English Pronunciation with Genial.ly

Time to play!!

These days I'm trying some of Sandbox Educación extensions to create Genial.ly games for my students. As you may already know, possibilities are endless!!

I've tried creating a Memory game to practise English pronunciation with some homophones.

It's a small game with a few words but you can reuse the template to change words, images and so on.

Hope it helps!

English Homophones

Fake text generator to practise writing

There's a new tool for the English class to easily create fake text messages simulating a mobile phone, ifaketext.

No registration is needed, just click on the link and start writing your text. Once you've finished, you can save and share the screenshot generated.

Again, another easy to use tool to let our students practise writing. You can use it to:

• write short texts on a topic
• write short dialogues; giving directions, situations in a restaurant or shop, short answers....
• revise and illustrate grammar expressions

Por qué crear un Google Site

Por muchos es conocido Blogger, la herramienta para crear blogs que nos ofrece Google, pero más descococida es la opción para crear páginas webs de Google, Google Sites.

Sin embargo, la creación y administración de un Site no resulta muy complicado y puede traernos grandes beneficios:

- Captar el interés y compromiso de nuestros alumnos
- Ahorrar tiempo en la gestión del aula
- Organizar recursos de aula / curso
- Mantener informados a alumnos / padres
- Llevar un control de tareas / cargos / temporalización de proyectos...

Antes de ver para qué podemos usar un Site en clase, vamos a repasar algunas de sus características:

• Visibilidad del Site.
• Privado, sólo visible para el propietario
• Público en la web
• Público sólo para aquel con quien compartes el enlace
• Trabajo colaborativo.
• Puedes conceder permisos para todo el Site, o sólo para algunas páginas del mismo.
• Permiso como editor. La persona a la que das este permiso puede publicar.
• Permiso como propietario. La persona a la que das este permiso puede publicar y también crear / modificar páginas.

Usos de Google Sites en el Aula

Visto esto, vamos a ver para qué podemos usar los Sites de Google con nuestros alumnos. Empezos desde los más sencillos a los más completos:


Control de proyectos / tareas / cargos. Crea un Site con una única página. Crea esta página con la plantilla "Lista". Luego personaliza la lista según tus necesidades. Si concedes permisos de edición a tus alumnos, ellos mismos podrán ir marcando o cambiando los elementos de la lista. De este modo será una lista colaborativa, más que informativa.





Calendario de Actividades. Crea un Site con una única página. Crea esta página con la plantilla "Web", luego inserta un Calendario de Google. En este calendario se pueden poner fechas de todo tipo,; exámenes, entrega de trabajos, salidas, fiestas..... Así conseguiremos que los alumnos y sus familias estarán completamente informados.

Tablón de Anuncios. Crea un Site con una única página. Crea esta página con la plantilla "Blog". Puedes destinar este Site a la publicación de información interesante para las familias; becas, información de centro....








Archivador / Repositorio de Documentos. Crea un Site con una única página. Crea esta página con la plantilla "Archivador". Utiliza el Site para almacenar documentos de consulta de diferentes áreas, documentos creados por los alumnos, documentos de centro descargables...Puedes organizarlos en carpetas.


Página Web de Curso. Combinando los elementos anteriores, puedes crear una completa Web de Aula con diferentes secciones. Recuerda que si otorgas permisos a tus alumnos la página será colaborativa.


Portfolio Digital / e-Portfolio. Los alumnos pueden crear su propio portfolio para recopilar y mostrar sus trabajos, pasos seguidos en trabajos de investigación, material de estudio recopilado.... Como docente puedes hacer lo mismo con tus programaciones, materiales recopilados por temas.... Recuerda que tu Site puede ser tanto público, como privado.



Wiki. Crea un Site y luego concede permisos a tus alumnos para que puedan publicar en él. Podrán crear, de forma colaborativa, una wiki sobre un tema propuesto. Ideal para trabajos en grupo.





Como ves, la opción de crear un Site de Google puede ser más útil y completa que un blog según lo que estemos buscando. No es complicado de hacer y puede ahorrarnos mucho tiempo a posteriori.

Films Review - Fill in the gaps

Do you know what are the famous Sci-Fi films Interstellar, Gravity and 2001 Space Odyssey about?

Read the following reviews from the Reader's Digest and fill in the gaps with articles first, and prepositions later.

You can download and edit the file.

Have a look first.

Pinterest in Education

All through the Internet you can find lots of ideas to integrate the use of Pinterest into your classroom. All of them are really inspiring and make you feel like getting down to work immediately. In my case, I decided to centre on one of the uses of Pinterest I read about and later, I will try another thing.

