A letter to Mother Midsummer (as opposed to Father Christmas!)

Dear Mother Midsummer, 

I have been a good teacher this year. I have taken care of all my students, I have taught them some skills I hope they can use and I have given them all fair marks. I have also been patient and understanding, I have taken into account my students' circumstances and I have pushed them enough to make them take risks and make decisions. 

Because I have been such a good teacher, I have put together a list and, if you think I deserve it, I would love to find these under the nearest palm tree so I can be an even better teacher next year:

- a good timetable, with enough time to prepare lessons, correct assignments, mark exams and talk to my colleagues about meaningful aspects of our job

- since we have a new Minister for Education in Spain, my wish is that the law is changed to do away with our current system of external assessment, to bring back subjects that help teens develop critical thinking and an ethical mind, and that individual schools have more freedom and more resources to best serve the community where they are located (I'm so generous! This isn't even for me!)

- kind, generous, friendly, curious and conscientious students who like to talk about different subjects, who progress in their skills and who help all their classmates no matter who they're friends with. 

- exciting projects across different areas of the curriculum, to give students a global vision of their world and... why not, to help me understand other areas as well. 

But before the new school year begins, we have the summer in front of us, so my wishes for the next few weeks are: 

- the chance to sleep in every now and then

- the chance to stay up and look at the stars, with and without StarWalk... like when I saw a meteor shower last summer

- to be able to visit some new places but also some familiar places, both in Spain and abroad

- to switch off for a bit, even if it is to gather strength and energy for the next school year

I will leave a glass of lemonade on ice and a few chilled pieces of watermelon for you and your train of flamingoes. 

Best wishes, 

Maite Gallego 

Sexist lyrics (4º ESO)

On the occasion of International Women's Day on the 8th of March, I designed an activity that would make my students use their critical thinking skills to decide whether some popular songs have sexist content, whether hidden or not. The aim of this activity was, in a way, to activate the 'sexist radar' in my students and to be aware of sexism in our society.


I chose some current hits but also some older songs, in an attempt to show that these issues are not new. Terms such as infantilisation, objectification and banalisation were discussed and we looked for instances of them in order to create awareness of how they can be put into words and images. If there was something I really wanted to achieve was to promote feminism as an equalitarian movement, which favours equal rights and equal treatment between the genders, and that a wrong is a wrong regardless of who does it.

This activity encouraged a lot of debate in class- students helped each other understand the difference between healthy behaviours and attitudes (for example, a feeling of sadness after a relationship breaks up) and unhealthy and potentially dangerous ones (jealousy, manipulation, stalking). We also touched on the role of social media in human relationships, but did not explore this in a lot of detail as this alone would make for a long and complex project.

The assessment rubric was quite simple:



I definitely think this activity works well for older groups of students. Some of the songs and videos chosen were quite explicit and this needs to be taken into consideration in order to choose whether to show the videos in class, or to just talk about the lyrics. The most interesting presentations were, unsurprisingly, about the songs which attempt to hide sexism and about the ones which display deep-rooted sexist behaviours that have, to quite an extent, been normalised to such a point that a lot of people do not perceive them.

I would definitely like to repeat this activity in the future.

Thanks for checking in! See you in the next post!

Maite

Edgar Allan Poe: Short Stories (1º ESO)

The master of horror, the father of detective fiction, the main contributor to the obscure and the macabre... Halloween wouldn't have been completed without  Poe. Last year, I got my Advanced students to read The Raven collaboratively. Because of technological glitches, I haven't been able to upload the recording anywhere... so this time I approached the task differently.

It was my 1º ESO students this time. First, we had a look at the following presentation, which I created specifically for this project:




The students were given a calendar to help them plan their work:


Then, we split the class into two groups, and having a close look at the (adapted) text of the two stories, the students began to unleash the performers within and finally... we made two recordings, added pictures and... voilà!

The project was complete.

In a task like this, students learn about literature, read a creative story, practice pronunciation and intonation, and develop their digital competence by putting together an audiovisual product. They also work as part of a team and develop collaborative working skills.

