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.           

  

Presentations on Three Wonder Women from Extremadura

One of the activities of the eTwinning project was the preparation and conduct of interviews of three relevant women from Extremadura: Cristina Almeida, Teresa Guzmán and Paloma Quintero. They were interviewed by some project participants studying the first year of Bachillerato. During the interview process, my students  organized into six groups (two for each interview) were there, taking notes and pics, and also recording videos. After gathering all the information necessary about their lives and contributions in different facets of society, they created a graphic presentation in English, which was recorded to be shown to the rest of their classmates during the English lessons and to our partners in Ireland. Their presentations served to get their marks for the third term speaking.

The result, as usual, was excellent and was also used to promote our eTwinning project and raise awareness on the importance of these three Extremaduran women:

CRISTINA ALMEIDA:

TERESA GUZMÁN:

PALOMA QUINTERO:

Our Big International Women's Day Poster

Based on our eTwinning project name, "El poder de la lectura" and on the final result on the empowerment of women, 8 March, International Women's Day, was chosen by both schools involved in the project as a key day in order to carry on several activities.

The first task was to create a poster announcing the DAY. The idea was represented on graphic sketches designed by both Spanish and Irish participants. Once we had all the sketches, elements from each sketch were chosen to produce a common poster.

Some of my students helped me to change images into PNG format with Gimp 2, such as the letters designed by Luisa Azzopardi and part of the world from Eliza's sketch. Also we got to make Elena's woman bigger thanks to the cooperation obtained from two teachers: Marco Sosa and Esteban Sánchez. During the breaks, letters and numbers were drawn and cut out from eva foam by some students and a group of teachers, experts in decorating the school with posters pics, exhibitions and so on: Encarna Casado, Esperanza Cabezas, Rosa Carrizosa, Esteban Sánchez, Eva Ruiz and Pedro de la Peña.

After long hours of work, all of us were really happy because we achieved an excellent result. The big poster was taken to the school foyer and glued onto a huge piece of paper.

Many pictures were taken of our awesome posters and the best was sent to our Irish partners so that they could also display the poster in their school foyer.

WELL DONE!!!!

Second Term Speaking: A video about Sexual and Gender-based Violence

This term, all the students, not just those involved in the eTwinning project: El Poder de la Lectura, were asked to record a video. The following requirements had to be taken into account:

1. groups of max. 4 or 5 participants
2. 6 to 8 minutes in length
3. Spanish subtitles
4. deadline:  21 February 2019
5. based on cases of sexual and gender-based violence against women
6. final message in order to help prevent additional cases
7. full names of the participants and their class group
8. music without copyright

All the videos below were recorded by the students. I must say that I was very proud of the tremendous work done:

EBAU: more examples

Here are two more examples of compositions my students have written in a test similar to the one called EBAU:
A FOR AND AGAINST ESSAY written by Lucía Banda Nieto-Guerrero (2ºBHA):

Nowadays, the meat industry is changing and there are new things like the meat grown in a lab. Some people support this type of food, but others prefer the traditional one.

On the one hand, the meat grown in a lab helps reducing some environmental problems because it doesn’t use pesticides to cultivate food for the animals. Moreover, fewer animals would die.

On the other hand, there are some disadvantages of producing meat in a lab; it needs special equipment and a lot of money. However, not everybody would eat it, because it is more expensive than traditional meat and they could think that it is unnatural.

To sum up, I think the disadvantages are greater than the advantages, and meat grown in a lab is not a really good idea.

 A NARRATIVE written by Daniel González Aparicio  (2ºBHA):

It all began when one of my friends asked me to buy meat grown in a lab for our barbecue. Everyone liked the idea and they started shouting: “Meat! Meat! Meat!”

My friend, John Barbecue, leader of the BBQ Gang repeated his request: “Buy meat grown in a lab, please.” I said: “But we don’t have any money. We are poor.” “Not anymore.” John “Big John” Bigboy, the biggest man in the BBQ Gang appeared with a suitcase full of money. “Where did you get this?”, I asked. “It’s a big secret.”, he answered. “He won the lottery yesterday”, said John Bald, the most intelligent man in the gang. John Barbecue asked: “Really?” “No, idiot! He stole it! Haven’t you noticed? He’s even wearing a pantyhose on his head!”, John Bald shouted. “Oh, I thought it was some new fashion trend”, said John Andorra, the famous Youtube gamer and famous for not paying taxes. “Anyway”, said John Barbecue, “we need that lab meat, go and buy it immediately.”
I arrived at the Meat Lab, where they grow meat. The scientist who grows meat was waiting at the “Meating Room”. “Hello, I want some lab meat”, I told him. “Ok, here you go.” I paid the money and when I was going to leave, the door closed. The scientist said: “Finally, it’s time for our revenge.” The scientist removed his mask and inside was John Barbecue. “We found out your little secret”, he said. “We know your name isn’t John. You broke rule number John from the BBQ Gang. Your name must be John to join. You are a spy from the BBQ Association, isn’t that right, Joe?” He discovered my secret. There was no escape. John Barbecue drank from his glass of barbecue sauce and laughed. “Now, I will turn you into in-vitro meat!”
I woke up. I found next to me a bottle of barbecue sauce. “I have to stop drinking”, I thought. Someone knocked at the door. I opened and I found a plate with some meat and a note: “We hope you enjoy this special in-vitro meat. We needed your help to make it! - The BBQ Gang.” I was going to pick up the plate, but then I realized something. My hands were gone.