Learning about clothes and shopping in Third Grade

 The activity consisted on the students creating their own clothes shop. They were given a worksheet with all kind of clothing items and after they had chosen their favourites, they had to customise them , cut them out and stick them on a card. Finally, they wrote the name of the item and gave it a price. 

They watched a lot of videos about people going shopping, paying special attention to the manners (they couldn't forget to be nice!). After lots of examples from the teacher and the teaching assistant, the students prepared a dialogue to use in class, pretending to be in a shop, asking for special prices and talking about money. It was such a fun activity with lots of communicative opportunities. They definitely learnt from it.

LEARNING BY MOVING: Actions

They say that "getting your students moving, wiggling and laughing is a hallmark of a successful classroom."

TPR stands for Total Physical Response and was created by Dr. James J Asher. It is based upon the way that children learn their mother tongue. Parents have 'language-body conversations' with their children, the parent instructs and the child physically responds to this. The parent says, "Look at mummy" or "Give me the ball" and the child does so. These conversations continue for many months before the child actually starts to speak itself. Even though it can't speak during this time, the child is taking in all of the language; the sounds and the patterns. Eventually when it has decoded enough, the child reproduces the language quite spontaneously. TPR attempts to mirror this effect in the language classroom. (https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/total-physical-response-tpr)

In Second Grade we started by saying a word and demonstrating the action. Then, we have been reviewing our knowledge about actions in a fun way, making sure that we understand which words are actions (or verbs, as we also call them formally) and which are not. One of the activities we have carried out is shown in the video below. 

If the teacher said a word that was an action, we would stand up and shake our hands in the air. If, on the other hand, the word was not an action but a noun, a place or an adjective, we would sit on the floor or the chair. 

CHRISTMAS CARDS FROM AUSTIN FRIARS SCHOOL

Last December we received lots of cards written by students from Austin Friars School, a school in the north of Cumbria and south-west Scotland that also educates in accordance with the Augustinian principles. 

It was very exciting and interesting to read about what these children had to tell us. In these letters they talked about them, their hobbies, told us what they were thankful for and asked us some questions about us too. 

Exchanging letters and cards with people from overseas is always a good idea, not only because it's fun but it also provides us with an excellent opportunity to practice our English reading and comprehension skills, and to get to know different cultures.