SONGS

• Follow them in facebook

Past simple

YOUR LAST HOLIDAY?

Where/go/When?

Who/go with?

How/get there?

Where/stay?

How long/be/ there?

/have good weather?

What/do during the day?

What/ do at night?

/have good time?

/have any problems?

GAMES

 6.Freeze!
Do U know what Freeze Frames are?

Choose some of your students’ favourite tunes and turn up the volume. Ask them to dance until the music stops. When it does, they have to freeze in whatever position they find themselves in – even if they have one leg up. To make the game more challenging, ask the kids to freeze in specific poses: animals, shapes, letters or even yoga postures.

Taken from Indoor games for little children

• 500 things little kids like, eg: Marching

PERSONAL INTERVIEW 1: 100 QUESTIONS

CARD 1 1. Are you a good dancer? 2. Are you a vegetarian? 3. Are you the oldest among your brothers and sisters? 4. At what times do you usually eat your meals (breakfast, lunch, and dinner)? 5. Can you play any musical instruments? 6. Can you ride a motorcycle? 7. Could you live in another country for the rest of your life? 8. Do you always eat dinner with your family? 9. Do you cook? If yes, what is food that you cook the most? 10. Do you do exercise? 11. Do you drive a car often? 12. Do you eat bread every day? 13. Do you eat breakfast every day?14. Do you eat fruit every day? 15. Do you have a car? 16. Do you have any pets? If not, would you like to have a pet? 17. Do you have difficulty with school work? 18. Do you like British food? 19. Do you like food from other countries? If yes, which do you like the most?

CARD 2 1. Do you prefer listening to the radio or watching TV? 2. Do you prefer to eat at a restaurant or at home? 3. Do you prefer to travel alone or in a group? Why? 4. Do you prefer travelling by car or by plane? 5. Do you prefer your own country's food or other kinds of food? 6. Do you see your relatives at Christmas time? 7. Do you sing while taking a bath? 8. Do you smoke? 9. Do you think playing sports helps people work better as a team at work? 10. Do you use an alarm clock to wake up? 11. Do you use English a lot? 12. Do you usually want to eat dessert after dinner? 13. Do you watch your weight? What foods do you think are healthy? 14. Do you work? 15. Does your family have any special Christmas traditions? 16. Have you ever been on a diet? If so, how long did you stayed on it? 17. Have you ever celebrated Christmas in a foreign country? 18. Have you ever lived in another country? 19. How do you get to school?

CARD 3 1. How many hours of sleep do you usually get? 2. How many times have you travelled by airplane? 3. How old are you? 4. How old are your brothers and sisters? 5. How old were you when you got your first job? 6. If you smoke, how old were you when you started smoking? 7. What are some good ways to learn English? 8. What are some popular foods for the Christmas season? 9. What are your hobbies? 10. What countries have you visited? 11. What countries would you like to visit? Why? 12. What countries would you not like to visit? Why? 13. What country are you from? 14. What do you and your family like to do together? 15. What do you do on Sundays? 16. What do you do? What's your job? 17. What does your father do? 18. What does your mother do? 19. What food do you hate? Why do you hate it?

CARD 4 1. What is your favourite TV programme? 2. What is your favourite website? 3. What kind of beverages do you usually drink? 4. What kind of car do you have? 5. What kind of exercise do you do? 6. What kind of movies do you like? 7. What kind of music do you like? 8. What languages do you speak? 9. What sports do you like to play? 10. What will you do on Christmas Day? 11. What's there to do in your hometown? 12. What's your address? 13. What's your hometown like? 14. What's your name? 15. When did you start to study English? 16. When was the last time you ate at a restaurant? 17. When was the last time you went to a concert? 18. Where are you from? 19. Where did you go for your last holidays?

Education

THE CREATIVE CLASSROOM

• What do you understand by "being creative"?
• Can a teacher assisstant be creative? How?
• What do you need to be creative in a class?
• What are the gains for a child when the teacher is creative?
• Have you visited a pre-primary school where the general atmosphere was "creative"?
• Can you think of an activity that will be labelled as "creative" in a class?

