Archive for 2017

The true meaning of Christmas

Watch the following videos

https://es.englishcentral.com/video/16059/the-true-meaning-of-christmas

 EnglishCentral 


Now, it's your turn. What does Christmas mean to you?

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First Transnational meeting



Last week, our partners from Romania and Poland came to Málaga (Spain) for our first Transnational meeting.
For several days, we were talking about the project in detail and without a doubt, we make a good team; we really enjoyed working and being together. A very fruitful meeting sharing knowledge, ideas and opinions.
Here you are some pictures of their stay in Málaga and the meeting schedule we planned for their visit.

  


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Warming up activities

Before diving into the project we are going to do some “warming up activities “so that our students can get to know one another and have information about the different countries taking part in this “interesting journey” we are just starting.

1. Introduce yourself.

Write an email to a student from another country in order to introduce yourself. Say name and age and include information about:

- family.
-likes and dislikes.
- personality.
-what you do in your spare time.
- what you want to do in the future.
 
Also, upload your email to Fotobable 
                                                                                                                                   Credit
2. Leaflet about your country or city

Prepare a leaflet for your country or own city. Think about location, climate, attractions, food, culture and religion.
                                                                     Credit 

Your leaflet can be bi-fold (a single sheet printed on both sides and folded into halves.Two panels on each side ) or tri-fold (the same, but folded into thirds, three panels on each side).

And remember, use colourful pictures and try to make it attractive and eye-catching!

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UniDiversity

Sorry for the delay in writing, actually, I was looking forward to blogging, but the beninning of the school year is usually a bit crazy and this year more than ever. We applied for an Erasmus + project and, guess what! Yes, it has been approved!! So, we have been pretty busy preparing everything to get started! It's going to be an amazing and enriching experience for all of us and we are really excited about it. I'll let you know how things go.

Here you are a brief summary of our project:

UniDiversity is a project about cultural identity and has to do with those characteristics that define us and make us belong to a group of people, community or country.
We will work on different issues such as language, family, religion, education, gastronomy, politics, climate, customs, traditions, lifestyle, music, art, etc organized into five main topics for study and research:
1. Role of women. We will study the traditional roles given to men and women in the different countries that participate in this project and the development of the role of women in the last century. We will pay special attention to all the messages that our culture through music, cinema, etc transmits us about what a woman is supposed to be and we will discuss about gender violence.
2. Prejudices and stereotypes. What do we think about ourselves and about the others? Is it real? How do they affect our attitude towards immigrants? We will also learn about the others and discover the contribution of foreign cultures to our own ones.
3. Globalization and different lifestyles. We want to analyse how globalization is affecting our way of living and we will see advantages and disadvantages. Are we losing our national identity because of globalization?. We will study about the use of the internet, social networks, mobile phones, Mass Media and so on.
4. Festivals and traditions. It is impossible to deny the influence of culture in our way of thinking. That’s why we want to work on them, to get to know about different festivities, their origins, the similarities among the countries. The role of women and men in our traditions, the values they promote and if they have turned into old fashion or continue being current.
5. Education system and citizen participation. In this case we are going to see different education systems and different ways to participate as critical citizens in society.

There will be three countries involved: Spain, Poland and Romania and these are the different contributions that each organization can bring to our project:  -Spain. We will focus on the issue of the role of woman in society. Spain is a Catholic country, defender of a traditional family and with a macho culture. Many cases of gender-based violence are taking place nowadays and we want to find out whether it only happens in this country or it has become a global problem.
-Romania. It is a country we don’t have much information about, we just know something about its gypsy background. We are amazed by the different religions that coexist in the country and how this may have influenced its inhabitants and its language of Latin origin like Spanish. We will see similarities and differences with the rest of the countries.
-Poland. Being one of the relatively recent countries that joined the European Union after the fall of communism, we are interested in getting to know how this transition took place and how it has affected people in its opening towards Europe. It will be relevant to get first-hand knowledge about the impact on its economy and society.
We will also deal with prejudices and stereotypes because of the high number of immigrants in our countries. We would like to know how the problem of refugees is being lived and what solutions are being given.
Finally, we will compare the different education systems and the citizen participation in each of the participant countries.

