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Useful ideas for my class

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  I have chosen Storyjumper: Where is…? shared by Estefanía in her blog. teacherestefania.blogspot.com I like its presentation, it is very appealing. I think this is a great idea to practise any aspect of English language. In this case, prepositions of place. Small students are very motivated when using digital tools and with this activity they learn and play at the same time. Besides, they develop their digital competence, which is very advisable at this stage. I would like to carry out something similar in my class. The plan is as follows: -         To divide the class into small groups -         To choose a topic of their interest -         Each group creates a different story. In this way, we let students use their creativity and imagination and work cooperatively to achieve the proposed goals. It suits every student, as each one can work at its own pace and advanced students may enjoy creating their digital book. To conclude, I would like to say that this course ha

A project with Genially

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  We have carried out a project using Genially. Our aims are the following: -         To encourage oral interaction among the students. -         To promote collaborative work -         To learn in an autonomous way -         To learn some cultural facts about famous cities -       To develop digital competence.   It has been developed in several stages:           a)       Students are grouped in small groups. There should be different levels in each group, so that each one can make   contributions to the group. b)     The topic is: “ A trip to…” So, they choose a city they would like to visit and look for information about that (monuments, food, weather, etc). To do that, they use internet. c)      The students organise and select the information they need. d)     They start working with Genially, choosing a suitable modality for this task. e)     As this is a new tool, the teacher helps them with any problem they may have. f)       Finally, the students show

Storyjumper

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  We have carried out an activity using Storyjumper. The students have worked in pairs or groups of three; so, we promote collaborative work. We followed some steps to get to the final product: First, I showed them the tool, so that they could get familiar with it. They had to choose a topic for their book, a setting and the characters. Then, they began to create their books, following the instructions of the page: choosing the props, characters, scenes and voice. This was the most enjoyable part for them.   The specific learning objectives for this activity are the following: - To develop written skills and practise language - To promote collaborative work and create opportunities to interact and communicate among them - To improve digital competence   The use of Storyjumper helped the learners achieve these objectives  because they had to select vocabulary and organise ideas in order to create a story. So, we can say that creativity and imagination are very importan

Using EDPUZZLE in class

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  Nowadays, there are many ways to practise listening in class thanks to the wide range of audio and video material available online.   This time, I have chosen EDPUZZLE, which is a great tool which allows us to cut long videos and edit and elaborate interactive sequences of listening activities. This means that we can adapt authentic materials in our classes or set it as homework and carry out post-listening tasks in class afterwards. Our aims in this task are: to use authentic materials: this means written or spoken texts to be used by native speakers and not adapted (we will adapt it for our needs using EDPUZZLE) to plan effectively the focus of the tasks and learning process step-by-step (pre, during and post tasks) make the experience significative and interactive (look for topics which are attractive and increase opportunities for oral communication) give a greater degree of autonomy to students ( flipped  learning) . To achieve them, I

Working with Timetoast

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    I have used Timeoast for the first time with my students in class, and it has been a total success.   The learning objectives of the activity were the following: -To learn more about different aspects, like: culture, literature, history, etc. -To summarise and synthesise important information. -To get used to new digital tools.   We can see some advantages of using Timetoast: -The students feel very motivated. -They learn to use new digital tools. -We encourage cooperative work, as they work in pairs or small groups.   These are the steps we followed to set up the activity: Firstly, I showed them how it worked so that they were used to this new tool. Secondly, I chose the texts they were going to work with. They   selected different topics of their interest: festivities, English writers of 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, famous kings and Queens and Biography of relevant people. They had to complete the timeline and add some photos, although it was not

Reading habits

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  Reading is an important activity for all of us, since it has many benefits, such as: it improves our vocabulary and comprehension, reduces stress and builds good communication skills.       I have liked reading since I was small. I remember going to the libray with my sister and taking different types of books and magazines. I enjoyed them very much. When I was a child, I always read in L1, but I as I grew old, I started to read in English, at the beginning as a part of my studies and later for entertainment.  At present, I usually choose the same types of texts in L1 and L2, since this is a way to spend my free time and have fun. Nevertheless, at school I try to update my English reading texts of different topics, like for instance: health, technology, science, etc. in order to learn as much vocabulary as possible. In general, we can say that nowadays our reading habits have changed a lot, mainly with respect to the format in which we read. If a few decades a

GREETINGS

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 Hello everybody! Welcome to Nextstep. This is a blog that wants to help you to improve your English skills. Here you will find different resources to practise reading, listening, writing and speaking. You can learn and enjoy English at the same time. Are you ready? Agenda web La mansión del inglés The yellow pencil