Reading badge projects

Different students have different abilities. While this has always been the case, it is even more apparent during this period of online learning. It's a challenging period for all of us, but while some students are struggling with the basic tasks we give them and require extra assistance, there may be others who would appreciate other (and different) challenges. This is why I've created a voluntary reading badge project. Reading is an engaging activity they can easily do on their own, and it has a high educational value. What is more, it is a form of personalized and differentiated learning since the students can choose their own titles with different language levels. But where to find books in the time of quarantine, and what to do with them once they've been read? I've prepared a list of suggestions.

YOUNGER STUDENTS

Younger students are supposed to read (or listen to) a book and then make a mind-map including the title of the book, the author, the main characters, five new vocabulary items and a drawing of their favourite scene. They are also supposed to write a short summary in their mother tongue and then send it all to me via email.

There are a lot of stories online that students can access for free. Here are some suggestions:

• https://worldbook.kitaboo.com/reader/worldbook/index.html#!/
• https://www.storylineonline.net/?fbclid=IwAR1zABRx6qpJhzMdM8j7Zdb-_Y8gQfrWLEQMuo9eyDnqc0VofmQhg6Cuniw
• http://www.kizclub.com/reading3.htm

TEENAGERS

Older students are supposed to read a book, write a summary in about 200 – 300 words and send it to me via email. Again, there are a lot of stories online that students can access for free. Here are some suggestions:

https://english-e-reader.net/

http://aj3000.com/wp/free-graded-readers/

https://www.gutenberg.org/

https://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Kindle-Store-eBooks/zgbs/digital-text/154606011/ref=zg_bs?_encoding=UTF8&tf=1

https://www.smashwords.com/books/category/1/newest/0/free/any

Obviously, there are so many different activities students could do with the books they've read, but during this period I've decided to keep it simple. The generel guideline right now is "less is more".

All students get extra credit for every book they read and present. However, let's hope some do it for the sake of fun and learning as well. :)

Brezplačen dostop do e-gradiv

Nekatere založbe so zaradi zaprtja šol omogočile brezplačen dostop do elektronskih in interaktivnih gradiv, ki vključujejo tudi učbenike, delovne zvezke, samostojne delovne zvezke in vadnice, ki jih učenci uporabljajo pri pouku. Ker so učenci pustili nekatera gradiva v šoli, smo s sodelavci zbrali nekaj povezav do gradiv posameznih slovenskih založb. Po navedbah založb naj bi bila učencem ta interaktivna podpora na voljo ne glede na to, katera tiskana učna gradiva uporabljajo pri pouku.

1. Rokus Klett

Gradiva so brezplačno dostopna na spletnih straneh: OSNOVNA ŠOLA www.Lilibi.si (1.–3. razred) www.Radovednih-pet.si (4.–5. razred) www.iRokus.si in www.iRokusPlus.si (6.–9. razred) www.znamzavec.si (interaktivne osnovnošolske vadnice za SLO, MAT, ANG, KEM) SREDNJA ŠOLA www.iRokus.si

Postopek prijave/registracije: Na izbranem portalu kliknite na gumb Prijava. Če ste že uporabnik portala, vnesite svoj e-naslov in geslo ter sledite navodilom. Če na portal dostopate prvič, kliknite na polje Nimam še uporabniškega računa in vnesite zahtevane podatke. Tako se boste registrirali in ustvarili uporabniški račun. a.    Na portalu iRokus.si gradiva v svojo iZbirko dodate s klikom na gumb Dodaj brezplačna gradiva. b.    Na portalih Lilibi.si, Radovednih-pet.si in iRokusPlus.si pa vas bodo vsa gradiva že čakala v vaši iZbirki. Priporočamo uporabo brskalnika Mozilla Firefox.

2. Modrijan 

Gradiva so brezplačno dostopna na spletni strani www.iRokus.si.

Postopek prijave/registracije:

1. Na portalu iRokus.si kliknite na gumb Prijava.
2. Če ste že uporabnik portala, vnesite svoj e-naslov in geslo ter sledite navodilom. Če na portal dostopate prvič, kliknite na polje Nimam še uporabniškega računa in vnesite zahtevane podatke. Tako se boste registrirali in ustvarili uporabniški račun.
3. Gradiva v svojo iZbirko dodate s klikom na gumb Dodaj brezplačna gradiva.