The purpose of all the activities is to promote among the students the development of skills such as the empathy, teamwork, dialogue, etc and to reach this objective we must think about our differences. Are they as deep as we can fancy? What do we have in common? Is there anything that can be called national identity? And if it is so, can we make of it a source of enrichment?

Our methodology will be active and collaborative based on the use of the new technologies and the different tools from the web 2.0 such as Blog, Google sites, Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc..Students will access knowledge from a constructivist perspective, they will learn "by doing" and they will be working on the different activities in national and international cooperative teams sharing goals in order to maximize learning. Videos, podcasts, digital books etc...will be made and shared on the net. Afterwards when meeting up in a country we will review our conclusions and reflect on our previous work. Workshops will be carried out and the final products, after each visit, will be uploaded to the various digital platforms (e-twinning, blog, etc…) There will be also exhibitions, presentations, discussions and a constant dissemination plan of the whole project.

Our main aim is not only to find out similarities and differences among the countries involved and reflect on it but also to make students and teachers get involved in the knowledge creation process by working together and try to go a bit further so as to achieve meaningful  learning by extending it beyond the classroom.
Our project is a “pro human” project, with an individual-centred approach ,because we think that by searching for our own identity and getting to know the others better we can become more tolerant, generous, critical, supportive, understanding and appreciate the different cultures as a vehicle of enrichment based on mutual respect. Learning from ourselves and from the others can be an important way of social integration to build a better world.


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Cuestionarios de evaluación

Interesante saber qué opina nuestro alumnado. Espero que os resulte útil.






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13 Reasons Why

 
By Isabel Márquez

Background music : Another day in August by Marc Teichert from Jamendo

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London attack

We can't go on with our lessons as nothing had happened. Today, we have to talk about this:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/qbic/24728728/

   The New York Times

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/06/03/world/europe/london-attacks-scene.html?smid=tw-nytimesworld&smtyp=cur&referer=https://t.co/PMMuXVq7Ou

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World Book Day

 "Books help weave humanity together as a single family, holding a past in common, a history and heritage, to craft a destiny that is shared, where all voices are heard in the great chorus of human aspiration."
Irina Bokova



World book day is on 23rd of April ( In the United Kingdom it is on 1st Thursday of March) and we are going to celebrate it by making book recommendation cards.
You will bring them in to the class and put them into a box. Then, each student will take one at random, read it aloud and try to gruess whom the card belongs to.
Once the activity is finished, we`ll pin all of them up to the bilingual board.

Here the information that must be provided on your card:


Book recommendation card

Title:           What is the title of the book?.

Author:      Who wrote it?.

Type:          Is it a detective story, spy thriller, horror story, historical novel, science fiction,  
                    romance, biography, etc?.  (literature genre)                   

Plot:           What is it about? Who are the main characters? What happens? (Don’t tell the
                    whole story, just enough to interest your readers). (How to write a book review)

Personal   
opinion:     How would you describe the story?
                                                  realistic? amusing?
                                                  exciting?  thrilling?
                                                  fast-moving? sad?
                
                    What did you like especially about it?
                    How did you feel?  Happy?  Sad?
                    Why do you recommend it?  
 
One more thing, don't forget to be original and creative!.

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Trip to Dublin

This school year our educational trip was to Dublin. As you can imagine, a very successful and "popular" activity :)  Here a video with some of the pictures and below all what we did over there.



1- Dublin Itinerary
2- Travel Diary
3- Treasure Hunt
4- Tresaure Hunt Key
5- "Trip to Dublin" contract 


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What would you do if you were invisible?

If you were invisible, would you live your life differently? Think about this for a moment. If you were invisible and no one could see you no matter what you did, what would you be doing right now? What would you choose to do with the rest of your life?

Let’s take it one step further, and imagine that as well as being invisible, you have no name and no identity. Would you live your life differently if nothing that you did could ever be traced back to you? Would you still want to write that book or record that album if you couldn’t put your name on the cover?

Taking the time to think about your answers to this question will help you find balance in your life. How? It will help you align with your true purpose. Your answers will help you see where you are being of service to others, and where you are possibly wasting time trying to please your ego. Let me give you an example.

When I completed this exercise, I came to the conclusion that if I were invisible and nothing I did mattered, I would still clean and organize my home on a regular basis. Yeah – it’s kind of crazy, I know, but I would do that for my husband as well as for myself. It is very important to me for him to be comfortable in his surroundings and even though he doesn’t realize how much time, effort, and energy cooking, cleaning, laundry, and organizing the house requires, I know he would be a mess without it. (Come to think of it, I am sort of invisible in this regard – aren’t we all? But that’s another post!)

