Welcome Kea

 El pasado 1 de octubre tuvimos la suerte de compartir nuestras clases de Science con la nueva auxiliar de conversación. Su nombre es Kea y viene de la ciudad de Los Ángeles en Estados Unidos.

Estamos seguros que su paso por el colegio será fantástico y de gran provecho para todos.

Ella irá colgando actividades con el alumnado en el blog así que... ¡estar atent@s!

Os dejamos algunas imágenes de la semana.

¡

Bienvenida Kea!

Thank you Megan!

It is a great opportunity for all the schools to have a language assistant because the children, the teachers and all the community can live a different experience during the school year. However, as always, we have to say "see you soon" by the end of May each year. And we hope to see you again after this COVID-19 situation at school.

What advantages have our students had with Megan, our language assistant, in our natural and science lessons? Our assistant has shared with all of them an unique linguistic experience and her culture. They have developed everyday communication with the use of language skills in real-life situations. 

As we all know, the best option to learn a language is with games and a lot of fun. Megan has combined the work in the classes with oral interactive activities and a very good English. During this lockdown due to this coronavirus situation, she has done a great contribution to our school for the online education with the creation of materials.

To sum up, our language assistant has done a great job and I would like to include the following tasks:

• motivating students to learn English,
• encouraging our children to participate in oral communication activities,
• preparing classroom materials and activities,
• encouraging children to explore the different cultures.

Some posts of these years are:

The Universe Project: 5th Grade	Layers of the Atmosphere in 4th Grade
The Five Senses in 1st Grade	5 Senses Project in 4th Grade
Me on a Map! 5th grade	Christmas Time!
The Water Cycle	5th Grade 5 Senses
Animals!	Sensitivity and the Nervous System
Geography and Culture Around the World	Jeopardy!
Animals and Ecosystems	Thanksgiving! 5th grade
School Day of Non-Violence and Peace: Light a candle for PEACE	Springtime!
Shop Role Plays	Parts of the Cell
Thanksgiving in the USA	So good to work as a linguistic assistant

Thank you very much!

Hope you come back soon!

Geography and Culture Around the World

The students of Jessica's 5th grade English class have done a very nice project about the geography and cultures of different countries around the world. The project gave them a great opportunity to practice their English and learn about the cultures of different countries while also practicing their research and organizational skills by researching new information and creating the presentation. 

The students researched several key aspects about their countries. They found out the capital of the country and the main lakes, rivers, parks, mountains, and woods. Learning how to research and find information is a very important skill for the children to learn as it is something they will have to do in high school, university, and many jobs as an adult. Some of the countries the children researched were the USA, New Zealand, and Australia. 

For each category, the students had to write information in the form of sentences and also find a picture to go with it. For example, under mountains, the students would write about the highest peak or the biggest mountains and also find a picture of the mountains. 

Here you can see some examples of the students' projects: 

The students did a great job with this project and really put in a lot of effort to make sure the presentation was neat and nice to look at. 

Sensitivity and the Nervous System

The 5th grade class of CEIP San Miguel has been learning all about sensitivity and the nervous system in English. They have just given their presentations about the topics in English as well.

This has been a great opportunity for them to practice communicating and speaking English. In addition to learning all about the science behind how our senses work and respond, they have learned how to present about the topic and how it would be done in English. They learned many common phrases that we use when giving a presentation such as, 'We are going to explain...', 'The functions of this are...', and 'We hope you enjoyed our presentation.' 

The students have also greatly improved their general presentation skills. They have learned to face the audience instead of reading directly from their project and also to show or point to the parts of the poster that they are referring to when speaking. Some girls also thought of a very creative game in which the students had to place each sense with the correct description on a poster. 

Here you can see some examples of their posters: 

And here you can see the game pieces that the girls created. There is one for each of the five senses (sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch): 

Animals!

Many of the students of CEIP San Miguel are learning very interesting things about animals in English. Animals is a great unit for the childrens because there are so many fun activities we can do with the children. The students are almost done with this unit so it is time for them to review and demonstrate all the things they've learned.

During this unit, the students learned many different aspects about animals, such as the type of skin covering, how they move about, and how they reproduce. The main groups of vertebrates (animals with a spine), are mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish. The students practiced speaking and listening by answering questions about each type of animal. I asked the pupils to tell me how the animals breathe, reproduce, move, and what type of skin covering they have (scales, feathers, bare skin, fur). Then, they wrote down the important infomation next to the animal in their notebooks.

This was a great way for the students to review animals and practice speaking and listening using relevant vocabulary to the lesson.

Here you can see an example of what the students wrote in their notebooks:

5th Grade 5 Senses

Lucía's 5th Grade Science class had a great time learning about the five senses. First, we thought of examples of each of the five senses (sight, hearing, taste, touch, and smell). The students then made sentences with each of the senses. For example, some of the students said "I can touch my book with my hands" or "I can taste chocolate with my tongue". This was a great way for the students to practice speaking English and also practice speaking in front of their classmates. The pupils then played a game of charades in which they had to act out a certain sense and the rest of the class guessed what it was. They had a lot of fun acting these out for the class! Next, the students got into groups and they had to paste different examples of things for each sense (ice cream for taste/a cat for touch/a firetruck for hearing) and they made a poster with the photos and sentences. This was a great way for the students to learn more about the senses, practice speaking English, and have fun while doing so.