Če imate več otrok, morate za vsakega otroka ustvariti lastni uporabniški račun, da bo lahko vsak dostopal do gradiv za svoj razred.

3. Mladinska knjiga

• Od ponedeljka, 16. marca 2020, naprej bodo imeli tudi vsi učenci brezplačen dostop do interaktivnih gradiv na portalu www.ucimte.com. Za uporabo ne bo potrebna registracija, dostop jim omogoča delo z interaktivnimi samostojnimi delovnimi zvezki, ki omogočajo preverjanje rešitev.

• Brezplačen dostop do interaktivnih nalog za učence in učitelje na www.ucimse.com za utrjevanje znanja.

4. DZS

Za brezplačen dostop do vsebin na portalu https://www.evedez.si/ jim pišete na promocije@dzs.si in sporočite, za kateri razred in predmet bi želeli prejeti brezplačne elektronske in interaktivne vsebine.

5. E-učbeniki Touchstone

• http://e-gradiva.com/dokumenti/T6/eT6/index.htm?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter_105&utm_campaign=touchstone-6-new
  (učbenik Touchstone 6 s posnetki za ANG, Založba Obzorja)
• https://touchstone.si/eucbenik (učbeniki Touchstone 7, 8, 9 s posnetki za ANG, Založba Tangram)

6. MY SAILS 1 (Založba Obzorja): http://e-gradiva.com/dokumenti/MS1/eMS1/index.htm?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter_110&utm_campaign=my-sails-1-new

7. Knjižnici

V času, ko ukrepi zaradi preprečevanja širjenja koronavirusa predvidevajo delovanje v domačem okolju in izključujejo javno življenje, knjižnice pa so zaprte, tudi Narodna in univerzitetna knjižnica (Nuk) dostop do nekaterih gradiv in knjig omogoča na daljavo. "V zadnjem času dobivamo veliko sporočil od staršev, da iščejo knjige za domače branje, ki pa niso dostopne, tako da smo poslali priporočilo, da tudi učitelji uporabljajo našo digitalno knjižnico in gradiva, ki so javno dostopna vsem, kljub temu, da so javne ustanove zdaj zaprte," je povedal Žiga Cerkvenik iz službe za prireditve in odnose z javnostjo. Dostop do knjig na daljavo omogoča tudi spletna knjigarna in knjižnica Biblos. Omogoča izposojo ali nakup e-knjige, odprt je 24 ur na dan vse dni v tednu, kako in na katerih napravah deluje, pa je mogoče izvedeti na samem portalu.

Hello again!

A wave to my fellow teachers and everybody else! I hope everyone is feeling okay. 

Due to other obligations, this page has been on hold for a while. As of Monday, March 16, the coronavirus pandemic has forced Slovenia to close our schools and resort to the means of online learning, a phenomenom that has happened to a number of countries worldwide. With the world staying home and moving online, what better timing to jump-start My Slo English Classroom. I'll do my best with posting and sharing relevant content, but the most important message I want to share is #stayhome and #staysafe.

This too shall pass.

Take care,

Katarina

MGM Online Teacher's code

Since a lot of you have been asking for this year's teachers code for Mary Glasgow Plus website to take a sneak peek before deciding on a subcription. This year's teachers' code is ejbzw8. You're welcome!

Upcoming workshops and seminars

I have to admit I haven't been very active in the area of of professional development this year. The school year just seems to go by faster each year. However, here are more chances:


Understanding IELTS: Techniques for English Language Tests (webinar)

Rokus Klett: Učitelj prihodnosti (Brdo pri Kranju, Mar 3)

EXPLORERS (Mar 2018)

Super Minds (Mar 2018)

MOOC-V: O kraji gesel, virusih in spletnem nasilju (Mar 2018)

Shrove Tuesday

Mmm ... It's Shrove Tuesday again. Time to put on our costumes (yet again! Yay, the perks of being a teacher), eat some more delicious food (not that I need a special reason for that) and have some more fun and engaging lessons in my classroom. 