The assessment was done by using this rubric:




As expected, this project involved quite a lot of hard work, but the students really enjoyed it.

Thanks for popping in! See you next time!

Halloween Stories (4º ESO)

Hi all,

This is a bit of a tradition for me now, since it's the third year I have done this activity. As usual, I introduced the topic of Halloween and launched the creative writing task in my 4º of ESO class, which this year are working towards a C1 level. They're a really strong class, with plenty of creativity and language skills to match.

The stories have been published in Stories at Base blog, and you can enjoy them by clicking on the link.

Enjoy!

Maite

Start of the year ice-breakers

New year, new students, and new routines!

I don't know about other teachers, but I seem to get new groups of students every year. Obviously, this means I don't even know their names, let alone their skills and learning styles. To me, this means I need to do both as quickly as possible in order to start feeling productive.

This year, I have done the following activities with my students:

First, my youngest students (1º ESO or Year 7). I have asked them to create a time capsule of themselves. I asked them to include information such as their height, their age in days, their favourite things, and other random questions. It was a bit of fun, but it got them thinking- 'how should I include my exact height if I don't have a tape measure?'... I asked them to be creative. Some of them used pens and pencils ("I'm 15 pens tall!"), some others asked their friends to walk toe to heel next to them ("I'm seven feet!")... It was a bit of fun but it allowed me to get to know the way they solve problems, how they interact, and also, how they express themselves in English. Another activity we did was to write Crazy Chain Stories. I gave them all the same start to a story, which they had to copy at the top of a piece of paper. Then, folding the sheet so only the last sentence was visible, they had to continue the story and then, fold again and pass it on. At the end, we read the resulting stories. I was more interested in the process of writing than in the final result. Again, it allowed me to check how they worked and it forced them to write in English, even if it was a simple sentence.

My next group, 2º ESO (Year 8), did a grammar revision activity with a prize attached to it. I gave them 15 gapped sentences and they had to fill in the gaps. Every correct answer allowed them to throw a paper ball into the bin. The person with the highest number of successful throws would get a lollipop. In this case, there was no cooperation- it was clearly a competition, but even then it gave me the chance to observe them when they were motivated and eager for the prize: some of them tried to copy someone else's answers, whereas others didn't complete the work and others breezed through it.

My oldest students, in 4º ESO (Year 10), were given a challenge. After showing them a short video on the 6 degrees of separation theory, I gave them random names of public figures, some of them already dead and some of them still alive, and I asked them to research them in order to find a plausible connection between them. Incredibly, some of my students managed to connect really diverse people in less than 6 steps! I watched them as they worked in pairs, as they tried to figure out how to 'crack' it, as it were, and finally, I asked them to explain their thought process in order to connect the two people they had been given. With an activity like this, I gained some knowledge of them, which I think is a good basis for a successful start of the year.

What do other people do to start their school year? Let me know in the comments box below!

Thanks for popping in! :)

Maite

Project: reworking classic literature

I love literature, and when you love something, you try to share it... don't you? Back in November, my 1º Bachillerato students worked on Poe's masterpiece The Raven, and the experience was really good. However, I thought it would be good to challenge them a bit more, by asking them to look at classic poets differently and therefore, to consider their works more relatable in spite of the time and cultural distance between, say, Lord Byron and a 17-year-old girl from Madrid.

When I was at university, I managed to change my view of classic poets- from cold, statue-like, unapproachable, venerable figures to warm, human and immediate people with day-to-day problems just like anybody else. I likened them to modern-day artists, and in a way they were. In an era (and a long one!) when the only way to make your works known was by writing them down, the immediacy artists enjoy nowadays,with Twitter accounts and media coverage, was unavailable to them, but that is not to say that poets in the past didn't behave unlike modern-day rockstars and had their quirks, eccentricities and diva moments... not forgetting that the reason why they have gone down in history is because they wrote wonderful poems, in the same way that, say, John Lennon has written wonderful songs and they supersede his personal life.

