Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Monday, December 6, 2010
SPANISH PARTICIPATION IN “RAINBOW” PROJECT ( WONDERFUL )
COMENIUS PROJECT
SPANISH PARTICIPATION IN “RAINBOW”
I.E.S. LA ESCRIBANA (Villaviciosa de Córdoba)
1)SCHOOL INTRODUCTION:
Our high-school is called “La Escribana ”. We have students from 12 to 17 years old and it is a public Secondary high-school placed in a village in the North of Cordoba known as Villaviciosa de Córdoba. The village is not far away (35 minutes) from the capital city, Cordoba, a very interesting and cultural city in the South of Spain, in Andalusia. Although the high-school is located in the centre of the village, some of the students come from a more rural environment and have to take the school transport. Above all, we find a middle-low sociocultural level, being their parent’s jobs humble and with limited economic resources, in fact, there is a huge amount of the students that receive a grant from the government.
“La Escribana ” is a young and very active Secondary high-school in which projects, contests and extra-curricular activities play an important role. Therefore, we are mainly interested in European projects because our school is an English bilingual center since 2009. Some of our students belong to the bilingual section and study some of the subjects in English.
In the school, there is a group of teachers who participate actively in many projects which deal with social and cultural issues. One of them is our well-known landscape photograph contest. This year we have a new category called “Category D: International Category for participants of the schools belonging to our Comenius project”. We would like you to participate and send your own landscape pictures to our contest.
You can see more information about our school in our webpage:
2)TEACHER AND ENGLISH DEPARTMENT INTRODUCTION:
The coordinator of the Spanish participation in the Comenius project “Rainbow” is Roberto Uceda, a teacher who has been teaching English since 2000. Last year, the school started the English Bilingual Project and he has been its coordinator since then. Moreover, the English Department is made of three young and active teachers who would like to develop the Comenius project to the fullest and show you our work and the way we teach the English language. You can see some examples of our work in our English blogs:
http://englishforeso.wikispaces.com/
3)SPANISH PARTICIPATION IN “RAINBOW” AND TEMPORALIZATION
The Spanish participation in the Comenius project “RAINBOW” (ReAl lIfe eNglish WithOut Borders) would be the following:
A)During this (2010-2011) we are going to divide our work with the teachers and the students taking into account the three terms of our academic year:
1st term (October-December) | 2nd term (January-March) | 3rd term (April-June) |
a)On-line meetings with the general coordinator and the other members of the project to get to know each other and decide what work each partner must carry on. b)Design the project logo with the help of the Arts teacher. c)Writing and deciding the general ideas of the Spanish participation, but always having into consideration the general lines of the project and the other partners' work. Everything must be related to the idea of using the English language as in real life. | a)Introducing our landscape photograph contest to the other partners to guarantee their participation in the International Category. b)Introducing its bases of participation. c)E-mail interchanging between the students of the project to get to know each other before the visits. d)Collaboration with the Polish recipe book. We will help the Polish teacher adding typical or traditional Spanish recipes to her recipe book. We will create a sort of model/worksheet to have the same layout and our students will search for the best Spanish recipes. In the partners' visits we will cook some of them. | a)Preparation of the landscape photograph exhibition. The students will describe the pictures using the English language to set up the exhibition. b)Creation of exercises and web-tasks about the exhibition using the English language as in real life for the visits. We will insist on using realia as much as possible since it is very important in the project. c)Celebration of the landscape photograph contest in June to choose the finalists. d)Publication of the finalists and their prizes in the school webpage. |
B)During the year (2011-2012) we are available for the visit of our partners. So we will devote our time to set up the landscape photograph exhibition and finish the activities the partners are going to work about it.
The best date for the visits in the first part of the academic year would be October and November. However, the best time would be at the beginning of the third term, especially in May. May is the best month in Cordoba because there are a lot of cultural festivals related to the spring season. However, we can decide on some visits for this year too.
We are available to visit the schools this very same year because part of the participating students are going to leave the school at the end of June and they will not be available to travel in 2011-2012 since they finish their studies. Anyway, we will agree on that later.
4)OBJECTIVES
The main objectives of the participation on RAINBOW would be the following:
- Use and learn how to use the English language as a tool for communication in real life tasks.
- Improve the students and teachers' foreign language skills. (Listening, Writing, Reading and Writing)
- Create and share Realia for our English daily lessons.
- Collaborate with the other Comenius partners and learn from them.
- Share different teaching techniques between the teachers involved in the project.
- Know about people from other parts of the world.
- Know about different cultures, countries and lifestyles.