IMPROVING LEARNING

• What is a lesson plan?
• In what areas does the teacher need to work to improve learning in a  class? (behaviour, environment,expectations, material,activities, etc.) Slide  6  Unit 2
• What does the teacher need to do the first days of class? (Slide 7 Unit  2)
• Why games are a great way to teach children?
• What activities do you consider to be attractive for children?
• How will you organize a class?
• What questions do you need to ask yourself before using a material with children?

TOOLS/RESOURCES

• What are some tools a teacher/teacher assisstant  needs to give good instruction?
• What do you consider not good tools/ resources? Why?
• Is money/ budget important in a school?
• Do u need a lot of tools/resources to teach young children?
• Is it important for a good professional to keep updated?
• What are some characteristics a person working with children should have?

L2 ACQUISITION / LEARNING

• What is acquisition/learning?
• What is concious learning and unconcious learning?
• Does knowing the grammar of a language mean that  a person  can speak a language?
• Are there some stages in the learning/acquisition process of a language?
• what is the best age to learn a language?
• It is impossible for a students to learn a language when he/she gets old?

EDUCATION

• What are the qualities of a good student?
• What are the qualities of a good teacher?
• What is your favorite class?What was (or is) your favorite subject? Why do you like it?
• Do you think your teachers give too much homework?
• Why do you think people want to work in the education area?
• What do you think of home-schooling?
• Does education guarantee a good job?

Questions adapted and adopted from englishonline

ENGLISH

• Why are you studying a foreign language?
• Why is it helpful to learn a Second language ?
• What are some good ways to learn English?
• Why is it sometimes very difficult to speak another language?
• Would you consider studying abroad?

Questions adapted and adopted from englishonline

Songs

Created with Padlet

Hands on activities

Personal Placemats (Individual activity). Lesson Food/Eating healthy

Materials: Clear contact paper (many, many uses for this so buy a big roll).  Large sheet of art paper about 12 X 14 inches, paint or crayons.

Description: The child draws/sticks veggie pictures on both sides of the paper (if you a using sloppy paints use 2 sheets and secure them back to back with tape), colour the pictures  and laminate them. 

• Other possibilities: holidays/animals/ colours, older children can use Wrapping paper to make Holiday placemats for everyone in the family !, etc.

Adopted from preschoolrainbow.org

Recycling activity: Bottle Cap Mandala 

(Class activity/Whole school) This is a project where the whole class/school works together to make one giant mandala made out of bottle caps and any other suitable ‘waste’ objects (creating a group mandala is a unifying experience in which students can express themselves individually within a unified structure).

Materials: As many bottle caps as the class can collect. Examples include the plastic caps that come on plastic bottles, some milk/juice cartons, aerosol cans and vitamin jars; jar lids; and the steel caps that come on beer bottles and some glass soft drink bottles. Other small ‘waste’ or recyclable objects that you think are suitable, such as, small yoghurt pot lids, small rigid pieces of plastic, etc.

Description: 1. Choose a mandala design and print it out on a piece of paper so that the whole class/school can refer to it as a guide. 2. Sort the bottle caps and other objects into groups determined by their colour. 3. On a clear area of the floor or ground, build your mandala by arranging the differently-coloured objects in accordance with the design. 

• Other possibilities: beach rock mandala,  sand mandala, personal mandala (incorporate all the things that you find personally comforting like: favorite colors, pictures, items, etc. Gather them together and layout them out in the form of a wheel within the basic mandala structure), etc.

The size of your mandala will depend on how many objects the class/school was able to collect. Ultimately, the mandala will be dismantled. You might want to take a photo of the mandala and the class before dismantling! 
Recycle as many of the objects as you can and dispose responsibly of the rest. 

Adopted from schoolsrecycle.planetark.org

Carla Canencia Jellyfish

Materials: A plastic plate , ribbons of different colors and shapes, glue and cardboard.

Description:

With ribbons of different colors and various types the kids can create the tentacles of jellyfish.

Children below should stick labels onto plastic plate .

Finally, can make the eyes of  jellyfish  with cardboard.

Activity of the jellyfish

Michelle Inga  Trick-or-Treat Bag

Materials:

• Canvas tote bag (sold at local craft stores)
• Tempera paints (Halloween colors)
• Paintbrush
• Paper plates
• Scissors
• Wiggle eyes, felt, glitter, buttons, or other decorative materials
• Fabric glue
• Newspaper

Description:

• Lay newspaper over your work area in case of spills.
• Pour a bit of paint on a paper plate.
• Have your child decorate the bag with paintings of witches, black cats, pumpkins and ghosts, using her fingers, handprints or paintbrushes.
• Add any other designs or decorative items on the bag.
• Let the bag dry completely - then fill it with treats on Halloween!

