Where do you live? In a big city or in a small village.
Do you like your hometown?
Do you want to know where we live?
This time, my students had to write about the place they live. Some of us live in a very small village called Forcarei . Others live in the country, so when they started making notes, they realized that it would be very hard to use the vocabulary from this unit.
We therefore decided that it would be easier to write about Forcarei. It was a great opportunity for us to get to know our village better.
As always, the mission had different levels:
Level 1: Make notes about Forcarei
Level 2: Write a draft
There were two difficulty levels of the task in order to everybody could get this level.
Do you want to be an explorer? Let’s walk through the jungle. What animals can you see? What can you hear? Walk and creep and wade… but be careful who you might find out there!
Walking Through a Jungle a story by Julie Lacome, is one of my students’ favourite book about animals. It is a lovely repetitive story which develops children’s listening and language skills, followed by an initial sounds phonics game with jungle animals. Furthermore, it is also a great book to learn about animals and actions in a catchy way.
In this 1st lesson we will learn the difference between REGULAR AND IRREGULAR VERBS and we will also learn how to make affirmative sentences in SIMPLE PAST.
“I wrote to the zoo and they sent me a…”… I would never have imagined how engaging a simple beginning of a story could be. So, Dear zoo has become in a must have book in our classroom library.
“I wrote to the zoo and they sent me a…”……nunca pensei que un comezo tan sinxelo poidera chegar ser tan atractivo para os rapaces. Así que, Dear Zoo pasa a ser un imprescindible na nosa biblioteca de aula.
Why do children love Dear Zoo? Firstly, because of its subject matter. Kids always enjoy visiting zoos, talking about their pets, seeing animals on TV or wacthing animation films like Madagascar.
Por que lle gusta tanto? En primeiro lugar, pola súa temática. Os cativos gozan visitando zoos, falando das súas mascotas, mirando pelis de animais,…
Before reading the book, this book provided a great opportunity for activating prior knowledge while sharing experiences through simple questions like (in their mother tongue): Who has been to a zoo? What was it like? What animals did you see there? What animal was your favourite? And so on.
Asemade, antes de lelo, partindo dunha serie de preguntas na lingua materna, permitiunos compartir experiencias e activar coñecementos previos.
Secondly, because of its simple, repetitive and funny language. The lift-the-flaps make it engaging and suspenseful read both ways. After reading it a couple of times, children involved in the story naming the animals in the cages or moving like the animals.
En segundo lugar, grazas a súa linguaxe simple, repetitiva e divertida. As solapas fan que os rapaces sen enganchen a historia grazas ao suspense que provoca intentar adiviñar que hai dentro de cada gaiola. Despois dun par de lecturas en voz alta, todos querían dicir o nome dos animais ou imitar o seu movemento, o que os fixo partícipes da historia.
Thirtly, because of the vocabulary that allows us to talk about. It provided not only the opportunity for learning animal words in a fun way, but practising colours and adjectives, comparing animals or making different conecctions. I read the book aloud, page by page and then I paused and asked children if they were able to name or point to something that was big or heavy or someone in the class who was tall or grumpy.
Por último, o vocabulario. Dear zoo no só nos dou a oportunidade de aprender o vocabulario dos animais dun xeito divertido senón que nos permitiurepasar as cores e adxectivos. comparar animais e establecer diferentes conexións. Parando en cada páxina, pedinlles que sinalaran obxectos da aula grandes ou pesados ou a alguén que fora alto ou algo gruñón.
Moreover, we focused on how letters sound. Reading is not an aim in kindergarten but teaching letter sounds is one essential step in teaching kids to read. This can be done in various ways, but one of the most effective methods is to use flashcards.
Ademais, centrámonos en aprender o son das letras. Aprender a ler non é un obxectivo de Ed. Infantil pero recoñecer o son das letras é un paso esencial para aprender a ler, sobre todo empregando tarxetas.
Today was a funny day! Students in Level 6 were practising the superlative form of adjectives and How+adjective questions with a workgroup board game.
MATERIALS
The players need one board and one set of cards for each group of three or four students; a fact file; counters and a dice for each group.
PROCEDURE
Divide students into groups of three or four.
Give each group a board, two fact files, a set of cards, counters and a dice.
They should place the cards face down in a pile and place their counters on the pirate ship (START).
Students should take it in turns to throw the dice and move round the board. When they land on a colour square, they should take a card from the pile according to the colour on the square and answer a question. The others should check the answer.
If the answer is not correct, the player misses a turn.
The player who reaches the treasure first is the winner.
Once everyone has finished, put each group together with another group and get them to report back on the answers to the questions.
There are some special squares: if the players land on the island, they will miss a turn. The treasure map wil let the players go foward two spaces. On the other hand, if they land on the ship wreck, they will have to go back two spaces. The worst square is the one with a skull… It is the unluckiest square. They should start again!
If you are teaching how to talk about the weather, you can use our new spinner. It focuses on the vocabulary worked in our unit 3 : raining, sunny, snowing, foggy,windy, cloudy, hot and cold.
Students in Level 1 started making this spinner today. They traced, coloured and cut them, but previously, we practiced the new vocabulary with some oral games and singing this funny song. They enjoyed it! Do you dare to sing it along with us? Try it!
In this new mission, students in Level 5 found out about the frecuency students in Level 6 do something at the weekend and wrote a short report.
Nesta ocasión, os alumnos de 5º averiguaron a frecuencia coa que os alumnso de 6º fan unha actividade durante o fin de semans e escribiron un pequeno informe. Para iso, tiñan que superar estes niveis:
To do so, they had to beat different levels working in pairs:
Level 1: Select a survey topic and write a questionare.
In this level, I previously explain what a survey is and why people do them. Furthermore, we learnt how to plan a survey.
Neste nivel, previamente expliqueilles que era unha enquisa e porqué se facían, Asemade, aprendemos cales eran os pasos fundamentales a seguir cando planificamos unha enquisa.
The main aim in this level was each pair to use their initiative to choose a survey topic and write the appropiate question.
Primeiro, tiveron que empregar a súa iniciativa para escoller o tema da súa enquisa e escribir a pregunta apropiada.
Level 2: Interview students in Level 6
Students used a tally chart as a method to collect information they needed. Then, counting the tally marks , they had to represent the information using a pie chart or a bar graph as instruments to help us understand the information.
The aim of this level was to develop children mathematical skills when they doing a tally chart and converting the data into a pie chart.
Para realizar este nivel, as parellas empregaron unha táboa de conteo como método para recoller a información e, para representar a información podían empregar ou unha gráfica de barras ou unha gráfica circular. O obxectivo neste nivel era desenvolver as súas habilidades en matemáticas.
If you could write to the zoo to send you a pet. What kind of pet would you like from the zoo?
In this lift-the-flap book written by Rod Campbell, you’ll discover many zoo animals! Some are HEAVY, some are SCARY, some are JUMPY, some are DANGEROUS! Which one is your favorite?
After reading “Dear Zoo”, you can work with the vocabulary on the story with this online worksheets. Enjoy them!
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