CLIL –Content Learning through Integrated Language- is a vast denomination which goes from methodology to approach of learning and teaching nonlinguistic subjects in a second language.

       Teachers of these nonlinguistic subjects who work in bilingual sections of English demand specific CLIL training directly aimed to their own subjects, most after having attended CLIL generic courses.

        Last February, thirty-seven teachers of Maths, Technology, Science and Physical Education attended to this course whose main objective was to provide resources, skills and practice on developing their subjects within this approach.

        Two face-to-face sessions lead by Melissa Thomson and Rebecca Place, from the British Council in Bilbao, developed a dynamic presentation of content and activities using the English language as both vehicle and target.

 You can watch a video-summary of the course in: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7T7anwSqho

Nos unimos a las celebraciones del 400 aniversario de Shakespeare y Cervantes en todo el mundo.

Entra en nuestro blog www.playingwithshakespeare.blogspot.com.es y accede a recursos como el que hoy presentamos: Shakespeare is Great (Britain), una guía de guías sobre los actos que tendrán lugar en Gran Bretaña para celebrar al Bardo.Pincha en la imagen para entrar.

Storybots.com es una web educativa para trabajar con alumnado de Infantil y primer ciclo de Primaria. Los protagonistas son simpáticos robots que nos presentan de forma divertida cuentos y canciones sobre diversos temas: animales, formas, colores, cultura, planetas, profesiones y partes del cuerpo entre otros.

Además, los padres o el profesor también pueden convertir en personaje al niño registrándose en la web y subiendo una foto. De esta manera, será el protagonista de canciones y videos y de cuentos, algo que le resultará muy divertido y motivador y que le hará aprender con más ganas y mucho más rápido.

Por otro lado, hay un espacio dedicado solamente al abecedario donde los alumnos podrán escuchar una canción con cada letra a la vez que ven un video con divertidas imágenes.

En storybots.com también es interesante el apartado Activity sheets. Los temas con los que podemos trabajar en ellas son muy variados y las fichas resultan muy vistosas para los alumnos ya que tienen conexión con los videos que anteriormente han visualizado y tienen como protagonistas a estos robots tan coloridos y divertidos.

Algunos de estos contenidos los podemos utilizar de manera gratuita, aunque muchos de ellos solamente se pueden disfrutar haciéndose miembro y pagando una pequeña cantidad al mes: 5 dólares un mes o 3 dólares si nos hacemos miembros por un año entero.

Este recurso nos ofrece una gran cantidad de posibilidades a la hora de enseñar a nuestros alumnos diferentes asignaturas como Sciences o Arts and Crafts, además de inglés, a lo largo de todo el curso escolar.

 Next November 26th  THANKSGIVING DAY will be celebrated.The day commemorates a celebration hosted by the Pilgrims to give thanks for surviving their first year in the new world. In 1620, the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock and endured a year that was filled with many hardships. A large number of the original settlers died from disease and starvation. After being aided by members of the local Wampanoag tribe, the settlers were able to enjoy a bountiful harvest and they celebrated by inviting the natives to a harvest feast.

Are you celebrating it at school?

The websitehttp://busyteacher.org/classroom_activities-vocabulary/holidays_and_celebrations/thanksgiving-worksheets/ offers you lots of free activities to do with your students, especially the younger ones.

Here is an example of a “Perfect Thanksgiving lesson”

Some of your adult ESL students may be familiar with the Thanksgiving holiday; some may simply be aware that there is a holiday by that name celebrated in the US, but have no idea what the actual celebration entails or how it originated. Young learners may see, every now and then, a typical Thanksgiving meal in an American children’s movie or TV program, but they won’t most likely get a whole lot of background info. Give your young students the opportunity to learn about this important American holiday; although they may not get the chance to sample a delicious turkey dinner with all of the fixings, we have got the recipe for a perfect Thanksgiving lesson!

                                                                       How to Proceed

1.            1. Warm up with a Thanksgiving poem 

Students who may know little about Thanksgiving may have the idea that it’s about getting together with the family to eat. The best way to start a Thanksgiving lesson is by conveying the real spirit of the holiday. Use this Thanksgiving Poetry Worksheet to accomplish this. First, students read the poem. Then, you ask them what it’s about. They should tell you it’s about being thankful for everything we have. Ask them to underline or read out loud the lines that reference this (I am thankful for shoes on my feet and food in my stomach...). Discuss with students the things they are thankful for; you may have them complete the worksheet too.