As this year we are working on Interactive English Notebooks, I have started out in Pinterest with the most obvious use for me; Collecting and Sharing my students' creations for the Interactive Notebook.

These are the steps I followed in this personal project:

•  Sign up to Pinterest with your email (it's free)
• Create a board and give it a clarifying name. (mine is "Interactive Notebook Samples")
• Embed this board to your blog / site. (this way the rest of students can have a look at other students' works and get some ideas to put into practice)
• Take photos of your students' creations. (I only take photos of the best works in the class)
• Upload the photos to the board you have created. (everybody will see them through your blog / site)

I started doing this with true enthusiasm but soon, and because it was resulting in great success, I faced a problem; I couldn't cope with all the photos I had to take. When my students knew their works were shown on the net, they improved a lot and so I went from taking 1 or 2 photos every session to 5 or 6. The solution to this was easy, I asked for help to my students, and no need to say, they met expectations. Now I mark the selected works with a "cool" stamp, a gomet...and it is the student who takes the photo and sends it to me.

By now I'm happy with the results I'm getting. On one hand students are doing their best and this means that they take time to make their schemes, minibooks and so on. On the other hand the Pinterest board is really useful for those students with a bit of lack of imagination to illustrate vocabulary or grammar lessons.

For further information about the uses of Pinterest in Education check the following sites:

	37 Ways Teachers Can Use Pinterest In The Classroom
	16 Ways Teachers Use Pinterest
	A Straightforward Guide To Using Pinterest In Education
	Educators: Making the Most of Pinterest
	Using Pinterest for Education

Playing Irregular Verbs

Studying irregular verbs can be hard, why not playing while learning.

This time we're going to study irregular verbs with Quizlet.

To see how it works and create your own set of flashcards, have a look to this post.

In this post you'll find the following stes of flashcards:

  1. List of verbs: Inf. # past = past participle
  2. List of verbs: Inf. # past # past participle = -en

  3. List of verbs: Inf # past # past particple

  4. List of verbs: Inf. = past = past participle

  5. List of verbs: Gerunds

To start playing, click on the images bellow
(Click on the flashcard and you'll see the reverse)

1. List of verbs: Inf. # past = past participle

Download the "Irregular Verbs: past = past participle" list.

2. List of verbs: Inf. # past # past participle = -en

Download the "Irregular Verbs: past participle = -en" list.

3. List of verbs: Inf # past # past particple

Download the "Irregular Verbs: inf # p. # p.p." list.

4. List of verbs: Inf. = past = past participle

 
Download the "Irregular Verbs: inf = p. = p.p." list.

5. List of verbs: Gerunds

A Recipe Book

Sometimes giving/studying vocabulary is quite boring. To make it funnier and get the emotional advantage, we can let students prepare their own set of words to study.
This time we were working on Food vocabulary. We decided to write our own recipes but before doing this, we needed to know the vocabulary we were going to use.

These are the steps I followed to do the whole project, which included vocabulary and writing.

1. Vocabulary. Prepare a document with Google Docs where students can write the words they have to use. This time there were two categories; food and verbs.
2. Share the documents with your students. This way everybody will see what is already written and so you will avoid repetition of words. As a teacher you also will be able to see each student's contribution.
3. Writing. Revise / Teach the grammatical structures students will use to write their recipes.
4. Students write the recipes at home.
5. Check the writings and mark mistakes, so students can correct them.
6. Once you have all the recipes corrected put all of them in a Word Document. After that, upload the file to Issuu and publish it on your blog (or share it with your students).

You can see here my students recipe book.

I won't fool you, it's extra work for the teacher, but the result is really nice and students like seeing their work on the net.

Writing a Superhero Comic

Do your students like Marvel heroes? So do mine.
I've found a site to create comics with these heroes (if you click on the image you'll see it).
I really liked it, it's easy to use and you can easily save the comic or print it.
The problem comes if you want to post the image in a blog to show your student's creations. The document you have when you save the comic is a PDF and I had some problems to post this image.

Image from Marvel

Nevertheless, I think this page will encourage my students to write some short stories in English.

Great idea from Marvel.

GLOGSTER Tutorial

Some of you may have heard about Glogster. This is an interesting tool that allows students to create interactive posters to show what they have learned.

Now I've made a tutorial to show what you can do with Glogster, as you can see I have used the tool itself to do it.

Diamante Poems

For those who need help when writing, or just love writing, here you have a very nice and useful site:

 This time I'm presenting a tool to make "Diamante poems". Click on the image to go to the tool.

How to use Diamante Poems tool. See the slides below.