- Know about other forms of landscape and natural resources.
- Share and study our own lanscape to be as much ecological as possible and design activities for that purpose.
- Agree on different measures to protect our natural scenery.
- Develop and participate in our landscape photograph contest.
- Use and learn how to use the new technologies (computers, e-mails, Messenger, Skype,...) to get to know other people, work with other people, search for information, agree on different stages of the project, etc.
- Develop a positive and, above all, an active attitude towards foreign projects.
5)PHOTOGRAPH CONTEST
One of the main topics in which we would like to work is in the preservation and protection of our natural environment since we consider that our landscape is highly important for the following reasons:
- It is the result of its viewers, its population and its society, that is to say, a kind of mirror of its society.
- It is the real proof of the interaction between all natural elements and the human action or our glance with which we interpret it.
- It varies due to different interactions, which results in a large variety of scenery all over the Earth's surface.
We would also like to emphasize that only the knowledge of this territorial heritage will result in its valuation and protection. Due to this, we, as educators, and all educational institutions must transform it into an important issue and a didactic resource in all curricular subjects. Besides being a source of values and a reflection of whom we are, landscape must be the basis for everyone to appreciate and enjoy life to the fullest.
Bearing all this in mind, La Escribana high-school developed a “landscape photograph contest” and this year we have started our third edition in November. So we encourage you to participate in this edition and for that purpose we have just added a new category called “Category D: International Category for participants of the schools belonging to our Comenius project”, so you can easily show your environment and at the same time win a prize. It would be a good idea to get to know everybody’s landscape.
III Landscape photograph contest “Paisaje”
I.E.S. La Escribana
Villaviciosa de Córdoba
Bases of participation:
-Topic: Any aspect related to your natural or human landscape (natural, rural or urban).
-Deadline: Deadline for sending your pictures is 20th May 2011.
-Participants: Both teachers and students from the participants of the Comenius project “Rainbow”.
-Number of pictures: 3 pictures maximum for each person.
-Production and Restrictions: The pictures will be taken with a digital camera, with a resolution of 300 pixels and with .jpg format. They must be unpublished and original, exclusively made by the author. They must not have been presented or shown in other previous contests. Furthermore, it is forbidden to alter the landscape in order to take the pictures since it will be against our conservationist policy.
-Presentation: The pictures will be sent to the following e-mail address before the previous deadline:
-Photographic format: The pictures can be taken in colour or black and white but without any computer retouch.
-Identification: The pictures will be identified with a title, the name of the author, his or her address, telephone number, age, academic year, occupation, name of the school, the date when the picture was taken and its precise localization. You can also include a small description or the author’s intention or feelings while taking the photo but this is optional.
All this information must be sent in a separate Word document using the English language, in this way both the students and teachers can improve their linguistic competence in this foreign language.
-Finalists: At the end of May, the finalists will be published in our webpage:
The awards ceremony will be on 2nd June in the Culture House of the village. Nevertheless, we will contact you by e-mail and ee will also send the prize to your school.
-Jury: The jury will be composed by educators and professional photographer and a representative of our village. The jury’s decision will be unappelable and definitive.
-Evaluation Criteria: The main aspects to have in mind when evaluating the pictures will be the creativity and quality of the photograph.
-Prizes:
- Frist Prize: A digital camera, a thropy and a certificate.
- Second Prize: A digital camera, a throphy and a certifica.
- Finalists: A certificate.
-Questions or Misunderstandings: Participants can communicate with us if they need more information on any aspect of our photograph contest writing an e-mail to the following address:
*There are several categories in the contest: Categories A, B and C are local categories for people from the village and Córdoba. Category D is a new international category for participants of the schools belonging to our Comenius project.
We would like to receive as many pictures as possible because we are interested in spreading our contest to an international level, so please, start taking photos. You still have some months before the deadline (20th May 2011) and you can take advantage of the different seasons. Each season offers a great variety of colours...
As a conclusion, we would like to point out that although nowadays there are many reference books, resources, teaching techniques, and the like dealing with the teaching of English as foreign language, we, as teachers, must be able to extract what is really insightful and fruitful from them and adapt those insights into our current teaching situation. Moreover, we think that it could be useful to become “Classroom Researchers” and have always into account the students’ needs and wants.That is why we have to learn from each other when possible and this project would be the best chance to do it.
Friday, December 3, 2010
OUR PROJECT TEAM :)
PARTNERS :
2.
ileana stan - ROMANIA : ileana_stan2007@yahoo.com
ileana stan - ROMANIA : ileana_stan2007@yahoo.com3.
