XMAS TIME!!!!

Everybody was looking forward to Christmas, or, simply some time to relax for a little bit and recover energy to start working harder again.

I would like to wish my students and their families a happy new year and all the best for 2020 with this Christmas card:

I should also like to take this opportunity to thank my ESO students for the significant contribution they made to take part in the Christmas Contest. They created special ornaments and decorated their classroom door. If only they had this illusion hanging over their heads and others could follow their examples.

I give my sincere congratulations to Claudia Cidoncha and Isabel González who were the winners of the Xmas Ornament Contest this year:

Now, students, it is time to relax but do not forget: 

There is time for everything. 

The key is knowing how to organise it!

First Term Speaking: 1ºB Bilingual Section

Students were asked to choose any topic and make a presentation about it in front of their classmates. They were also asked to grade the other presentation. I should say that all the students did an excellent job but the best ones chosen were:

First Term Speaking: 1ºBHB

This term students made a presentation providing detailed information about a person in their family circle or a friend. Each studen was also asked to grade their classmates'  work.

The results were as follows:

HALLOWEEN 2019

As every year, on 31st October, Cuatro Caminos High School has once again surprised everyone, not only teachers and students, but also visitors, with its creepy Halloween decorations. An excellent job carried out by the ACE Department.

Moreover, the English Department has organized a Halloween Poster Contest to encourage students to take part in this celebration. A huge poster has been shown in the school foyer with all the works that fulfilled all the relevant requirements. Everyone was able to vote the two best ones.

I am highly proud because all my students took part in the contest and came to school dressed in black.

1ºBHB

1ºESO B 
Bilingual Section

1ºESO B 
With their teachers Estrella & Marta

Also, my students of 1ºESO B decorated two doors and their classroom with their Art teacher, Marco, and English teacher, Marta.

Here are some more posters they made for the contest:

 

Best of all: the two winners were my students of 1ºESO B (Bilingual Section):

CONGRATULATIONS!!!!

SERGIO QUINTANA VALBUENA

IRENE PAREJO FERNÁNDEZ

Here I should like to mention the excellent work done by the teacher Alba Pavón with my students of 1ºBHB  disguised as different characters and some important writers of universal literature. By going class to class, the students recited some of texts from mystery and horror books.

Literatura Universal
1ºBHB

Once again, our High School received the Extremagia Award organised by Achikitú in association with Don Benito Town Hall, as best decorated High School. 

THANKS TO EVERYONE INVOLVED

AND

SEE YOU NEXT YEAR!!!!!

Decorating our English corner 1ºB Bilingual Section

The first project  carried out by the students has been to create the seven letters of ENGLISH. All the students have done a really good job showing their own creative skills.

During the English lesson, the best letters have been chosen for our English corner. In this way, all the best projects will be shown on this big poster.

The aim of this initiative is not only to help the students improve using their classmates'  projects as a model but also to decorate the classroom with their work.

Here you can see the best letters:

Adriana Tapia Cuadrado

Claudia Cidoncha Ruiz

Irene Parejo Fernández

Best English Students (School Year 2018/9)

Having taught almost the same group of students for four years, they were used to collecting stickers when getting marks between 9 and 10 points. As this school year was the last one for them at Cuatro Caminos, I decided to continue my long-held tradition.

Imagine my surprise when counting all the stickers got through the year, the results were striking but very, very satisfactory.

Two students tied for each place. Of course, the six ones were given their well-deserved prizes in recognition of their perseverace, hard work and will power.

This year the prize-winning ceremony had to be held in the school playground and only a few of them were able to come since the students were so busy preparing their EBAU exams.

Third Term Speaking: GETTING DIRECTIONS & MAKING PLANS

For the third term, those students, who did not take part in the eTwinning project: EL PODER DE LA LECTURA, were asked to record the following everyday situation: GETTING DIRECTIONS and MAKING PLANS. Once more, the students did such a great job taking into account the following criteria: English skills, perfomance, real life-settings, video editing and, of course, creativity: 

More examples of EBAU compositions

Some more examples of EBAU compositions written by  the following students:

Advantages or disadvantages of setting up your own business:

Setting up your own business can be such an incredible experience because you get many experiences working by yourself and you learn how to make balance of money. Although there are many advantages, there are also disadvantages.
On the one hand, setting up your own business can make you feel optimistic about the future. You can also meet new people, your employees. Moreover, you will learn some aspects you didn't know about such as economics or politics.
On the other hand, creating your own business can cause you stress and you may feel overwhelmed because of the many things you have to take care of. Also, you will have to live and work with other people who can be less hard-working than you or even more than you.
To sum up, I think setting up your own business is a really good option which you can choose if you don't find a job you really like. Although it has disadvantages, they aren't as many as advantages.