I digress. I presented my students the following:

The first step, of course, was to try to understand the poems. I didn't dwell in the literary devices, figures of speech or structure more than was strictly necessary- these are English language learners without a huge interest in such things-, so I tried to reach the meaning of the poems by asking the following questions:

- what is the topic of the poem?

- have you experienced something similar?

- have you read/watched/listened to anything similar?

- what sort of situation might have led to this poem being written?

By answering these questions, students had a more direct way to find themselves in the poem, as it were- they found links to their lives (either first-hand experience or witnessed events), and imagined situations which could have inspired the authors to write those lines, or other situations where the content of the poem would apply.

Their imaginations were working and their creative muscle was being exercised. Exactly what I wanted!

I split the students into groups of 4. I gave them a grand total of 5 periods for this. As usual, some of them threw themselves into it while others went through the motions-- but nobody was in their comfort zone.

You can check the final products clicking here.

Have you done anything like this in class? How was it? Please share your experience! 

Project: a tutorial

This week, in my 1º ESO class, we have been working on conditional sentences. We have discussed '0' and 1st conditionals. In order to practice, I have asked them to create a mini-project. These are the instructions,




It's just a short activity in order to practice a specific grammar point. I didn't want to use the typical activity in which students are presented with a 'condition' and have to come up with a consequence or result (we practiced that orally as a chain kind of activity), and I wanted the students to write down sentences, so I came up with this. Not a genius idea, or completely original, but effective (once the students understand they have to move away from just giving instructions).

I asked them to use Snapguide because it's really easy to use and the final product is really eyecatching. This contributes to the students' feelings of achievement and satisfaction... an important element for students!

Thanks for checking in! See you next time!

Scottish English

There are a lot of difficult accents and, I'm not going to lie, the Scottish accent is one of them. It's not only the pronunciation that makes it a bit hard to understand, but also the fact that there are a lot of Scottish words most other native English speakers have never heard of, and they are used widely. This is because in most informal situations, people use a variety of English called Scots, which a lot of people from Scotland consider a language in its own right (and a lot of visitors do, too), and many Scottish people take pride in their distinctive sounds and words.

They do say that one of the clearest varieties of English is spoken in Scotland. In Inverness, for example, people speak in a recognisable Scottish accent, but one which is clear enough for anybody to understand without trouble. Go to Glasgow, on the other hand, and you may well need an interpreter.

What are the main characteristics of the Scottish accent, then?

Pronunciation

Broadly speaking, this is what makes it different from standard English:

- Scottish speakers roll their 'r', and it's a strong 'r', not the soft sound Americans make. It's sharp, it's short, and it's there. As a result, a word like 'girl' is not pronounced 'gal', but almost 'gerrrrral', with a small vovel sound between the 'r' and the 'l' (unpronunciable otherwise). Words like this include 'curl', 'whirl', 'Carlsberg'...

- Scottish long vowels are far less frequent than in standard English. 'Bath' contains a short /a/ sound, whereas in RP it's long, /a:/. Thus, there are some words that become homophones, like pull and pool.

- Some dipthongs become long vowels. For example, house is pronounced 'hoose', about is pronounced 'aboot'... and not all dipthongs stay the same. Home is commonly pronounced 'heim', toes is 'teis'...  And some words turn short vowels into dipthongs, like head: 'heid'.

- In some areas, speakers drop the sound /t/ when it's between vowels: be'er instead of better. 

- The sound /x/ ("j" as in "jamón" for Spanish speakers) exists, although it is a bit softer. Common words include loch (=lake), dreich (=wet, damp weather), och (sound people make to express annoyance)... it's very common in names of Gaelic origin, which are ubiquitous once you venture into the Highlands.