Galina Naydenova - BULGARIA : galinadkn@abv.bg
Galina Naydenova - BULGARIA : galinadkn@abv.bg4.
Vagelis Marinis - GREECE : vmarinis@sch.gr
Vagelis Marinis - GREECE : vmarinis@sch.gr5.
Roberto Uceda - SPAIN : robertoucd@gmail.com
Roberto Uceda - SPAIN : robertoucd@gmail.com6.
Anna Staszak -POLAND : anias-76@o2.pl
Anna Staszak -POLAND : anias-76@o2.pl7. 
Rémy Vandevyvère - FRANCE - remynat@gmail.com
Rémy Vandevyvère - FRANCE - remynat@gmail.comSummary of the Project
RAINBOW
ReAl life eNglish WIthOut Borders
Not only in Turkey but also in Europe , the biggest problem is that students can not use English in daily life because they do not know how to do it, they only memorise things and that’s all.However , our dear students need to acquire English.If they achieve this , they can use it in everywhere, in every situation like their mothertongue.
We all know that teaching English isn’t easy.Teachers should have the ability to make the lessons enjoyable and attractive.According to me, the way you teach English should be same as a rainbow.I mean it should be colorful,eye-catching,different,realistic and various.We as teachers ought to use authentic materials ,real life situations in our lessons while teaching four skills (reading,listening,speaking and writing) ,grammar and vocabulary.
Nunan and Miller (1995) define authentic materials as those which were not created or edited expressly for language learners. This means that most everyday objects in the target language qualify as authentic materials. Another definition of authentic materials is from Peacock (1997): materials that have been produced to fulfill some social purpose in the language community .Here is a wide sampling of authentic materials that can be used in the ELT classroom :
train schedules ,pictures of road signs ,business cards ,labels ,menus ,brochures ,receipts ,currency ,music, literature ,fashion, newspapers ,televisions programs , radio broadcasts ,films ,internet websites , advertisements, photographs, models, weather forecasts, news, REALIAS and etc..
I wrote “REALIA” while giving examples to authentic materials above .Have you ever heard it ? What is it ? I will explain it for those who dont know the meaning of it.. ‘Realia’ means any real objects we use in the classroom to bring the class to life.
The main advantage of using real objects into the classroom is to make the learning experience more realistic and catchy for the learners.
1. For instance, if you are going to teach vocabulary of animals, clothing, fruit ,vegetables and etc. ,you had beter use actual objects.It is a very useful tool in making the abstract concrete.I mean , students can touch, smell and see the objects at the same time as hearing the new word. This would appeal to a wider range of learner styles than a simple flashcard picture of the piece of the target vocabulary.
2.A second example is that if you are going to teach some functional language for asking for the timetable for a train. You can use a fictitious timetable or you can use a real one from the local train station or one from the internet, .In this way They will see information about prices, discounts, bank holidays etc.
3. If you want to introduce a country like Canada to your students , you can use a Canadian flag, a map of the world, and photographs of Canada and talk about them . What realia allows you to do is create a picture of the country, introduce and practice target vocabulary and sentence patterns.
4.Realia is also useful in teaching prepositions of place (such as on, in, under, next to, in front of, over). Objects can be placed on a desk, in a vase, under a table and so on. You can want your students to make sentences about them or you can ask questions to the students realted with the places of objects.
5.Realia can be used to tell a story. You can use Christmas cards as a means to explain the concept of Christmas and some of its many traditions , to illustrate Christmas images such as Santa Claus, reindeer, candy cane, Christmas trees, poinsettia and to teach Christmas greetings such as "Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Christmas cards provided a springboard to get your students to talk about their own holidays and customs.
As a summary, using realia in the ELT classroom serves to foster a more creative and active teaching-learning environment and promotes cultural understanding. As we all know, there's a connection between language and culture. Helping language learners see the connection helps them understand more clearly the meaning of language.
ACTIVITIES
1.I will prepare a downloadable website so that we can share videos and pictures of our lessons and so on.
2.We should prepare brochures and posters related to our title or subject.
3.We will share sample lessons of real language teaching. (I have already had them J )
4.We will prepare realia,authentic materials with our students or we will find the via internet.
5.Our students will be penfriends and also they can talk via Messenger.This is the best real life activity.
video 55 transcript ( after watching the radio,check your undersatnding )
Lesson/Video 55
1-
Interviewer: Uh, what's the biggest mistake you think you ever
made?
Carlos: Uhm, gettin' divorced.
Interviewer: You got, that was a bad thing to do?
Carlos: Yeah. It was a bad thing to do.