Halloween candy bag

WEBGRAPHY & BIBLOGRAPHY

-Material from course Crif "Las Acacias " Rodolfo Muñoz, Noemí León  June 2016
-Basic language activities
-The Creative Classroom
-Promoting Communication  

ASSESSMENT TECHNIQUES

• What is assessment?

SONGS, RHYMES AND TALES

• VIDEO What to read to a child. The Different Genres

LANGUAGE IN CLASS

• I can follow the rules SONG
• Basic commands Video

• Basic language activities

Readings: 

1. The Montessori method and free montessori materials and more like THIS at montessorisoul.com

ACTIVITY: Writing

- 3 things you didn´t know about this  Method

-Something that surprised you

-Something you don´t agree with 

-A small paragrpah summarizing  the Montessory method , don´t forget to include your opinion at the end.

1. Positive Reinforcement

Writing: The Creative Classroom 

• Find info in this handoutThe Creative Classroom

 TASK-LEARNING STRATEGIES

• Language Teaching Methods

What´s your learning style ?

 

• Strategies/ Bloom´s taxonomy prezi

Read about this experiment 

Thibaut's Manhattan Language Workshop for Children divides Tots into three age groups: 6-16 months, 13-24 months and 2 to 3 years.

In the past, the LWFC had grouped all the students (between the ages of 24 months to three years) by age. This resulted in children who had taken French for Tots or Spanish for Tots since they were 6 months old, learning in the same classroom with absolute beginners.
However, Mr. Thibaut and his teachers saw that the experienced students were absorbing and repeating the vocabulary (which was designed to be new for all students) significantly faster than the inexperienced children.

If the teachers slowed down to allow the inexperienced students to follow, the seasoned children quickly got bored and began misbehaving. Then, if the teacher began introducing more complicated material again, the newer students were confused and could not respond.


It was clear. Spending 18 months in a language-rich structured playgroup had accelerated the early starter's verbal processing skills to such a degree that they could no longer be placed with children who, in other circumstances, would be considered their peers. Therefore, The LWFC created an Advanced Tots program where its seasoned two year olds now get the challenge they need.

Adapted from newsforparents.org

TASK 1-Say wether the sentencea are True or False. explain the False ones

1. Toddlers in TBLW are divided by age.
2. Children that had some notions of French or Spanish got bored in class.
3. All the students misbehaved.
4. A language-rich environment is not important in the process of  learning  a language.

TASK 2- Find a synonym for these words in the text

1. Seminar (school)
2. arrange
3. total(complete)
4. gripping
5. school yard

C Vitae

APPLYING FOR A JOB (Europass)

• The europass
• Cover letter  
• Check this  cover letters teacher aide job vacancy to get more ideas
• Find your title in English  EUROPASS Supplements

Practical

• EURES
• linkedin.com

Some good ADJECTIVES: 

Compelling, Engaging, Active, Motivating, Challenging, Interactive, Engaging, Creative, Aware, Involved, Inspiring, Innovative,Dedicated, Helpful, Loving, Caring.

Find more here

BILINGUALISM AT SCHOOL

Bilingual Education

LANGUAGE LEARNING

• Theories of Language Acquisition
• How-Children-Learn-a-Second-Language and the best age
• Baby talk video 
• Parentese Versus Baby Talk  (Watch Video and read "It´s called parentese")

BABY TALK is the undignified, high-pitched talk that comes naturally to some parents when referring to a baby. Notice I said some because some others feel like absolute idiots! 

Though the baby will learn your language even if you never learn his, his speech will develop faster and better if you make a conscious effort at early communication. Babies who aren’t communicated with at all suffer not just in language development but in all areas of growth.

But that rarely happens. Even the parent who’s bashful about baby talk communicates with his or her baby all day long _ while cuddling him, responding to his crying, singing him a lullaby, saying: “It´s time for a walk”, or muttering, “Oh, not the phone again!”