You can see some pictures of the students working and the projects they came up with here:

The Water Cycle

In Lucía's 4th grade science class, the students created a very interesting art project about the water cycle. The water cycle consists of four steps: evaporation, condensation, precipitation, and collection. The pupils made a cloud, then wrote and decorated it with the title 'The Water Cycle'. They then made four water droplets and wrote about each stage of the water cycle. Evaporation is when the sun heats the water on the earth and the water forms water vapour. Condensation is when water vapour condenses into tiny water droplets and forms clouds. Precipitation is when the water falls from the clouds as rain, snow, or hail. The last stage, collection, is when water from the rivers goes into the sea. The students used fishing line to connect the four water droplets to the cloud. The result of the project was very nice and the children really enjoyed creating it and it helped them understand the water cycle much better. 

Here you can see the projects the students created: 

Christmas Time!

Christmas is approaching and the students of CEIP San Miguel has been doing many lovely activities to get into the holiday spirit. Many of the classes have made some type of craft about Christmas, such as ornaments, Christmas trees, snowmen, Santa Claus, or Christmas cards.

Some of the students created a beautiful Christmas landscape with clouds, lollipops, and stars in the background and their own homemade figures showing in the front. 

The students in one class even made me a very cute flipbook in which they each created a page about Christmas. It was very sweet! : 

Here you can see some of the Christmas cards that the students created and wrote their own message inside: 

A Chrismas Poem by Jo Geis: "Christmas Long Ago"

Frosty days and ice-still nights,
Fir trees trimmed with tiny lights,
Sound of sleigh bells in the snow,
That was Christmas long ago.
Tykes on sleds and shouts of glee,
Icy-window filigree,
Sugarplums and candle glow,
Part of Christmas long ago.
Footsteps stealthy on the stair,
Sweet-voiced carols in the air,
Stocking hanging in a row,
Tell of Christmas long ago.
Starry nights so still and blue,
Good friends calling out to you,
Life, so fact, will always slow…
For dreams of Christmas long ago.

Me on a Map! 5th grade

The students of 5th grade B social science class did a very interesting project when learning about maps! They created a lovely flipbook about where they live on the Earth.

Each category gets more and more specific. The most general category is called 'My Planet' and the most specific is 'My Street'. The order of the categories is 'My Planet', 'My Continent', 'My Country', 'My Community', 'My Town', and 'My Street'.

The students then researched information about each category and wrote facts underneath the flaps so that when you unfold each category, you are presented with five fascinating facts about each place. For example, under 'My Planet', some students wrote 'The Earth is the third planet from the sun'. About Europe ('My Continent'), they wrote 'Europe is the second smallest continent in the world'. Many students were surprised to hear that it is so small, but there are many enormous continents in the world. For 'My Country' (Spain), some wrote facts about the location ('Spain is located on the Iberian Peninsula') or about things that Spain produces, 'Spain produces the most olive oil in the world'. Under 'My Community' (Andalusia), some wrote about the colors of the flag, flamenco, or Holy Week (Semana Santa). For 'My Town' (Armilla), they wrote about the population, the schools, and Nevada Shopping. The facts about the streets varied from each student but they wrote about shops or bakeries that were located nearby.

After researching, editing, and creating their flipbooks, the students presented the project to the class. It was a very lovely project that allowed the students to learn about where they come from and also realize how big our planet really is.

Here you can see examples of some of the students' projects 'Me on a Map'!:

Thanksgiving! 5th grade

Some people know about the very important holiday in the USA called Thanksgiving. Last week, the children of CEIP San Miguel got to learn all about it. Thanksgiving is a holiday celebrated in America on the fourth Thursday of November. Historically, it celebrates the great meal that the pilgrims had together with the Native Americans when they sailed to America. Now, the holiday focuses more on family getting together and feeling thankful, or grateful, for all the good things we have in our lives. Some examples of things we are thankful for that we talked about were family, school, friends, food, health, and pets. In Lucia's 5th grade class, we did a very nice project in which each student wrote one thing they feel thankful for on a turkey feather (turkeys are important to Thanksgiving because they provided us with food). At the end, they each stuck their feather on a big turkey! This was a great project for them because they got to understand a bit more about the culture of an American holiday and reflected about the things in their lives that really matter.

Here you can see the end result (the big turkey) and some of the students creating their feathers: 

5 Senses Project in 4th Grade

Lucia's 4th grade science class worked on a wonderful project about the five senses. They used their knowledge about the five senses (sight, taste, smell, touch, and hearing) to create a project incorporating examples for each of the senses. For sight, some of the students drew shapes, colors, sizes, and distances. In smells, they included bad and smells. One student even used a real garlic clove. For bad smells, they included garlic and rubbish. Under good smells, they used tea bags and flowers. For taste, they included all different kinds of tastes, such as sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami. They used examples for touch such as rough or soft objects. The children had a lot of fun coming up with samples and creating this lovely project. Here you can see a few of their projects: