viernes, 12 de noviembre de 2010

martes, 1 de junio de 2010

Bonfire Night

BONFIRE NIGHT


The origins of the festival:

The history of Guy Fawkes goes back to when there were religious problems between Protestants and Catholics, in 1600.
King James I was a Protestant who passed laws against catholics, not permiting them to have religious services.
For this reason, the 5th of november, a group of twelve Catholics decided to destroy Parliament and to kill the king. It's known as the Gunpowder Plot.
Guy Fawkes was an expert in explosives and with the help of the plotters put 30 barrels of explosives in Parliament.
Guy Fawkes was arrested and tortured, and three days later, he was and the plotters were found burned.

"Remember, remember,
the fifth of November,
Gunpowder, treason and plot.
We see no reason why
Gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot!"


Traditions that are still observed:

In the UK, since 1859 it was obligatory to celebrate the salvation of the king.
The celebration included shows of firework displays and the building of bonfire where guys, straw figures representing Guy Fawkes (the most famous of conspirators of 1605), were burned.
The day before 5th November the children used the Guys to ask for money calling out of “Penny for the guy”. With “the penny” they used to buy fireworks.

This festival is still celebrated in town and cities in the UK, and in Canada, New Zeland, Australia, South Africa, but in these places the content and the significance of this festival has disappeared.
It is celebrated with some different dishes like toffee apples, jacket potatoes, bonfire toffee, and black peas with vinegar.
People make guys and celebrate the festival with fireworks:
The guy (effigy) is made out of old clothes stuffed with paper or straw. The guy is a reminder of Guy Fawkes.
The fireworks are a reminder of the gunpowder Guy Fawkes hid in the cellar of Parliament.
Plann of a lesson: Bonfire Night

Aims:

-Knowing why is this festival celebrated.
-Knowing the tipical dishes of this festival
-Learning to prepare a typical dish of the festival: toffee apples.

Methodology:

The teacher starts the class explaining why Bonfire Night is celebrated on 5the November.
Then the teacher explains the customs that make this day (the fireworks, the Guys ...).
The first activity is that each student makes her Guy. The teacher will explain and help each student to make their puppet.
The second activity is to prepare a typical dish of Bonfire Night.
Each student will bring from home an apple. In class the teacher will explain how to prepare toffee apples.
She will bring toffee and help each student make their apple.

Materials:

-One apple for each student.
- A wooden stick to stick through the apple.
- Old clothes.

Time and place:

The lesson will take place in the children’s classroom, and it will last 45 minutes.

jueves, 27 de mayo de 2010

martes, 11 de mayo de 2010

Discussion essay on language teaching

DISCUSSION ESSAY ON LANGUAGE TEACHING


It's certainly easy to say that we should introduce cultural contents in our English lessons, but how could we do it?
Most schools have already started introducing a foreign language for three year old children, and this has also turned into a topic of debate. It might be English another subject for children with three years?
Many people believe that such young children aren't able to start with another language like English, because they think that learning catalan and spanish they is enough learning.
From my point of view, people who say things like this are so ignorant because it is said that the more languages you know and dominate the better for you, and if you start this task since you are young it will be more easier, and you'll have more time to improve the different languages you learn.
On the other hand there are people who are in favour of introducing foreign language since their children are young because they help them to be more skilful to learn other languages.
Furthermore they approve of this project because learning a new language will open a lot of doors to them when the time for them to work arrives.
One of the main advantages of this project of introducing a foreign language so soon is that it will help our pupils to develope other subjects and to enrich their culture.
On the subject of culture, another idea is to introduce cultural contents in to our English lessons, and we can do this in different ways, because depending on the age of the children we will offer them different aspects of the culture and we will treat it aspects in different ways.
To introduce this cultural contents in a class of three year old children, we might put a video where you could see the English countryside, where you could see native people of the country speaking the language, making together typical English dishes in the class, bringing an English in order that the children could ask him about his country, reading about legends of the country or typical stories. There are a lot of things we can do introduce cultural contents.
The best thing to know well about cultural contents of the country would be organizing an excursion to this country, but this trip qould have to be considered well because with such small children we might not be able to organize it.
On balance, we are capable of introducing a foreign language at age, and school enty age is probably the best age to begin. And in different ways, we can introduce the cultural contents of the country so we have a better knowledge of the language.

martes, 20 de abril de 2010

Planning of a lesson

LEARNING SHAPES:

Aims:

- Learn the names of the differents shapes (rectangle, circle, triangle, square).
- Be able to recognize these shapes in other ways.

Time:

The english lesson will last 45 minutes.

Place:

The english lesson will be given in the children class.

Methodology:

- See the musical video of shapes.

- After see the video we should repeat them the name of every shape that they have already seen, showing them flashcards with a draw of the shape and its name.

- Make them to think about real objects that contains these shapes, talk about it in class, and propose them to draw in a paper the diferents things that they have told.

- If there are enough time, we can propose them to make a dece template with pictures of the different shapes.

Materials:









Webs of the materials:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4zDyxxf8Gs (musical video of shapes)

http://someonesinthewolf.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/shape_flashcards_1.gif (flashcards of shapes)

http://www.esl-kids.com/worksheets/drawing.html (draw things wich contains the shapes)

http://www.esl-kids.com/worksheets/dice.html (make a dice templece with shape)

lunes, 19 de abril de 2010

martes, 30 de marzo de 2010

Discussion essay on education

Nowadays education is one of the most important topics that are discussed in our country.
Politicians are talking about changing some laws on education but the changes never come. I also think that changes never come because they aren't good enough. We should spend more time thinking about children and people who receive education, and not only about political issues.
There are some questions on discussion about education that are: if compulsory education should be extended up to eighteen, or if it should stay the same up to sixteen, and another, if compulsory education should start before 3 years of age.
As regards, about the first debate I think that compulsory education should stay the same up to sixteen, and have optional education to eighteen. Unfortunately there are a lot of people that they don't want to study, and if we make them study we might create a bad atmosphere for people who want to study.
As for the second question, it seems to me that early education must be carried out by the family, therefore I think that starting compulsory education as soon as you born isn't a good idea. When you are so young you need have contact with your parents.
From my point of view, we should spend more time improving the education levels that are already compulsory than spending time thinking about elevate or decrease the ages of compulsory education.
Talking about the news on education there are some issues to comment on too, like the introdution of laptops in classrooms and ICT.
Some traditional people think that ICT will eliminate traditional school tools such as books, pencils, blackboards … but they don't think that these things don't eliminate anything, they only help to improve our education. What's better? Drawing on a piece of paper or on a virtual blackboard? I think the second one will help new generations to integrate at our new world of technologies.
On the other hand, there are people and teachers who are enthusiastic about new technologies, like me, and they think that one advantage is that children are so clever and they learn so fast how to use new technologies. Nevertheless we have to pay attention to children who have problems of learning because they require more time to adapt to new technologies.
Not only ICT and laptops help us in education, the Internet does too. Internet is a useful tool if you know how to use it.
To sum up, when I start to work as a teacher I will have to work with new technologies, and for me they aren't disadvantages for devoloping education, they help to improve our education as I have already said before.

jueves, 11 de marzo de 2010

Children's emotions!



How can we know the emotions of the children?
Only we have to leave them to speak and to express their emotions.
Often the words of the children are taken as stupid words, but why?
They only say what they feel,their words are the more sincere.
We should let they express like they want,and listen to them, because in their words we can find very insteresting things!
I find so interesting a commentary of a girl who says 'when all you want to do is play and your best friend pushes you away' and two boys who say that be misunderstoods make them feel sad.