Vocabulary

There are a lot of common words that don't resemble regular English:

aye = yes

nay = no

ken= know

gie = give

bonnie = nice

kirk = church

bairn = child

lass, lassie = girl

blether = chat

braw = beautiful

haar = mist

how? = why?

crabbit = grumpy

loan = alley

wifey = woman

In Scottish English, it's common to use 'no' as a shortened form of 'not', although the word order is not always the same as in standard English.

'I'll no tell ye any lies" = 'I won't tell you any lies"

'Don't' is often pronounced 'dinny', and 'didn't' is 'didny', with the stress placed on the first syllable.

'I dinny ken him' = 'I don't know him"

It's also fairly common to use 'ye' to mean 'you', or 'yes' and 'youse' to mean 'you' in plural.

'I'll meet youse outside the pub' = 'I'll meet you all outside the pub'

All of these make it quite exciting (and, if you're new to the country, quite nerve wrecking) to decipher what people are saying to you.

Once you get used to it, it's quite alright, really.

Here are a couple of videos to illustrate some Scottish accents.

First, David Tennant reads Shakespeare's Sonnet 18. Tennant comes from Renfrewshire, in the West of Scotland. 

Next, a short clip from Brave, the Pixar film. Merida is played by Scottish actress Kelly MacDonald, a Glaswegian actress. Her mother, Elinor, is played by English actress Emma Thompson, who does a sterling job at speaking with a broad Highland accent. 

The trailer for Sunshine on Leith is a good example of the accent generally found in Edinburgh. 

Finally, in these videos you will find out some of the problems some Scottish people face because of their accent. 

Thanks for reading! See you next time! 

The Raven

I've come to realise that, no matter how old my students are (ahem, ahem...), they always enjoy celebrating foreign holidays such as Halloween. Last October, I decided to humour them, but I had my rules.

1-. They were going to read a poem.

2-. The poem was long.

3-. It had lots of strange words.

4-. I wanted to record their voices reading it.

Their enthusiasm somewhat subdued, I showed them the following video:

Some of them were touched by this point. Most of them, though, still had their suspicions. It was long, it had a lot of long, difficult words, and the subject matter wasn't all that clear. Who was Lenore, anyway? 

Printed copy of the poem in our hands, we went almost line by line, focusing on the rhythm and the sounds, just getting used to the cadence and the images conjured up by the extensive use of alliteration, repetition and rhyme. Even those students who still didn't understand the poem were starting to let themselves get carried away by the intricate, elaborate and resounding mechanics of the poem. 

OK, then. Death, loss, insanity, obsession... the themes started to fly around in class. Written on the board, bubble diagram covering the white surface. The words started to gain meaning, up until then unclear. Mythological figures became more concrete and significant. Most students were on board and started to make decisions about how they were going to read their lines. 

They wanted to read their lines in pairs, so I gave each pair of students two stanzas. We went over difficult words, drawing their attention to internal rhyme so they could predict their pronunciation. Without saying they were turning into actors, the students were interested in the speaker's frame of mind in order to give their performance some substance. And then, the big day arrived. 

I used WavePad, a voice-recording app on the iPad, and recorded stanza after stanza. The students felt satisfied after we finished, our 10-minute long recording testament to their efforts, to the journey they had to make to reach the master of horror literature, even if it was only with their fingertips. 

When we finished, the general comment was... we should do this more often! 

I agreed. 

Have you used Poe's masterpiece in class? What was your experience? Let me know in the comments below! 

History of English: double words

Hi all,

I came across this short video recently, and I would like to share it in this blog. It illustrates neatly why we have some words that mean more or less the same thing, but that look very different.

This phenomenon isn't exclusive of the English language. In Spanish, for example, the words perro and can mean the same thing (dog), and their origins are different (Basque and Latin respectively), and there are countless other words like that. Without going into too much detail, this depends on how much one language has been exposed to others, whether or not one of the languages was used by the ruling classes or was considered more prestigious, and so on.

Apart from the words illustrated (sometimes, literally!) in the video, there are others. Can you think of any?Why do you think they have both survived and are in use nowadays? Feel free to use the Comments section below to post your ideas.

See you next time!