibition (countries) or with real food recipes tasted in class.


The course has been highly successful and students have given it top marks.



To conclude, all that task has been formally presented in Getxolinguae and received a warm welcome by Primary and Secondary Teachers attending the Conference

More on Reading Motivation


I  RECOMMEND
One of the aims of the Trilingualism Project together with another Project of the Center  is to promote reading among our students. To motivate and encourage them to read, the Basque, Spanish and English Departments have provided some panels so that they can stick their “book recommendations”. There, in special colourful paper they comment on their favourite books, make a short review of them and finally say why they recommend them.
                             

    At the same time the three departments have opened a competition in   1º ESO about bookmarks promoting reading.      
                             



And the winner who will see his original idea published and handed out to all the high school students next year is …

                                         

lunes, 14 de mayo de 2012

Drama Workshop

Our Drama Workshop in 1ª ESO goes on working hard and performing successfully. At the end of the second term they presented FUNNY SCHOOL TIMES - 2.

 
After Funny School Times -1, the students felt a bit bored in class and decided to change things and live more intensively at school. First, they imagined a "free trip" by train,


then they gave birth to an urban legend on the stage


 and finally they told a witty African story.

Food for thought.

But a big surprise came to the audience when, as a summary of all the things seen, thought and imagined, the function ended with a musical of six original songs:


The audience clapped their hands in delight, proud of these young English speaking actors.