Teaching English in Preschool and Primary

The Big Sentence Searches Give Away!

2010-05-03T03:26:00.001-07:00

I´m giving away 3 complete sets of Sentence Searches!

One set includes 6 books of English language learning puzzles for children and 3 puzzle books for adults.

Sentence Searches are a fun and innovative way of improving English vocabulary and learning how to construct sentences.

Sentence Searches are now available to buy online at:

http://www.theenglishworkout.com/esp/tienda.html

http://www.canadianinstitute.eu/es/publications/compras.html

http://www.ebay.es

Just look up: Sentence Searches.

You can win a complete set if you enter this competition. All you have to do is answer the following question, in 50 words or less, and the best 3 answers will receive a pack of Sentence Searches, absolutely free!

What is your biggest challenge in the classroom?

Submit your answer as a comment to this blog or email it to info@theresazanatta.com

The Classroom-Community Connection

2010-04-12T01:01:00.000-07:00

I´m a firm believer in the importance of taking English out of the classroom and into the community. I know it isn´t always easy, especially in a formal school setting, but the benefits are just so positive that I do my best to plan outings.

At my language academy, we have a regular once-a-trimester all-English, Saturday outing for our students of all ages. We preteach the language of the event in our classes prior to the outing and I prepare a little work booklet, usually containing a fun quiz, some drawing work, some vocabulary work and some interactive game activity, such as a treasure hunt for items found at the place we are visiting.

Here is a 3 minute video clip of an example of one of our outings to the zoo.

I conduct this entire outing in English. I visit the place prior to the event and look for brochures and any material either in Catalan or Spanish that I can then rework in English so that my students can have the same content in English to work on!

Our students receive this little booklet that I have prepared while we are at the outing. We work on it at various moments during our morning. We have been doing these outings for the past 4 years. Each year they get easier to organize and the language level gets better and better. When we first started visiting places in the city, there was no English material available, and of course no English-speaking guides. But this is slowly changing. More and more we are finding that there are places in Barcelona that can offer us services in English!! This is a lovely surprise for our students!

Over the years, we have visited Caixa Forum, Cosmo Caixa, the Barcelona Zoo and the Aquarium several times. We have also visited the COPE radio station and been interviewed by the radio broadcaster Olga Ruiz and this May, we will take a boat tour of the Barcelona harbour. Students love these outings!

I find these outings meaningful for many reasons. Students are incredibly motivated and participative. Learning happens before, during and after the event. Myself and my group of teachers (the number of teachers depends on how many students we are bringing) bring one or two small digital cameras so that during the outing we can take photos and film short sequences of language use.

After the event I combine these photos and filmed sequences to make a short video clip where I include the language we had been working on during the outing. Often we show them to the students in the classroom after the event as follow-up practice work. The video above is an example of a video we prepared for one of our otings at the Barcelona Zoo. We also hang these videos on our web page for students and parents to review. This helps us connect regularly with our students´families. In addition to this, at the end of the year, we prepare a DVD for each of our families with these video clips and other examples of students´ work on it, so that students and families have a record of what we have done, what we have learned and what we have visited in the community.

These outings are not only for my little learners but also for my older students as well! In my university language classes I have just started to organize a Friday afternoon English movie session at the cinema once a trimester. My students are thrilled with the idea! As we are studying movie reviews and practicing with the simple past and related tenses to retell stories and past events, a movie outing is a perfect classroom-community connection. Our first movie outing is at the end of the month. I will let you know how it goes!

More about the classroom-community connection to come in my next entry!

Happy teaching!

Theresa

I love cats! Student Publishing online!

2010-02-13T16:01:00.000-08:00

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I came across this great web site to have students write and publish short stories online! I thought I would make a book to try it out for my students. Hope you like it!

Here is the web site. http://http://www.pimpampum.net

I´ve sent the web address to my grade 6 students (12 years old) and my Ist of ESO students (13 years old) here in Barcelona for them to have an on-line reading experience (with or without their parents at home)! Hopefully they will write me back by email.

I´ll let you know what my students say about reading on-line!

Happy teaching and learning!

theresa

Christmas Cheer!

2010-01-01T15:45:00.000-08:00

Christmas is without a doubt my favourite time of the year! I love the music, the generosity, the family time, the hope, the expectation and especially the tradition that abounds.

It provides me with yet another opportunity to explore new and exciting ways to connect with my students. This Christmas I have worked with sentence searches, word walls, Christmas recipes, treasure hunts and interactive Christmas Card gamebooks with my students. If you are interested in receiving information about any of these activities, send me note at asktheresazanatta@gmail.com and I will send you the information you request.

