29TH OF JUNE ENTRY

Sharing Norwich Knowledge

The first thing we did today in the morning was to put in common the different routes we followed yesterday's afternoon in and around Norwich city centre.

From all the groups we gather some useful information for the following days. Just some interesting points...

・ You cannot miss a walk along the riverside! Ask Rafa about what place you should sit and have a drink there.

・ Stroll over Elm Hill St., Princess St. and Tomland Alley. Get captivated by the past!

・ Discover Julian of Norwich sculpture by the main entrance to the Cathedral. She is holding her book “Revelations of Divine Love.” Enter in the Cathedral and just feel.

・ Have a look at the different stores in the Market.

・ Visit the castle. It is an art gallery and exhibition centre today, but it’s got lots of History inside.

・ Touch any flint stone. They are in all the black buildings you see!

・ Have a tea in any cafe and try a delicious cake!

・ And have lunch or dinner in a pub with a beer. (You can have more than one.)

REGARDING OUR STUDENTS...

We could do something similar with our students. Some teachers pointed out they could do it quite the same since they have safe open areas close to school. Other choice is to do it within the school involving teachers. A kind of gymkhana in the playground could be perfect too.

On regular basis students are given the language and the interaction is students-student or teacher-student in the same classroom. Therefore, the general point of this activity is to get students involved in their own communication, facing other English language speakers and communicating with them.

Something Else to Take from the City

The second work we did today was related to the “Environmental Print,” considering it not only the traffic signals but also all the language printed in our environments, such as food boxes, billboards, signals in street, shop windows' posters, etc.

We did this activity combining words and then we watched a video to check whether or not we were right in our guesses.

The interesting thing here is of course the activity itself. You can do it to introduce some language, to reinforce the vocabulary of a lesson or as an extension activity after. We got Jamie Keddie's site (www.lessonstream.org) to include in our lessons. Nevertheless, why not going out there and recording our own videos for our students? Kids will love it and, by appearing in there, we will definitely draw their attention. Let's try!

Setting Common Ground for Future Works

The rest of the morning and afternoon included, we worked on four different activities which we analysed after.

Activity	Materials	Grouping	Skills	Instructions	Cognitive Skills
BADGES	Post-it notes & markers	Changing pairs	L & S	Mingling activity: in your post-it you write your name. In its four corners, you draw something you like. Stand up, talk to a number of different people. Tell them what you think they like doing.	Symbolic thinking. Bloom's Taxonomy: up to application.
BIRTHDAY ORDER	-	Whole group. (Students should split in two groups to do it.)	Body Language & S.	Line up in order of your birthday. Just day and month. Do it without talking.	It demands abstract thinking which young learners don't have. Accuracy oriented activity. Bloom's Taxonomy: knowledge.
FOOD VENN DIAGRAM	Paper & Markers.	Groups of three.(Students should do in pairs.)	L & S	Make a Venn Diagram bout what you like to eat. In order to do so, you have to ask the others what do they like what they don't. Draw it down where it corresponds. On the board we can add some challenging vocabulary. Then, we said aloud what happened in each diagram, for example “None of us liked offal (casquería),” or “Neither me nor Maria José like seafood but Marga does.”	Bloom's Taxonomy: up to evaluation.
SINK OR FLOAT	A mini-white board, a container with water, fruit & vegetables.	Small group.	Mainly L & S. But also a little bit of R & W	In your groups talk and guess whether the fruit will sink or float. Note your predictions down in your whiteboards.	Referring to already passed experiences. Children guess, predict using the given structure.
CRAZY DAY SONG	Song sang by the Teacher.	Individually.	L & S	Listen to a song. Write down the things you hear.	Bloom's Taxonomy: Evaluation. Language is based on concrete situations: achievable for children.
AUCTION	List of sentences with grammar/ spelling/ punctuation mistakes.	Whole group.	R	You have got 100 pounds to spend. In a real auction we have a catalogue. We don't, but we have a list of sentences. Sometimes you buy not a real masterpiece but a fake. It may happen that some of the sentences are also fake. Have a look at them and decide which ones you like and which you don't.	Bloom's Taxonomy: Evaluation. Language is abstract: beyond their level of thinking. It demands teacher scaffolding. By doing this kind of activities we are wrapping a boring activity in a nice paper.

All the activities we have done today in class are useful and offer us many different possibilities. We can adapt them to our students at different levels considering what we have been remembering about Piaget and Bloom's theories. It is also interesting to point out that, even though we are working these activities from the English SL/FL perspective, all can be also used in content classes, bringing up together language and content (CLIL) as we usually do in the Bilingual Programme.