      2. Gather your ingredients

Tell your students that American families gather for Thanksgiving to celebrate everything they are thankful for, and they put together a wonderful feast for this celebration. Tell your students they will gather some of the typical foods and ingredients used to prepare a Thanksgiving meal. Prepare a scavenger hunt with flashcards or pictures that include these foods and ingredients. Add some flashcards that have no relation to either Thanksgiving or meals (i.e. furniture, school supplies, technological devices, etc.) Hide the flashcards around the classroom (if possible outside in the school yard) and ask students to collect only those that are foods or relate to food preparation.

Students count how many they found, and you may ask each if they can name the ingredients or foods they found. Supply the right word whenever needed. Ask your students which they would use for their own Thanksgiving dinner.

     3. Spice it up with some Thanksgiving vocabulary 

Give your students a brief overview of how this celebration originated and the main points of the first Thanksgiving; teach them as many new words as you deem they’d be comfortable learning and make the historical account appropriate to their level. UseThanksgiving clipart and Thanksgiving borders to illustrate the new words. Have them practice their new words by filling in the blanks in a brief written account of the first Thanksgiving

    4. Add a handful of action to shake things up

Play spelling catch to review how the new words are spelled. Hold a bean bag in your hands, call out a word, and toss the bean bag to a student. He or she says the first letter, then tosses the bag to a classmate who has to continue with the second, then tosses the bag to another, and so on. When someone makes a mistake or can’t recall the next letter, he or she has to sit down. The last student left standing wins!

     5 Serve up some fun Thanksgiving worksheets

From crossword puzzles to word search activity sheets, great sites like Teachnology allow you to easily custom design your own. There’s also a great collection of Thanksgiving activities available at BusyTeacher.org that you can use with your class.

    6 End your perfect Thanksgiving lesson with the perfect Thanksgiving song

What better way to end a great lesson than with a hilarious Thanksgiving song! Students listen to the song, fill in the blanks in the lyrics, and finally write a letter of apology to all of the turkeys who end up on the Thanksgiving table.

At the end of october, we hosted the induction course for teachers of the new Secondary Schools result of the agreement with the British Council. It was organised by the MECD and the teachers who attended the course were really satisfied with the training they received by the experts selected by the Ministry of education.

To give this training a continuation, we decided to give these teachers the possibility of sharing their resopurces and experiences through the creation of a specific Platform for these teachers. This way, we will guarantee an adequate training for our teachers that will result in a better training for our students.

In the video you can see a summary of the face to face course.

Excelente post en el blog del IES Emilio Ferrari sobre los riesgos del alcohol. De forma creativa los alumnos han elaborado este vídeo resultado de su proyecto de aula. Excelente iniciativa.

This lesson was not aimed to be the typical ‘ alcohol talk’ teenagers expect to receive from parents and teachers. Instead, I just wanted to show you some biology facts related to comsumption of alcohol and encourage you to think for yourselves and make informed choices.

Thanks to Cristina, Sara and Elisa from 4º B for making this video to recall what we talked about in class.

https://ferraribiblog.wordpress.com/

Our TC4PI European project aims at promoting plurilingualism and it fosters the achievement of six main objectives:

1. Create a network of schools of similar characteristics for the exchange of best practices between teachers and management/leadership. 

2. Research on competences. Analyze official documents on teachers multicultural competences

3.M ake exchanges/job shadowing/observation period/team teaching by teachers employing an intercultural approach to plurilingual education. 

4. Create training courses, courses, seminars and training modules on the development of specific intercultural and plurilingual competences. 

5. Evaluate teachers´ didactic approaches and linguistic and intercultural competences of students in the different languages present at school/high school.

6. Disseminate and exploit the results of the project.

Therefore, It is a great satisfaction for us to be able to see the impact of our TC4PI European project in one of the high schools involved in it. 

As part of TC4PI, 3rd level students from Emiio Ferrari High School have been working on a very interesting project in which they show students from the other countries involved in the project: Lithuania, Polland, Turkey and The Czech Republic, what our cuisine is like. They do that by cooking different typical Spanish dishes and explain the nutritional value of each. Clicking on the image above, you´ll see all their great work.

You can find the complete post in IES Emilio Ferrari English blog.

Thanks for sharing it with us!