Parents teach language when they talk to each other as well as when they talk to their baby. Babies pick up almost as much from second-hand dialogue as they do when they’re part of a conversation.

Some popular baby talk words are for example, “boo boo”, for when the baby has a wound, a scratch, or a bruise; and “bee bo” for belly button.

BABY’S FIRST WORDS

Just when a baby makes the transition from sounds that mimic real words but have no meaning to meaningful speech is difficult to pinpoint exactly.

Some babies find easier the consonant D or M (mummy, daddy).

When the first real word is spoken varies a great deal. According to the experts, the average baby can be expected to say what she means and mean what she says for the first time anywhere between ten and fourteen months. (word level)

A small percentage of children start a couple of months earlier and some perfectly normal babies don’t utter a single recognizable word until midway through their second year.

Long before the baby utters her first word, she will be developing her linguistic skills:

-          First by learning to understand what is said. This receptive language starts developing at birth, with the first words the baby hears.

-          Gradually she begins to sort out individual words from the jumble of language around her,

-          and then one day, about the middle of the first year , you say her name and she turns around. She’s recognized a word!

-          Pretty soon thereafter she should begin to understand the names of other people and objects she sees daily, such as, mummy, daddy, bottle, cup, water, biscuit

-          In a few months she will begin to follow simple commands, such as wave bye bye, kiss mummy.

Here are some hints on how to help develop a baby’s language:

1. Label, label, label! Verbally label objects in baby’s environment (bath, changing table, nappy, mat, cot, chair, and so on) Play “eyes-nose-mouth” (take baby’s hand and touch your eyes, your nose, and your mouth, kissing the hand at the last stop). Don’t leave out people! point at other care takers, teachers, babies…
2. Listen, listen, listen! As important as what you say to the baby is how much you let your baby say to you. Even if no words are identified yet, listen to his/her garbled speech and respond: “Oh, that’s very interesting!”, or “Is that so?”
3. Concentrate on concepts. Be sure to say the word for the concept as you and baby act it out.

-          Hot and cold: let baby touch the outside of his/her warm bottle, then an ice cube; or cold water, then warm water.

-          Up and down: gently lift baby up in the air, then lower to the ground;

-          Stand and sit: hold babies hand and help him/her stand, then sit down together (use ring-a-ring o’ roses to help with this concept)

-          Wet and dry: compare a wet wipe/flannel and a dry towel.

-          Big and little: Set a large ball beside a small one; show baby that you are big and baby little in the mirror.

4. Become colour conscious. Start identifying colours whenever is appropriate. “See, that balloon is red just like your shirt” or “That truck is green, your socks are green too”
5. Urge baby to talk back. “Do you want bread or crackers?”, “Do you want the red or the blue dummy?”. Get baby to help you locate things: “Can you find the ball?”
6. Keep directions simple. Sometime around the first birthday most toddlers can begin following simple commands, but only one step at a time. Instead of “Please, pick up the spoon and give it to me”, try “Please, pick up the spoon”, and when that’s been done, add “Now, please, give the spoon to Daddy”.
7. Correct carefully. When a baby mispronounces a word use a more subtle approach to say it correctly to protect the baby’s ego. If the baby says “pelota blue”, respond with, “That’s right. It’s a blue ball”.
8. Think numerically. Counting may be a long way off for the baby, but the concept of one or many isn’t. Comments like “Here, you can have one biscuit”, or “Look, see how many bubbles!” Count or recite, “One, two, buckle my shoe..” Integrate counting into the baby’s life when you do sit-ups with him or when you’re feeding him with the spoon..

                       

USING BABY SIGNS TO COMMUNICATE

Sign language, once used only among the deaf, is becoming a popular form of communication between children who can hear but can’t yet speak and their parents, who are anxious to understand them.

Preverbal babies have always used hand gestures and motions in an effort to express what they weren’t able to through speech. Like ei. waving to let his parents know that he wants to go bye bye, or out and about!

Hand games, like “pat a cake”, and finger songs, like “Incy Wincy Spider”, have been favourites for generations because they allow babies to play along even though they’re not able to sing along.

Baby signing offers many advantages:

-          it increases comprehension

-          it decreases frustration and therefore tantrums.

-          bolsters a child’s self-esteem by making him feel more confident.

