EXCITING NEWS: OUR SCHOOL RADIO PROGRAMME ON IVOOX HAS BEEN REVIVED!

First of all, apologies for not having posted in a while: Things have been rather busy at school lately, but for a very good reason! We’ve been hard at work developing an exciting new project: our very own school radio station, as part of Radio na Biblio, a programme supported by the Consellería de Educación da Xunta de Galicia.

Over the past few months, I’ve been collaborating with fellow teachers and students to design, script and record podcasts that bring language learning to life. These tasks have allowed our learners to practise their English and other languages they study at school in creative ways, while developing valuable communication and teamwork skills.

The first series of podcasts my students recorded focuses on a highly relevant topic: household finances and how to save money. These episodes were researched and recorded by my C1 students, who tackled the challenge of speaking clearly and informatively about managing personal finances.

So, you can now listen to our programmes on iVoox! I hope you enjoy them and find them useful! Stay tuned for more content! 

MAKING LANGUAGE LEARNING LESS BOT-RING: THE ULTIMATE MEDIATION INSTRUCTOR!

Hi, fellow teachers!

I can't stop moving on through the ever-evolving language teaching journey, can you? I am continuously seeking tools to enhance my students' learning experiences. One such tool that has captured my attention recently is the chatbot. Who hasn't heard about the wonders of @Mizou from @ELT_CATION, @blogdecristina and @EliGozalo? I couldn't resist following suit to uncover the mysteries of integrating bots in the ESL class!

As I was brainstorming ideas for my bot design, inspiration came quickly: What aspect causes the most insecurity among my C1 students? Undoubtedly, it's mediation! They struggle to understand how oral mediation works here in Galicia when it comes to the standardized exam: "Identify the main idea of a small text and highlight the most relevant pieces of information without adding any personal opinion or extra ideas". Challenging, isn't it?

So, I got down to it and started designing a chatbot experience with Mizou that I'm now excited to introduce: The Ultimate Mediation Instructor🥰. It is a new bot specifically designed to help students practice mediation skills, which - as I have mentioned - are a crucial component of standardized language exams in Galicia. Just like the exam teacher here and complying with the Galician standards, the instructor evaluates students' ability to summarize and streamline main ideas effectively, guiding and supporting them throughout the building process.

I have already implemented it in class and also asked my students for feedback on the tool. Students' opinions are key to my teaching job! Here are five compelling advantages they have found out:

• 24/7 Availability: They all agreed that this chatbot is available round the clock, providing them with instant access to mediation practice whenever they needed it so that they could engage with the task at their own pace. How convenient!
• Personalized learning: I tailored the interaction so that each student could choose their own area of interest for the bot to provide the right text to mediate. My students pointed out that this personalized approach fostered greater engagement and motivation. I was thrilled!
• Immediate feedback: According to my students, the most significant advantage of the Ultimate Mediation Instructor is its ability to provide instant feedback on their responses, which not only reinforced learning in real time but also helped them identify and address areas for improvement more efficiently.
• Promotion of Speaking and Writing Skills: Through supportive prompts, the chatbot encouraged my students to practice and refine their speaking and writing skills in a safe environment. This active engagement facilitated language production and fluency development. They were so focused!
• Autonomy Enhancement: My students agreed that they managed to take over their own learning process by exploring mediation independently, experimenting with different language structures, and tracking their progress live and over time!

I will try and continue to enrich language learning experiences in my classroom, embracing the possibilities that #AI offers in fostering meaningful and effective language acquisition. Also, I will keep on considering risks and challenges that need to be overcome! So, stay tuned for updates on this journey!

WELCOME BACK TO SCHOOL!

A new school year has just kicked off and we are about to open up a new term full of unexpectedness and, of course, willingness to learn. It is high time for both teachers and students to pull up their socks to reinvent themselves for their lessons. Motivation is key! 

As usual at the beginning of the course, I have been figuring out how to welcome my C1 students as we arrive in class. I have even been scanning previous posts looking for a flash of sheer inspiration and I have been lucky enough to bump into it! I am going to re-use an activity I did a couple of years ago to re-think the classic getting-to-know-each-other idea. Hopefully, my students will be able to set their own learning goals together to progress over the next ten months. Although it looks like a long time... time does fly! So, let's get ready to give the new school year our best shot!

This opening activity is called "The Compass". You can download it here! I have asked students to use their creative skills to identify their goals for the new school year by drawing. It took them a while to design their own compasses, but, after done, they managed to guess what their classmates' goals were by figuring out the meaning of their pictures.

It was quite an inspirational activity that sparked a lot of interesting discussions so do not hesitate to try it!

END-OF-THE-YEAR REVISION GAME

All good things must come to an end... and this school year is no different! That is why I usually tend to finish my last class of the year on a happy note. If that does not get my students into the right mood to enroll in our school again, I have no idea what will!

Since this year I am into #RetrievalPractice and boosting long-term learning, I decided to put a new class game into practice: a Retrieval Bingo Game. Also, I added an unexpected twist by using wheeldecide.com, which spiced up the atmosphere. I must say it worked out quite well in the end! Here is how we played:

Go to wheeldecide.com and create a wheel with the titles of all the units you have covered in the year. Just in case you need an example, this is what the roulette looked like for my C1.1 "Blended" students.  

When in class, give each student a bingo card like the one below (click here for a sample model in Spanish that you can customize to your own needs!) and explain that, as in any bingo game, the final aim of the game is to complete their card so that they shout bingo! as loud as they can. 

First, students should be asked to fill in the questions themselves before they start playing. To do just that, ask them to spin the wheel one at a time to write one question for every single unit in the year. Students complete their cards individually as units pop up on the screen. They can write true-false questions, multiple-choice questions, open-ended questions... on anything in the units: vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation... you name it! Here is one example: I know little about mediation. Re-write the sentence using inversion. Promise your students will come up with much better questions! Let them know that creativity is power and, when it comes to learning a language, it also means progress!

Once they have completed their questions, it is time for them to mingle and play! As they ask each other their questions, tell them to write the name of the student who knows the answer and the correct answer itself. The game is much more effective if you tell students not to repeat names on their cards. That was hard, indeed!

At the end of the game, I awarded a certificate to the student with the highest number of correct answers and covered the questions that were left unanswered. It was a fun, furious and very compelling way to retrieve course content that students had almost forgotten! 

Give it a try and let me know how it goes!

HAPPY 8M 2022: INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY🙌💪

Last year I took the golden opportunity to participate in an #EscuelasAmigas project about inspiring female figures from Galicia and Navarra that forged the way for future women generations not only in their areas but also across Spain. The project evolved from January to April 2021 and involved C1 English students from EOI Pontevedra and EOI Pamplona. My supportive fellow teacher was @Cristinakata and I also want to take advantage of the occasion to appreciate her work. I feel so grateful! We wouldn't have done it without her and her motivating students! 

During the project, we shared information about these remarkable women and learned why and how their personalities became so influential. Here they are, together with the name of every single student at EOI Pontevedra and Pamplona that made this possible:  

This year I feel honour-bound to commemorate that project as it brought attention to issues just as female cultural achievements, gender equality, and violence and abuse against women. Re-listening to the podcast and re-watching the video we designed then is my particular celebration of womanhood today March 8 2022!

ESCUELAS AMIGAS BOUNCES BACK!

#Escuelas Amigas is a project that brings together Language Schools (EOIs) around Spain. Teachers and students work jointly to learn about their different cultures, practice their English skills and, overall, have fun! I have been taking part in the project with my students for three years now. In this third edition, we are going partners with C1 English students at EOI Málaga. The South of Spain awaits us! We just can't wait!

Taking off will include the following steps:

• Introducing each other in a Padlet board to meet our fellow mates and their teacher Blanca in Málaga. I really appreciate the fact that Blanca and her students have shared their introductions board with us! You rule!

• Filling in a questionnaire which will definitely be our roadmap during the project. We have decided to empower our students by asking them how the project will evolve. The google form questionnaire will definitely become the linchpin of the whole adventure. 

Hopefully, the final episodes will help us discover a lot of interesting information about different places and areas in both cities: Málaga and Pontevedra. 

Blanca and I count on our C1 students to shape this cooperative podcast program together. That is why we have asked them to tailor it by taking these first steps and adapting them to meet their own needs as English learners. In for a new adventure?

LET'S TURN OVER A NEW LEAF!

2022 has arrived and tomorrow we are kicking off a new term full of unexpectedness and, of course, restrictions. This pandemic does not seem to come to an end and teachers need to go on pulling up their socks to reinvent themselves for their first January lessons. Motivation is key! So, let us uncover some!

As usual at this time of the year, I have been cudgeling my brain to figure out how to welcome students as we arrive in class tomorrow morning. I have even been scanning previous posts looking for a flash of sheer inspiration. And I have been lucky enough to bump into it! I am going to re-use the activity here to re-think the classic new year´s resolutions idea and build it around the concept of language learning in a more realistic and manageable way. 

Hopefully, my students will be able to put together different ways that can help them progress in their learning over the next twelve months. Although it looks like a long time... time does fly! So, let's get ready to give the new year our best shot!

And just in case the video above does not do the trick, I will definitely put the cherry on top by playing a game on idioms that might come in handy to ring in the new year. 

Happy 2022, everyone!

PLAYING TRIVIA: CAN STUDENTS BE THE PROTAGONISTS?

Whether the subject at hand is movies, geography, or '80s ballads, playing a trivia game is always a fun way to spice up your lessons so that the class community can bond and compete over shared knowledge in a motivating environment. However, I had been struggling for ages to come up with some sort of new version of the game that had a greater impact on language learning than just that of  "You got the wrong answer". Luckily, I came up with a clever idea when I found the @simplificamates template on Twitter. It was just the perfect game to give my class trivia a new twist. 

It is true that the template @genially_es provides is great for the classic "correct vs incorrect" feedback type. However, David´s template goes the extra mile! If you use his template (he has been generous enough so as to share it on Twitter🙏), students will not be able to know whether their guesses are right until the end of the game. So, if they fail any of the questions, they have to go back to start and play again. What a nightmare, or is it?

As there is no other way to get positive feedback than playing until the end, the debate is guaranteed as students strive to get all the right answers! No wonder they will hate starting from scratch! On top of that, once they get all their correct guesses (hopefully, it will not take them too long!), you may add very interesting feedback or even follow-up questions, which really worked out for me.

I have been using this template with the forums of my blended learning courses, bringing students' contributions and comments into our at-school lesson. I must admit it did the trick. Students got actively involved and their work at home paid off! You may give it a try below... even though answers were based on the students' posts onto Moodle, they should not be too hard to guess. Up for a challenge?

OFF TO A FRESH START!

It is that time of the year again... September is about to finish soon and school children are already used to getting up early every weekday and grabbing their school bag in a rush so as not to miss the bus that will take them to their well-settled routine. Our summer blues has definitely vanished, hasn't it?

However, even though both primary and secondary school teachers have already plunged into the school curriculum, we - of course, EOI teachers - are still struggling with the preparatory work for school year 21-22: enrolment periods, virtual classroom management, getting to know each other lesson plans, ice breakers... we are set to start in just a few days! As usual, it often depends on the Autonomous Community we live in or even our local Education Authorities. But for better or worse, it is that time of the year again for EOIs...

I have already been designing the new beginning. This year I will be teaching C1.2 again but the school course comes with an extra bonus: a Blended C1.1 English course I just can't wait to teach!

No wonder I am preparing a plethora of resources I will be sharing with my school community. Here is one I am particularly proud of: my @wakelet compilation of online dictionaries, translators and corpus dictionaries. I hope my blended course students find it useful. I will definitely devote some time to providing the right instructions on how to make the most of them. I love collocation dictionaries and expanding my students' knowledge on how to sound more natural. It is most likely this will help. Wish me luck and all the best for the new EOI school year!!

END OF THE YEAR EXTRAVAGANZA!

 end-of-the-year ceremony. I just did not know how to thank my students for their endless effort and constant support. So, I came up with this idea of designing original certificates to encourage them all go on with their learning.

At the end of the year, we awarded the diplomas and recalled a great year of learning. Now I hope they all go ace that C1 test! 💪

E TI DE QUEN VES SENDO?

Dear all, 👋 

I am proud to present you with the project that our school has been carrying out this year regarding idioms. In the presentation below, you will be able to see a lot of different idiomatic expressions in the different languages that you can study at school. I am particularly proud of the English section, as a lot of familiar faces appear. Please, take a look 👀 and judge for yourselves!

Do not hesitate to share this wonderful work. Show your family and friends what we are up to at school.

I would like to thank my C1 students for their contributions and enthusiasm!

INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY 2021

Our #EscuelasAmigas project "Remarkable women from Galicia and Navarra you should know" can't miss this chance to celebrate #internationalwomensday2021 #DiaInternacionalDeLaMujer today! Just in the nick of time to highlight those women who have inspired us throughout time. Have a look at the contribution that students from EOI Pamplona and EOI Pontevedra have made and learn how our project is evolving!