Interviewer: And why was that a bad thing to do, do you think?
Carlos: Uhm, 'cause I believe I'm paying for it right now.
Interviewer: Ah hah! Okay, so if you had to do it over again, you
would not have gotten that divorce.
Carlos: No, I wouldn't have. I'd have, I'd have, I'd have tried harder.
Interviewer: Tried harder?
Carlos: Yeah, I would have tried harder.
Interviewer: And so the next time you get married, do you think
you're going to try harder?
Carlos: Gonna hold on.
Interviewer: You're going to hold on?
Carlos: I'm going to hold on.
Interviewer: Okay.
2 -
Interviewer: Uh, okay, so what's the worst decision you ever made?
Sid: Wa' - the worst decision I ever made? Well, like, probably like,
decisions in like, prior relationships. Things like that.
Interviewer: With women?
Sid: Yeah, with women, yeah.
Interviewer: Uh, okay. That's a very typical answer.
3 –
Steve: Uh, the worst decision? Uh, not marrying a girl 6 years ago
that I should have married.
Interviewer: Ooooh! Is there any recovery from that bad decision?
Steve: What do you do? You just, life just goes on.
Interviewer: Life goes on.
Steve: Life goes on.
Interviewer: Life goes on.
4-
Interviewer: Hi. What's your name?
Barbara: Barbara.
Interviewer: Where are you from?
Barbara: I'm from France.
Interviewer: You're from France?
Barbara: Yes.
Interviewer: Well, this is for the Marzio School in Marseille.
Barbara: Is it really?
Interviewer: Yeah.
Barbara: Oh my God.
Interviewer: And if you go to "realenglish dot com", you can see
yourself.
Barbara: That would be great. I would love to see that!
Interviewer: Life goes on
1-
Interviewer: Uh, what's the biggest mistake you think you ever
made?
Carlos: Uhm, gettin' divorced.
Interviewer: You got, that was a bad thing to do?
Carlos: Yeah. It was a bad thing to do.
Interviewer: And why was that a bad thing to do, do you think?
Carlos: Uhm, 'cause I believe I'm paying for it right now.
Interviewer: Ah hah! Okay, so if you had to do it over again, you
would not have gotten that divorce.
Carlos: No, I wouldn't have. I'd have, I'd have, I'd have tried harder.
Interviewer: Tried harder?
Carlos: Yeah, I would have tried harder.
Interviewer: And so the next time you get married, do you think
you're going to try harder?
Carlos: Gonna hold on.
Interviewer: You're going to hold on?
Carlos: I'm going to hold on.
Interviewer: Okay.
2 -
Interviewer: Uh, okay, so what's the worst decision you ever made?
Sid: Wa' - the worst decision I ever made? Well, like, probably like,
decisions in like, prior relationships. Things like that.
Interviewer: With women?
Sid: Yeah, with women, yeah.
Interviewer: Uh, okay. That's a very typical answer.
3 –
Steve: Uh, the worst decision? Uh, not marrying a girl 6 years ago
that I should have married.
Interviewer: Ooooh! Is there any recovery from that bad decision?
Steve: What do you do? You just, life just goes on.
Interviewer: Life goes on.
Steve: Life goes on.
Interviewer: Life goes on.
4-
Interviewer: Hi. What's your name?
Barbara: Barbara.
Interviewer: Where are you from?
Barbara: I'm from France.
Interviewer: You're from France?
Barbara: Yes.
Interviewer: Well, this is for the Marzio School in Marseille.
Barbara: Is it really?
Interviewer: Yeah.
Barbara: Oh my God.
Interviewer: And if you go to "realenglish dot com", you can see
yourself.
Barbara: That would be great. I would love to see that!
Interviewer: Life goes on
Comenius
The Comenius programme, addresses the teaching and learning needs of all those
in pre-school and school education up to the level of the end of upper secondary
education, and the institutions and organisations providing such education;
Specific objectives
• To develop knowledge and understanding among young people and educational
staff of the diversity of European cultures and languages and its value
• To help young people acquire the basic life-skills and competences necessary for
their personal development, for future employment and for active European
citizenship
Operational objectives
• To improve the quality and to increase the volume of mobility involving pupilsand educational staff in different Member States
• To improve the quality and to increase the volume of partnerships between
schools in different Member States, so as to involve at least 3 million pupils in
joint educational activities during the period of the programme
• To encourage the learning of modern foreign languages
• To support the development of innovative ICT-based content, services,
pedagogies and practice in lifelong learning
• To enhance the quality and European dimension of teacher training
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