First 10 high frequency words for year 1

18th September 2013

Hola Papas y mamas de 1º A/B

Help Please!!!!!!!!!!

Aquí tienen como pronunciar en inglés las primeras 10 palabras(Gracias Charo) que tienen que leer y escribir vuestros hijos/as.

You are gonna be so sick of these videos by the end of the year.SORRRRRRRY

What I need to bring to school 6ºA/B 19th September

18th September Year 6 

Just to remind all of you to bring the definition of 4 Roman related words tomorrow for your glossary and also anything that you have at home related to the Roman Topic.  Books, encycopedias, magazines, souvenirs, postcards photos of family visiting Rome...........

Also we are going to make lavender bags in Art so we need to bring small pieces of material(Cotton)and ribbons to tie the bags.

By the way I just corrected your Dream Holiday essays and they were amazing!!!!! Well done everyone

This weekend 20th-22nd September

Dont forget to find the definitions for the next four Roman words and to copy the Romulus and Remus text into a word doc (or copy out by hand if you don't have  a printer.)

The New School Year

      The New Beginning   2013-14                                                                    

I love this time of year the planning, the organization of the course, the setting of objectives and deciding what's important and what needs to be done.  The kids are ready for a new start, we're all refreshed after a long summer holiday.
Even the teachers are smiling at each other.  We haven't started irritating each other just yet.

The meetings actually seem to be productive and there's a feeling of energy a buzz around the school.
Long may it last!The parents meeting today seemed to go well and parents were looking reasonably happy and asked sensible questions.
 I always get butterflies in my stomach before these meeting even after so many years.  It's a bit like being on the stage.  You can see that you are being judged,  it's completely understandable but makes you feel nervous.
I finally managed to recover my  index so visitors to the blog can actually find the posts for their class.  It only took me about 5 days.

So this year I plan to lead my students(108 of them) to learning and hopefully motivate them along the way.  The official formative assessment is slowly dying but it still has some followers among us.  Unfortunately these followers tend to be in the echelon of the Education department in our local authority.  So there will have to be some formative testing done but the bulk of the evaluation carried out in my class will be from The higher order thinking skills with a lot of emphasis on  (self evaluation and peer evaluation), measurable, specific objectives that children understand.
This ancient chinese proverb got it right.

 Chinese proverb : Teachers open the door. You enter by yourself.

I also want to use Excel to show, compare and contrast results and move away from my scruffy old notebook.

So good luck to everyone and hopefully this is going to be a great academic year.

Stuffing Your Cerebral Cortex

      Stuffing your cerebral cortex

                               susanmidlarsky.com/why-learning-should-be-fun

This blog is really interesting it's quite similar to mine in that Susan and teachers like her

 can see that we're not preparing children for the world that we live in and that each day the
 joy is being taken out of the classroom.

 We're still churning out factory or production line workers or god forbid burocrats 

and civil servants.  Why are we still evaluating kids on there memory capacity,

 and lower order thinking skills?  

The big fat educrats sit on there thrones dictating  what should be 

happening in the classroom when they just don't have a clue.




As far as I know Finland which has incredible results in education and a huge budget 

for spending is one of the few countries that invites classroom teachers at all levels 

of education to contribute to changing education policies and laws.

Why on earth don't they just get a few of us out of the classroom and ask us .

what needs to be done?.

Parents in Spain are totally obsessed with the grades but I guess that's not just here.

 To be a good parent you have to sit down for hours and help your kid to stuff a

 bunch of useless facts into their heads.  When all that knowledge is at the flick of a switch.

  I'm not saying that we shouldn't provide a good base but after that why aren't we

 workingexclusively on creativity and exploiting what each child does best?? 

 The rivers and mountains of Spain and every capital city in Europe they can find in 

Google if they ever have an urgent need to know them,  but helping each individual to

 develop personally and reach their personal goals is what I signed up for 28 years ago.  

 Not passing the KET, PET, TRINITY;  or SATs or whatever other official exam they come

 up with next.

Safe Kids in Internet

Try this quiz just to make sure you are safe when you are surfing in internet.  I'm worried  even when you are connected to this blog that you might see things that are not good for you.
Safe Kids

Grammar exercises. I know you love it!!!!

Look at this lovely grammar page just for a change,  it looks really helpful.

English Grammar (ADULT ORIENTATED)



This one is more for kids(Thanks Larry)
KIDS GRAMMAR AND PHONIC WORK

THIS ONE TOO
KIDS GAMES AND GRAMMAR ACTIVITIES


More ESL games