The other thing I would do if I were invisible is go around whispering in people’s ears – “You can do it!” I would be that voice that you sometimes hear when no one is around that motivates and inspires you to become your best. I would encourage everyone I could. Want to lose weight? You can do it! Want to go back to school? You can do it! Want to go for that promotion? You can do it! Want to start your own business? You can do it! Want to quit your job and stay at home with your kids? You can do it! Whatever your heart is calling you toward, you can do it!

So, in my daily efforts of writing books, speaking, preparing seminars, designing websites, etc., all of it falls into my passion and true purpose. All of the organizing, cooking, cleaning, writing, speech preparing, web designing etc. – all of it, as long as it is within the guidelines of helping and motivating others, (or myself), is time well-spent.

At the end of the session my higher self reminded me that I am not invisible, and that that is on purpose – by design of a Higher Power. I am visible so that I can motivate, educate, and inspire others to be their best and reach their full potential. It’s a good feeling to know that I am living a life, fully visible, in line with my true self.

But now it’s your turn: What would you do if you were invisible? Make a list of the things you would continue to do, and then a list of what you would no longer do. How many of the latter could you let go of now? Think about how much more freedom letting go of those things would give you to do the things that align with your true purpose. As you begin doing more of what your inner being calls you toward, you will find more things in that realm that please you. Living a life full of purpose requires that we remain true to our “invisible” selves.

Until next time,
Live Joyfully!

                                                                                                                       By Debra Moorhead

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Finland Will Become the First Country in the World to Get Rid of All School Subjects



Finland’s education system is considered one of the best in the world. In international ratings, it’s always in the top ten. However, the authorities there aren’t ready to rest on their laurels, and they’ve decided to carry through a real revolution in their school system.

Finnish officials want to remove school subjects from the curriculum. There will no longer be any classes in physics, math, literature, history, or geography.

The head of the Department of Education in Helsinki, Marjo Kyllonen, explained the changes:
“There are schools that are teaching in the old-fashioned way which was of benefit in the beginning of the 1900s — but the needs are not the same, and we need something fit for the 21st century.“

Instead of individual subjects, students will study events and phenomena in an interdisciplinary format. For example, the Second World War will be examined from the perspective of history, geography, and math. And by taking the course ”Working in a Cafe," students will absorb a whole body of knowledge about the English language, economics, and communication skills.

This system will be introduced for senior students, beginning at the age of 16. The general idea is that the students ought to choose for themselves which topic or phenomenon they want to study, bearing in mind their ambitions for the future and their capabilities. In this way, no student will have to pass through an entire course on physics or chemistry while all the time thinking to themselves “What do I need to know this for?”

The traditional format of teacher-pupil communication is also going to change. Students will no longer sit behind school desks and wait anxiously to be called upon to answer a question. Instead, they will work together in small groups to discuss problems.

The Finnish education system encourages collective work, which is why the changes will also affect teachers. The school reform will require a great deal of cooperation between teachers of different subjects. Around 70% of teachers in Helsinki have already undertaken preparatory work in line with the new system for presenting information, and, as a result, they’ll get a pay increase.

The changes are expected to be complete by 2020.

What do you think about all these ideas? I’d love to hear your opinion, so let us know in the comments.

Taken from Bright side 

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Perception versus reality. Film review

The Matrix 
 

The Matrix is a science fiction film, that came out  in 1999. I really loved it when I saw it for the first time and I recommend it. If you like fiction and philosophy, you will enjoy it!.

Neo (his real name is Thomas Anderson), who is a hacker, is contacted by a rebel group. They explain to him that the reality they are living in is a lie. It is a virtual reality called the Matrix. It was created by a artificial intelligence, the Matrix hides the truth from humanity. Meanwhile, the machines, grow up using people’s energy. Morpheus, the leader of the rebel group, believes Neo is “The One”, and he will free them from the Matrix. But Neo has to choose being “The One” or not.

The film makes you think about what is real and what is not. Also, about what we know and what they hide from us. “Do we know the truth about all?”, I asked myself when the film finished. You must watch it.

By Claudia Guillén González, 1BC



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