ESL ACTIVITIES AT IES GALILEO GALILEI

This is an account of activites carried out by teachers in the ESL classroom at Galileo Galilei High School:





1st ESO:

Town Brochures on Glogster

Family Projects on Brainshark

A Holiday Story on StoryBird

Their own comic strip 

PHONETICS II

By now all of you should have practised some vowel and consonant sounds in the  BBC site and done some minimal pair activities.  Refer to this website for further study. Remember
 this site to keep working on the pairs studied so far. When you finish you can do more practice here.
Make sure you've gone through all the quizzes in the BBC site.

Let's start testing ourselves. Do this short test and tell me how you did. 
Now for the games:

• Try the minimal pair difference game on your own and later in pairs. 
• This one for silent letters

If you need extra explanation on any sound, click here and you'll get to learn how to pronounce all the symbols and sounds in English.


Finally explore this useful interactive

OSCAR NOMINEES 2014

 I guess if you like films and the cinema you will love your assignment this week. As you might know on January 16th the nominations for the Oscars 2014 were announced.







You must watch the announcement of the nominees and the 9 trailers in the link below:

Once you have watched the trailers for the nine nominees for The Best Picture (around 2 minutes each trailer) I want you to fill in the quizz below

PHONETICS I

This is the first in a series of post about phonetics, which we didn't work on last year but I definitely intend to do throughout this school term. We will learn the phonetic symbols and their sound to help you improve your pronunciation in English.

Have you ever wondered what those strange symbols are that appear next to words in the dictionary?

They are a guide to pronounciation called Phonetics. Those symbols represent sounds, of which there are roughly 44 in the English language. Since there are only 26 letters in the alphabet, 44 characters are used to represent them all. Phonics should be a part of every student's tools for learning a language.
There is no end to our study of grammar and vocabulary but phonemic symbols are limited, visual and physical. They may seem challenging at first but it is like learning to swim or ride a bicycle. Once you can do it, it is easy and you never forget.





Watch the following videos from the site we will be using to practice phonetics, BBC Learning English, to know the hows and whys of what we are going to learn about.




Why should you learn the different English sounds? Why should you learn the symbols? Watch the next video to find out:





Notice the interactive phonemic chart below.


Let's become familiar with the sounds of English by clicking on the different symbols. Click on each symbol to go to the video with the explanations: Sounds of English 


Start by clicking on the sound /i/ and doing the activities in Unit 1. Then write a comment about the different exercises you have done.
Then go to the Minimal Pair Website and go through the activities there.

A JIGSAW STORY

Time for sorting out a story! Below you have the QR codes for a well known story by Roald Dahl called Lamb to Slaughter.




Each one of you will scan and read one QR code which contains 10 different extracts of the story and you must try to figure out how the story goes all together by telling the others what your extract is about.
If you don't have a QR reader, download QR Droid for Android or QR Reader for iPhone.

Have fun!



Now that you've come with the story, let's watch the short film based on it by Hitchcock: 

LEARN CODE!

Last year I wrote a post about coding and asked some of you if you would be interested in taking this subject were it to be taught at your High School. Obama himself has made a recent call on the importance of learning to code for American students and for America itself. Watch the video below:

 

Well, now it seems that what we thought as a long term future subject may not be so and that education authorities in Spain are along the same lines and techonological high schools might be in the lead in this subject. I can't read more... 
Anyway, if you are interested, I got an invitation from Khan Academy (I guess you're familiar with the site; you don't know what you're missing, otherwise) to take one hour lesson on coding I'm sharing with you. It all seems to be part of a movement to get people of all ages to give coding a try: www.hourofcode.com

Welcome to our Hour of Code!: Pamela welcomes you to our programming community here.  

I still haven't given it a go, but some of you may be interested and can devote some time during the holidays. I hope some of you, girls, find it interesting too, since we're dealing with gender gap and women don't seem to be so fond of computer science.

As Sal Khan, Founder of Khan Academy, says: "you'll be part of creating our technology future, not just living in it! If you can type, you can code!" and who knows... I may even get a greeting card soon...    Start coding your holiday card

NELSON MANDELA

As you all know by now, Nelson Mandela died on December 5th. He was a man that really made a difference.







Obama pays tribute to him in the following public announcement:

 Let's pay tribute by doing some activities about him.

The three assignments are due on December 13th.

First, watch the speech by Obama and send me a Speakpipe with the main headlines in it.

Second, do the following listening activity in your virtual classroom so that I get your grades for your final marks this term.

Watch and listen to the poem “His Day is Done: A Tribute Poem for Nelson Mandela by Maya Angelou,” which was produced by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of International Information Programs in December 2013.

Third, watch the video about Mandela's story in your virtual classroom and answer the questions below it. 

The listening assignments will help you upgrade your grades for the listening skill this term.