-          this confidence translates in an increased motivation to speak

The advantages of baby signing, however, seem mostly to be short term.

Once a child can speak and be understood, the benefits of having used signs diminish and eventually disappear.

How to use baby signs:

-          Get an early start on signing. Begin as soon as your baby shows an active interest in communicating with you. At least by eight or nine months. Most babies will start signing back somewhere between ten and fourteen months.

-          Sign what comes naturally for you and the baby. Any simple gesture that fits a word or phrase well can work. For example: flapping arms for bird, scratching under the arms for monkey, hand together and supporting a tilted head for sleep, a rubbed belly for hungry, a finger touched to the nose for smell

-          Give the baby the signs he needs. The most important signs are the ones your baby requires to express his everyday needs, such as hunger, thirst and fatigue.

-          Sign consistently. By seeing the same signs over and over, the baby will come to understand them and imitate them quickly.

-          Speak and sign at the same time. To make sure the baby learns both the sign and the spoken word, use both together.

-          Follow the baby’s signs. Many babies invent their own signs. If they do use the sign of their desire.

-          Don’t push the signs. Signing like any other form of communication should develop naturally and at a child’s own pace. If the baby seems frustrated don’t force the agenda.

GAMES BABIES PLAY (improve socialization)

-          Peekaboo. teaches such concepts as object permanence. “Where’s mummy/ Noemí?” then uncover your face and say “pekaboo I see you!” Be ready to repeat until you collapse. Most babies have a voracious appetite for this game.

-          Clap hands. As you sing “clap, clap, clap your hands, clap your hands together” or any other ditty take the babies hands and show her how to clap. Can add a hiding game: “clap your hands, one two three, play a clapping game with me. Now your hands have gone away, find your hands so we can play!” The pat a cake rhyme is very appropriate too.

-          The itsy bitsy spider. Thumb and pointer fingers.

-          This little piggy went to market. This little piggy went to market, this little piggy stayed home, this little piggy had roast beef, this little piggy had none and this little piggy cried wee, wee, wee, all the way home!

-          How big is baby? or how big another student and then help the child spread his or her arms as wide as possible and exclaim “So big”

-          Eyes, nose, mouth, kiss! Take both baby’s hands. Nothing teaches these body parts faster!

-          Ring-a-ring o’ rosies. “Ring-a ring o’ rosies, a pocket full of posies, A-tishoo!, A-tishoo! We all fall down”.

-          One two, buckle my shoe.

-          Pop goes the weasel. Half a pound of tuppenny rice, Half a pound of treacle, That’s the way the money goes, Pop goes the weasel. www.rhymes.org.uk

READING TO BABY

It’s probably never too soon to start reading to a child!

But it isn’t until the second half of the first year that a baby becomes an active participant in the reading process, if only by chewing on the corners of the book to start with. (Bath books are ideal at this stage)

Soon she begins to pay attention to the words as you read them (at this point to the rhythm and sounds of the words rather than their meanings) and to the illustrations (enjoying the colour and patterns, but not necessarily relating the pictures to known objects)

To make sure a baby catches the bookworm early, use the following strategies:

-          Read to yourself. Children are much more likely to do as you do than to do as you say.

-          Read a few pages out loud while you nurse or give the baby a bottle,

-          read a book in her room while she plays, keep a book on your bedside table for reading before you fall asleep and for showing your baby (this is Daddy’s book)

-          At age one, a few children are ready for very simple stories, though most won’t be willing to sit still for them for several months yet. Even those who are ready can’t handle more than three or four minutes with a book at this age. You’d hold it longer if you make reading interactive, a process baby can participate fully. Stop to discuss the pictures, ask the baby to point to familiar objects and name those he hasn’t seen before. Rhymes are still favourites with babies entering their toddler years, as are books with colourful pictures.

-          Giving children the opportunity to both tell and hear stories encourages them to develop active speaking and listening skills. 

-          Storytelling fuels the imagination and allows children to develop their own mental images of the story.

-          Storytelling develops the memory

-          Storytelling is fun and exciting – and children love it!

PLAYING DVD’S

• Oxbridge baby DVD Learn to talk
• Baby Einstein DVD’s

 Adopted and adapted from Noemí León´s material for course 2016 Crif "Las Acacias"