Here are some Shrove Tuesday activities from my classroom (grades 1 - 9).

Paper doll dress up

Playway to English 1 activities - my students don't have their own textbooks, so I project the materials on my smartboard.

Peppa Pig: Fancy Dress Party (Youtube video)

Mary Glasgow Plus: Pancake Day and Valentine's Day (Culture Crew video & activities)

British Council Teens: Pancake Day (reading comprehension & interactive exercises)

Aaaand a very hungry teacher with a doughnut at the end of the school day. I ate five. Yes, five. No wonder Shrove Tuesday is also called Fat Tuesday.

The many faces of a teacher

Teaching is certainly no monotonous job and it doesn't have to be Halloween or Mardi Grass for a teacher to look different than his normal self. Can't tell you how many times I've roamed the school halls wearing silly clothes and paint on my face - and I've managed to venture outside the school walls looking like this on more than one occasion as well! But if you're a true teacher, you learn to make do with curious glances, don't you?

Here are just some of the costumes I've had to put on recently - OK, the last photo isn't technically a costume, but it actually took more guts than roaming the streets of Ljubljana dressed as a witch. :)

Visiting the mines of Mežica, Oct 2018

The Roman Emona field trip, Nov 2018

The Ljubljana ZOO, Nov 2018

My class and our little Christmas party

Sharing is caring #4

As by popular demand, here is this year's MGM code: 

Teachers' code: p5b234
Student's code: jupiter5

May it come in handy!

Some YL activities from my classroom

Hey there. It's been a while since I posted any updates from my classroom so here are some activities I've done with my young learners recently.

• The Little Train

The Little Train is a story from the Hello Robby Rabbit course. This is how we approached it: we began by listening to The Little Train story. Later the students also acted it out - but not without making the prompts first! Making the little train and the puppets was an effective group work activity while I was assessing individual students.

• Robots

This is a CLIL lesson and you can find the lesson plan here: Izdelajmo robota (Slovene only). I added The Robot Chant, a lovely TPR activity from Happy Street.

• Finger Family

I'm sure you're all familiar with the Finger Family song. It's great for learning the words for family members. What you can do to make it more fun when singing it is you take a felt-tip pen and draw little faces on each of your fingers. Now there's a real finger family living on your hand!

• Paper clowns

This was another group work activity. And our topic? Take a wild guess! Face and body parts, of course. The clowns were later given names and some of the braver students took their shot at describing the clowns (with a little help of their benevolent teacher). Mind you, this activity does take some preparation. Since our time in the classroom is limited and language goals are above content goals, I took the liberty to prepare and drew the body parts in advance. So basically what the students did was cut out the parts and paste them together which allowed us to spend more time on language goals. The students were proud of their work nonetheless and insisted I put their clowns on display.

• My school

We made origami schools from paper and filled them with different rooms. The one in the first photo is mine - the students used drawing, not writing - and the second one was a surprise for me from one of my students. As I only had an English origami school, she felt I could use a Slovene one, too. :)

That's it for now, I hope it comes in handy. Stay tuned for more updates from my classroom!

Most read blog posts of 2016

Looking back on 2016, I published 25 blog posts on different teaching-related topics ranging from lesson plans, teaching ideas and  professional devolopment to different teaching statistics. Here are the top 5 most-visited ones. 

1. It's Christmas time ...
   
2. Autumn and young learners
   
3. Angleščina v prvi triadi OŠ v številkah (Slovene only)
   
4. Upcoming workshops, seminars and webinars
   
5. Describing a person: MY TEACHER

And here's the most viewed post on My Slo English Classroom Facebook page: Tongue Twisters in my classroom. That's it from me for 2016. See you next year! 

It's Christmas time ...

