Learning Innovative Teaching Practices

A day at the beach We have done a comic by means of Pixton. This is an amazing digital resource which helps us motivate our pupils to improve their English in a fun way. This story has been carried out in the 6th level of Primary. First we had a brainstorming in order to decide what kind of comic we wanted to create. We talked about: Title. Characters. Setting. Faces. Clothes. Speech bubbles. Then we had a draft of the story. The pupils were working in pairs to decide what they wanted to do. Taking into account they are young, they needed my help constantly. Since we have been working on the use of like + v -ing and hobbies, we have considered a comic as a perfect way to practice these contents.  The main objectives of this activity are: To improve their writing skill. To enrich their vocabulary. To foster their creativity and motivation to speak in English. To develop their use of the new technologies. To make pupils more autonomous. Later on, I corrected the mistakes and helped t...

Watching videos in English is one of my favourite tools for my students to improve their level of English. Therefore, Edpuzzle is an essential technique to work with videos in the best possible way.  We use it very often, since I have realized it is very motivating for my pupils. In this case, we are comparing English schools with the Spanish ones. Our current unit is about subjects, thus this video is perfect in order to work on this topic. Why did I use this video? I think it is a very interesting approach for introducing the topic. This way, they can see children like them working at school and studying the same subjects they have in their own school. I believe this tool makes pupils willing to learn. It is really significant to have images at the same time they listen to real children talking to each other at school. For me, it is very appealing to work with authentic material.  What were the learning objectives and the sequence of activities? - To watch an authentic vid...

 Learning objectives of the activity To make a timeline. To motivate the pupils to learn about Anglosaxon festivities. To have a better understanding of British and American cultures. To improve the children's skills, specially reading and speaking. Advantages of using TimeToast This is a very attractive and useful tool.  While some children are presenting their jobs, the rest can follow them thanks to the images. The visual support is essential for young learners. By means of this activity, the pupils can easily see the sequence and dates of the different festivities.   Steps to follow First of all we thought about different topics. We discussed about each of them and eventually we decided to create a timeline about festivities, considering that this theme is really motivating for them.  Later on, they decided which festivities they preferred to work on.  We searched for information on the Internet. The pupils wrote down the exact dates and they also look...

Since I teach in Primary and sometimes in Pre-Primary, I normally choose stories.  When I read for small children, I try to create a magical atmosphere, where my pupils feel excited to listen to the story. First, I speak with my teddy bear "Wrinkles"and I ask him questions about the story. Then, I show some big storycards to my pupils and ask them some questions too or try to draw their attention to some specific features. I also enjoy using some props to motivate my children. I think my performance is dramatic, because I change the voices of the characters and I constantly vary the tone.  Another useful technique is to hand out the flashcards so that pupils feel as an essential part of the story. They believe they are telling the story just by showing the big cards.  Regarding older children (5th and 6th levels), I frequently use songs with English lyrics. Before listening to the songs, I carefully select them so that children can follow the lyrics and understand the gis...

We can see different reading situations in varied formats. There are people reading in a library, a girl with an elder person, children at a school and someone reading outdoors. The first photo reminds me of a bookshop in Germany, where you could read whatever you felt like and nobody pressured you. It was a really pleasant moment. On the other hand, the second image brings me memories of my childhood, when my granny read books to me. It is extremely touching. In all the pictures people are reading paper books, but only in one case a person is using an e-book. Except for the photo of the school, we could say the others have chosen their own books. Taking into account the images, I think everybody is enjoying his/her reading. Children at school may not be so happy. Anyway they seem to be concentrated, which is rather positive. My experience as a reader identifies with the first image considering that I like choosing my own books. Both in L1 and L2 it is very important to select an appea...