Educational project about plants!

Hello friends!

Before Easter, Teachppy and I made an educational project to develop the Natural Science unit four about plants. Then, we shared it with our second grade coworkers and we coordinated to work at the same time, also in other subject into a cross curricular link teaching.

To show this porject to the students, to guide them, we created a mind map with all the information about the topic: objectives, learning outcomes, key competences, classroom managment, resources, activities, cross curricular link and assessment. 

We think that it is a good option to show the topic plan to the learners, because if they know the content that they will discover, the activities that we will do and the assessment way, they will be focused on the way that they have to follow. 

This is our educational project mindmap!

You can see the mindmap here!

A mindmap is a type of diagram to represent words, tasks or other concepts linked around a keyboard or a central idea. We use mindmaps at school in many different ways: to present a content at the beginning of the lesson or topic, to make a summary, to do an activity or evaluation test, to organize ideas or, as in this case, to share an educational project. It is very visual and the comprehension is very easy... if you do well! 

In this time, to make the mindmap, we use MindMaster. It is a very funcional webpage. First, you have to create an account with your email adress or social media profile. Then, they offer you a lot of templates, that you can select in relation to the topic and the motivational intention. You have to make your mindmap little by little, because you must be done carefully! We recommend you, before using the digital tool, to do a mindmap draft in a papersheet.

If you want to know other webpages similar to MindMaster, you can discover tools as: coogle, mind24, spiderscribe, bubbl or creately.

Don´t worry.... discover mindmaps!

Don´t worry... teach happy!

First day at school... how do the students feel?

Hello friends!

Teachppy and I were talking about the next course... well, really we started to speak about summer holidays 😊... but the next year we will be first grade teachers! It is a great challenge, but the beginning is always complicated.

How can we help those pupils? Maybe with something creative... curious... striking... motivating... Teachppy always has the answer: a digital comic!

Once we decided to create a digital comic, first we made a reflection about the topic. The first day at school is an excited day. Learners, families and teachers are nervious, thinking about the things that they will find the new schoolar year. So, what better than create a comic about the first day´s emotions?

Then, we created a draft with our pencil and rubber. We made the main characteristics of the characters, the dialogs and the scenes.

Finally, we were ready to create the digital comic. We can recommend you different websites: Pixton, Creaza and StoryboardThat.

In this case, we decided to use the last of them. StoryboardThat is a very useful web to be creative! You have to create your account, it is very easy because you can do it with your personal information or with your social network account.
To create your comic they provide you a lot of options, as scenes, characters, textables, shapes, etc. Inside each one of it, you can choose from different topics. Por example, indoor, outdoor, historical or transportations scenes , or sports, jobs or medieval characters.
Also, you are freedom to include a brief description about what is happening in the story and write the words that the characters say.
So, this tool gives you many facilities for its use, but you have to spend a lot of time ifyou want your comic to be well.

It is a pleasure for us to show you our comic. It could be a great tool for teacher and families, to help students prepare for the first day at school, especially when we start the firts grade of primary education. In this comic they can detect different emotions in other children (also in the teacher), and they can check that it is very normal to feel nervious or other emotions when something is going to star. Also it develops values of multiculturalism and integration. It is a funny comic, they will enjoy!

Press here to see the comic on the webpage

We hope that you enjoy with our comic, and also we hope it will be an effective and useful tool for families and teachers.

Don´t worry... sharing stories through comics

Don´t worry... teach happy!

Attractive and interactive daily routine!

Hello friends!

Teachppy and I start our lessons with a daily routine every morning. We like to do it because is a fun warm-up, students feel trustful to speak English and we create a positive communicative situation. 

Through the daily routine students learn and acquire every day expressions (as regards, the days of the week, colors, the weather or clothes), we are also adding the content that we are learning during the course (animals, foods, and feelings) and we show them different verb structures (present simple and continuous, past, future, and questions). 

Nowadays, we are teaching in first and second grade. For a couple years ago, we changed the way of do it in both courses. For the first graders, we ask the questions and, one by one, pupils answer us. For the second grade lessons we created the mini teacher.

Mini teacher is an activity to motivate the pupils and to encourage the English use. One of the students, that changes every day, is the mini teacher and he/she has to ask (and check) the questions to their classmates. They are speaking English and they love it! Mini teacher has an outline to remember the questions. The (real) teacher is a support in case they need help.

We were wondering... how can we go one step further with the mini teacher activity?

I was calm because Teachppy always helps me!

As you know, Teachppy loves to use the ICT in the classroom and recently he discovers Genially. It is an easy-to-use webpage/app to make presentations, infographics, reports posters or guides. You can sign up very quickly (with your email adress) and use this tool. You will discover a lot of ideas, templates, samples and effects to create atractive presentations. It is a free creator, and they allow you to share your creations. The only downside is that, if you want to download your works (to use without the Internet) you have to subscribe in a payment mode.

You can find similar tools on the Internet as Powtoon, Prezi, Biteslide or Google slides. 

In this chance, we decide to make a mini teacher presentation using Genially. We hope the students think it is genial! It is a pleasure to show you!

Finally, I attach a video from Youtube, where I explain this activity and I show the mini teacher slide.

Don´t worry... motivate with slides!

Don´t worry... teach happy!