It's that time of the year again. Joyful and happy, stressful and hectic. There's much more going on in school and somehow you have to balance that with your just-as-eventful private life. Somehow find time for everything. Add to that students with their minds already on holidays (if they're in school at all) and there you have it: the joy of teaching in December. Whatever you think of Christmas time, one thing is for sure: your ordinary lesson plans just won't do. Here's what I did/will be doing with my students this December:

First and second graders

• The snowflake quiz

This lesson plan comes from Super Simple Learning and my youngest seem to love it. What we did was sing the Little Snowflake song, make paper snowflakes and competed in a Snowflake Quiz (the Falling snowflakes activity). The latter  is not only fun, but also a great way to revise vocabulary before assessing.

• Christmas games

Even though I'm sure there are special Christmas games for children out there, I took the simple way out and just adopted some of the games I normally play with my students and gave them a holiday theme. For example, we often play Simon Says with my students but in December we play Santa Says. Instead of Spiders and Candy we play Grinch and Presents. We do the Freeze Dance to Christmas songs. You get the idea.

• Christmas songs

Personally, I don't think it's always reasonable to teach traditional Christmas carols with complex lyrics and obsolete language at this level. But since most of my students are already familiar with the most famous ones, I decided to focus on two of the most famous Christmas songs anyway: We Wish You a Merry Christmas and Jingle Bells. I did choose slightly modified versions, however. As for the first one, I only teach the chorus (see my favourite version by Maple Leaf Learning HERE), and as for the second one, the Happy Street version is just perfect.

• A letter to Father Christmas

My first and second graders don't write in English yet. What they can do, however, is either draw or cut and paste pictures of different kinds of toys they want for Christmas on a sheet of paper and then "read" their letters to one another. 

There are loads of Christmas catalogues from different shops, why not make use of them?

Here's the amount of catalogues I was given by the friendly staff at Müller Ljubljana.

• Reading Christmas storybooks

My favourite ones include: Father Christmas (Playway to English 1 story cards), Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer, Peppa's Christmas and Peppa's Christmas Wish (also available as Youtube videos), The Mitten (My Fairyland 1 story cards) and others. Find more HERE or HERE. 

• Making Christmas cards

You just cannot get through December without making Christmas cards. But one thing's for sure: I'm not writing them by hand this year! Here are some ideas for Christmas card designs:

Made by my first graders with my humble assistance

Made by students from our school for our Christmas Bazaar

http://christmas2016ideas.com

As for older students, we're on a much tighter curriculum and testing takes place right after holidays so if you want to have Christmas lessons, you just have to find a way to incorporate them into whatever language goals you're dealing with at that moment. This is how I do it:

Fourth graders
Here's where we can finally write some real letters to Father Christmas. We're using Happy Street coursebooks and we've just finished discussing toys. Also, letter writing is one of our main topics this year (we even started a penfriend project with another school, more on this in one of my future posts) so writing a letter to Father Christmas is the obvious next step. Instead of posting them, we'll pin them around the classroom for Father Christmas - and everyone else - to see. Not that any of the students in fourth grade still believe in Father Christmas, but they do like getting their work exhibited around the classroom.


Sixth graders
There are two language goals we're currently dealing with that I managed to squeeze into my Christmas lessons: location (There is/are + prepositions of place) and the Present Simple Tense. 

The first one is easy. All you have to do is place different festive objects around the classroom and leave it to the students to describe their location. To make it more fun, you can hide the objects and play a little Hide-and-seek or guessing games. Who says grammar has to be dull?

Now that we covered the location part with Christmas games, it's time for Present Simple. We're doing that with a Christmas song and with a little help from my friend Mariah Carey. Yes, it's All I Want For Christmas. And why not? The first part is full of Present Simple examples and there's plenty of things you can do with it: gap fills, rewriting the song in the third person singular, writing your own similar songs etc. And since the second part of the song is rich with Future Simple, that makes it perfect for older students as well. For more ideas of working with music lyrics, see on of my previous posts.

Here's my friend Mariah. There's also a version of this song with Justin Bieber if you think your students would like it. And of course, the ever adorable Love Actually version!

Eighth graders
We're discussing charity and if that doesn't scream Christmas, I don't know what does. I found some great Christmas charity resources on maryglasgowplus.com and if you want to take a sneak peek, you can find the teacher code for their materials HERE. 