In the meantime, I wish you the best Christmas and holiday season ever, filled with magical, memorable moments for you, your family and your students!

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

theresa

New beginnings!

2009-09-09T09:22:00.000-07:00

I love September!

September means new projects, new students, and new beginnings for me! This always makes me excited!

I´ve learned alot this summer from the courses I have given with teachers, from the many books I have read and from the countless conversations I have had with teachers around the world. Plus, new beginnings means I get to start all over again and try to do things even better and with all this new found awareness, I am anxious to put into practice what I have been working on.

One of my new projects is an online email course for primary and presechool teachers. If you are interested in being accompanied weekly by me for the next three months, then you might be interested in this email course. Write me at tezanatta@gmail.com if you would like more information about this online course!

An Online Course about Learning Tools

2009-08-15T04:59:00.001-07:00

I receive countless emails from English teachers asking me for more examples of learning tools.

As you have seen, these interactive learning tools and materials that I have used and developed in my English classes over the past twenty-five years and demonstrated in the teacher training courses and workshops I have given around the world, promote speaking skills and literacy development. Apart from their pedagogic value, they also make learning English a lot of fun!

In answer to these emails, I have finally put together a 12- week, on- line course about these materials. The course begins on Thursday, October 1st and will finish on Thursday, December and you can be a part of it!!!

Course Materials
Every Tuesday, you will receive:

1. an email from me with the presentation, description and explanation of a new and innovative learning tool
2. a step-by-step instruction sheet on how to make the tool with your students
3. a photocopiable black-line master and/or activity sheet to make and work with the tool
4. four additional activity worksheets, one for pre-school students (ages 4 and 5), one for early primary (ages 6-8), one for middle primary (ages 8 -10)and one for upper primary (ages 10 -12)
5. a special holiday activity for Hallowe`en, Thanksgiving and Christmas to use with the learning tools
6. an evaluation score-sheet to assess on-the-spot, how well your students are working with the tool
7. a language list of the expressions and vocabulary you can use when working with each of the tools

Ask Theresa Questions and Answers Webinar
In addition to your weekly Tuesday email filled with materials, every Thursday night at 10:30 pm, Barcelona Spain time, I will host an hour-long, on-line seminar, where you can ask me any question about the learning tools and/or any other question related to your classes and students and I will answer it for you. The next day I will send you a summary list of those questions and my suggestions and answers to those questions. That´s 12, "Ask Theresa" webinars and follow-up emails.

Computer requirements
All you need is access to a normal computer (pc or mac), an email address, and an internet connection preferably wideband to receive and view the webinar, and a telephone line.

I am so very excited about offering this course to you. For years, teachers have asked me to give them more hands-on activities and the language they need to use these tools in the classroom on a more regular basis. Now, I can finally do that!

With this course, you will have the benefit of receiving my best and most effective learning tools that I have developed and worked on over the past twenty-five years in English classrooms and with teachers around the world!

You will also have the benefit of allowing me to accompany you during your first three months of this school year! Every week we will connect, exchange emails and come together for an on-line, Internet training course to do what we love best doing- talking about good teaching practices :-) :-)

When you complete this course
When this course is finished, you will have...
12 simple and effective, hands-on, interactive, student-made learning tools which you can use in class with children ages 4 - 12
12 language lists with English expressions, questions, comments and vocabulary to enrich your own language knowledge,
12 assessment tools to use to evaluate your students,
48 activity worksheets and
3 new holiday activities, one for Hallowe'en, one for Thanksgiving and one for Christmas!

All of this is yours for the one-time fee of 97 €. That´s less than 5 € a week and you can pay for the course here on my blog. Once your payment is confirmed, just send me an email indicating you have paid for the course and I will send you all further details about the course. We begin on Tuesday, Sept. 8th!

Contact me
If you have any questions or comments, please don`t hesitate to contact me at tezanatta@gmail.com

Hope to be talking teaching with you on Sept. 8th! See you then!

Theresa

Learning Tools: Do! Say! and Show!

2009-08-14T05:24:00.000-07:00

Today I would like to offer you a short little introduction to learning tools! Over the next few weeks, I will write a little more about learning tools and suggest some great ones that I have developed and used with my students at the beginning of the school year to help start the year off well.

I have been teaching for close to 25 years now and with every year, it becomes clearer to me that I need to put more and more effective learning tools in the hands of my students.