Juan Romero Torres (2ºBC)

A story ending with this sentence: "This is the reason why I decided to set up my own business next time" 
When I got a job for Microsoft, I was so happy. I could already see myself going out for a dinner with Bill Gates. But the first day of work I noticed something strange. The office wasn't on Silicon Valley, it was in Medellín. I thought that maybe they moved the company there. But the company also wasn't a huge building, it was a little house next to a green river. The boss came through the door. He shouted: "Welcome to Microsoft Chicken Wings!" I realized maybe I should have read the job application properly. The boss, whose name was Pascasio Pollo (but everyone calls him the Chicken man), told me that I had to learn and master the Twelve Dark Arts of Cooking Chicken. I thought about going home, but money is money and I'm poor so I stayed to learn. On my dangerous journey to become a chicken legend, I had to chase chickens, cut chicken wings, clean the nuclear waste of the river and set up the tables. It was finally the day of my final trial. Everything was going great until the legendary myth of Medellín, the man who lives on a cardboard box and has a gun, came through the door and screamed: "Oi mate, give me those camalote chicken wings!". The Chicken Man was sweating. He told me the man who lives on a cardboard box and has a gun was the most dangerous customer of the entire village. "If ya don't make them perfect, I will shoot you", the dangerous man said. The Chicken Man started preparing the best camalote chicken wings he could but he suddenly stopped. He had diarrhea. "This is bad", he said, "I can't finish them! You will have to do it for me". "But i don't know how to make them!", I said to him. "Listen, Johnny, this is my final lesson". He pointed to the river and went to the bathroom. I didn't understand it. The camalote was already on the chicken. What could be missing on the chicken wings? But then, I realized. The thing that was missing ... was me. I wasn't strong enough to finish the chicken wings. But if I became one with the camalote, I would have power to finish them. "Thank you, Chicken Man", I said as I entered the river. The camalote energy started flowing in me. I got back, I finished those wings and served the man who lives on a cardboard box and has a gun. "Here you are". The day was saved. Eventually I discovered that the Chicken Man didn't pay me money so I left. This is the reason why I decided to set up my own business next time.

Daniel González Aparicio (2ºBHA)

BOOK DAY: The Little Prince Chapter XXI

On the occasion of World Book Day, some students of mine were chosen to take part in another activivity for our eTwinning project. The proposed activity by the French teacher María López consisted in reading the chapter XXI from The Little Prince by Saint-Exupery in the three languages: Spanish, English and French. 

First of all, Ciara Rock sent on the recording in English by two Irish students of the chosen chapter so that my students had the opportunity to use this resource to help them with their pronunciation. They could hear it as many times as necessary since it was available on Google Drive.

Then on April 23rd, Pablo González and Claudio Terrados recorded their classmates reading the chapter in English in our school library. The pupils involved in this activity were: Lucía Banda, Luis Brito, Marina Gallardo, Paloma García, Andrea Parejo, Juan Romero and Sergio Ruiz. Before that day, the students themselves shared out the task of dividing the charter so that each of them could read a certain number of sentences. 

The result is shown in the following video edited by Pablo:

A Short-film Competition on Gender Equality and Gender-based Violence

Finally, after one month of hard work, we carried out one of the many activities of our eTwinning project. It was a complicated and difficult task to find the appropriate date and time to watch the finalist videos. Even,  the pre-selection of all the videos for the competion was not a particularly easy task as most of them had pretty high-quality.

On the morning of the 20th, students and teachers involved in the project met to watch the 13 finalist videos: 9 in English, 1 in French and 3 in Spanish. With the help of some students, a video montage with all of them was made, inserting the adverts of the game LADY WHO? recorded in three languages:

Here you can see the one we recorded in English:

Before watching the video, our partner Ciara Rock sent me a message saying there was an issue with the internet connection and the downloading time of the video. Given the delay, her students were unable to vote as originally planned during that time period. Instead they finished watching at home and voted that evening.
By means of this page web live.voxvote.com, the Spanish students could vote using their mobile phones by inserting a PIN or a QR Code. However, it was impossible to publish the final result that day due to the internet problem in Ireland.
Two days later we got the final vote count:

Once again, I felt a very great emotion and it was really gratifying to be able to see that the the top two videos were recorded by my students.

First Prize:

The justice's mistake: Claudio Terrados, Pablo González, Yanjun Chen, Antonio Pérez and Daniel González.

Second Prize:
It is possible to heal scars: Andrea Parejo, Pablo García, Mª José Fernández and Lucía Gallego.

In a brief ceremony during a break, some presents were given to the award-winning pupils by Pedro de la Peña and their English teacher, Marta Fernández.

First Prize

 

Second Prize

 

We all enjoyed the process and were extremely impressed by the standard and quality of some students’ videos. Students also felt that the process had really helped them with their writing skills and had built their vocabulary significantly.

LADY WHO? An amazing educational game

Another activity carried out with my students for our eTwinning project was to design and create the game called LADY WHO?

The aims of the game is not only to promote our project but also to make students know the importance of the 20 Wonder Women in history and to practice and improve the foreign languages used in the project: Spanish, English and French.

You can see through the following pictures how we designed and created our game:

1. We made laminated cards with the information about our 20 Wonder Women in Spanish, English and French:

2. The cartoons designed by the teacher Domingo Valero and his students were printed in small oval-shaped laminated cards:

  3. Two boards were made of purple eva foam, and we placed twenty black stars on each one:

4. The twenty cartoon cards were placed on the black stars:

5. All the material produced were placed in strategic places inside a black box, which was very similar to a case:

6. On top of the black case, one can see the front cover, designed by the student María Ramos with the assistance of the teacher Marco Sosa:

7. As in all the games, some rules of the game were needed. The teachers, Pedro de la Peña and Esperanza Cabezas were given the job of writing the rules in Spanish. Then, these rules were tanslated into English by Ciara Rock and in French by María López and Mercedes Guerrero. After that, a brochure was designed to be placed into the box:

8. This way, one of the games was ready. The following step would be to create another one in exactly the same way for our Irish partners. My students and I spent some time during the breaks to do that and finally the game was sent to Ireland by postal mail:

9. Before cataloguing the game in our school library, El Rincón de los Sueños, students had the opportunity to play the game during the breaks:

We are completely sure that this game will be used as a major resource for language teaching in both schools.