So what do I mean by "learning tools", you may be asking? Well, a learning tool as I have come to define it is a student-made and therefore personal, hands-on, instrument that helps my students to speak and better understand how the English language works. It is physical, touchable, and showable. This means that I use it to do something, say something, show something or all three: "do, say and show"!

In all my classes and with all my students, I am always looking for activities that give reasons to students to speak and to show me what they know. The learning tool makes this possible!

In my next entry, I'll give you an example of the most important learning tool I use and how I set up my classrooms to use this tool on a regular basis throughout the year so that my students, can Do! Say! and Show!

Hope you have a wonderful summer weekend!

Theresa

Summer

2009-08-09T06:41:00.000-07:00

It's August and I am here in Canada, my home town of beautiful and oh-so-scenic, Sault Ste. Marie, at the hub of the Great Lakes.

I try to make it home at least once every year for many reasons, the most important of course is to be with my family, many of whom are teachers and educators. We visit and spend catch-up time with each other. This is a very important time of the year for me!

I always feel so grounded when I am here. The love and warmth I get from my family is second to none! But, it`s also the ability to be immersed in the small-town values that I so cherish and often find more challenging to experience in the big city.

Here, people pop by for a coffee and a visit just to see how you are doing. Here,you are always served with "Hello! How are you today? and a super-big smile! Here, you are surrounded by the spleandour of the wild and wonderful outdoors. Nature is so generous. We have seen bears, foxes, rabbits, and deer... in the 8 days we have been here. Exhilarating!

We also talk teaching! I come from a family of teachers... my mother, my stepfather, loads of aunts and uncles, cousins, sister, whew! Yes, teaching and learning is definitely in our blood! There isn`t a family get-together that doesn`t turn to teacher-talk. And I love it! I always come away feeling inspired to try new ideas, explore new thoughts, and look for new materials.

My trips home are also about book scouting. I spend hours and hours in books stores reviewing the newest teaching materials, reading magazines, finding out what teachers and students are talking about, and just getting up-to-date.

For more than 2o years now, almost 25 I have been writing and developing my own teaching/learning materials. I have loads of activities, but more importantly I have developed learning tools which I use over and over again with all my students, regardless of the age and stage of language learning.

These learning tools form a critical part of my strategy for classroom organization and management. They help me create opportunities in the classroom for children to show me what they know, to engage in relevant revision, and to provide meaningful ongoing assessment opportunities.

Please, don`t think for a minute that I have a monoploy over my learning tools. The real interaction happens because every student makes and uses their own learning tool.

Each and every student keeps their learning tools in their own personal English Portfolio, kept whiin a labelled plastic box at the bck of the classroom so that the tools are accessible and can be taken out and used at any time during the class.

Over the next few weeks, I am going to write a little more about some of the learning tools I have created. If this interests you, drop by my blog and let me know what you think!

In the meantime, I hope you are having a wonderful summer full of educational and inspirational moments!

Theresa

Say and Show!

2009-07-21T01:07:00.000-07:00

Two weeks ago I gave a 30-hour course in Tarragona for preschool and primary English teachers called "Say and Show: Creating a Meaningful English Experience in the Preschool and Primary Classroom!". I have given this course several times but this is the first time I have asked the teachers to create and present their own "Say and Show" learning tool based on what we had been studying and discussing during the course.

It was a great course for me! The teachers were so excited and enthusiastic about exploring new instructional learning tools that we can use in the classroom to help engage our students, promote understanding and encourage language performance. They readily jumped to the occassion and presented some really wonderful and innovative ideas for learning tools. You could just feel the desire in every teacher to create the perfect learning tool for their students!!! I was reminded of this wonderful quote by Helen Keller that I once read...

"It was my teacher's genius, her quick sympathy, her loving tact which made the first years of my education so beautiful. It was because she seized the right moment to impart knowledge that made it so pleasant and acceptable to me.  Helen Keller"

Yes, we have to do all of that. We have to have a quick sympathy, a loving tact, criteria to choose our teachable moments and learning tools in order to impart what we know. And while I am humbled by the responsibility of this task in the classroom, I am also so grateful for the possibility to make a difference in the life of a child, just as Helen Keller´s teacher brought vision and made such a difference in her life! I know that each and every one of the teachers on my course will make a difference. I can just hear their students looking back and saying "English was fun! I learned a lot. She made my day and school experience different!"

Well, on that smiling thought, I will leave you here. I´ll write more about learning tools later on this week! Keep posted!

Until then, have a wonderful week! theresa

Welcome!

2007-02-22T05:03:00.000-08:00

Welcome to my blog about teaching and learning English with little learners!

Theresa