Ninth graders
We're dealing with national cuisines and we've just started to discuss the passive voice. You know there's only one thing we can do here, right? That's right, Christmas recipes! We'll write them in the passive voice: first in the present passive to describe the recipe and then the past passive to explain how they'd done it. And maybe they could even bring proof they'd actually done it to the classroom? :)

https://peopledotcom.files.wordpress.com

So here you have it - my festive season survival plan. For more ideas, see some of my previous posts on Christmas/winter lessons: CLICK, CLICK nad CLICK.

My school's contribution to this year's Christmas spirit of Ljubljana

Upcoming workshops, seminars and webinars

Never pass a chance for professional development! Here are some upcoming seminars/webinars, lots of them free of charge:

• Teaching Your Subject in English (free online CLIL course, started Oct 31)
• Teaching for Success: the Classroom and the World (free online course with the possibility of buying a Certificate of Achievement, starts Nov 21)
  
  
  
  
  
• Reach for the Stars (webinar, Nov 17) 
  

• Le z drugimi smo (Murska Sobota, Nov 16 – 17; Kranj, Dec 8 – 9) 
  
• Komunikacija in delo z učenci, ki motijo pouk (Maribor, Nov 29)
• Študijska srečanja angleščina (Oct – Nov)
• OUP Conference Slovenia (Ljubljana, Dec 9)
  
  
  
• 24th International IATEFL Slovenia Conference (March 9 – 12)
  
  
  

For more course announcements, also follow my Facebook page!

Halloween in my classroom

Once again, it's one of my favourite festivals of the year: Halloween! Here's what we did for Halloween with my young learners:

I recycled my last year's Halloween lesson with my first graders. As they say, don't fix it if it ain't broken! And yet again, the lesson turned out perfect. Here are some photos of this year's Halloween party from our school's website: CLICK

As my second graders had already enjoyed the privilege of the lesson above last year, we changed things a bit. Of course, we kept the trick-or-treating part. But before trick or treating, I told them the Dark Dark Wood story to set the mood. Then we sang the Knock Knock, Trick or Treat song: 

After that we had a Maths activity in the form of a pumpkin puzzle with additions and subtractions. I got the idea from the Angleščina v 1. triletju Facebook group - thank you!

I also used the Dark Dark Wood story for my fourth graders as I believe creating the right atmosphere for Halloween is key. Then we did some great activities I found on Bogglesworld. And finally, I took them trick-or-treating around classrooms as well. You think fourth graders find that too childish? Well, think again! In fact, my older students resented me a bit for not taking THEM trick-or-treating too!

Oh, and did I mention we did all of these classroom activities with spooky Halloween music in the background? 

I did do some Halloween themed activities with my older students as well. As it turns out, Slovenians are widely misinformed about Halloween - and regretfully, so are some of the teachers. No, it's not a silly modern American invention. There are plenty of very educational articles and videos available online - here's one. Add a reading/listening comprehension exercise and some vocabulary and you've got yourself a perfect Halloween lesson for teenagers. And not to leave them empty handed, I gave them Halloween candy once they finished with the worksheets.

So another Halloween has gone by ... But we are already looking forward to Christmas!

Sharing is caring #3: MG+

You may remember that I shared the codes to the Mary Glasgow Magazines website the last couple of years. I've had a request to do this again this year so here goes: use w4akjc for teacher pages or owl1 for student pages. You're welcome!

Anketa o pouku angleščine v prvi triadi

Zanima me, kako poteka pouk angleščine v prvi triadi po slovenskih osnovnih šolah. K reševanju kratke ankete (3 – 4 min) vabljeni vsi, ki poučujete angleščino v katerem od prvih treh razredov OŠ. Rezultate bom objavila na blogu. Hvala za sodelovanje!

https://www.1ka.si/a/105451

Hello, Robby Rabbit!

I used to teach English at Pionirski dom and back then, young learners were my speciality. My youngest were ages 4 and 5. We did lots of independent language learning activities, but the courses at Pionirski dom did require coursebooks. The coursebook we used for age groups 4 and 6 were Hello, Robby Rabbit 1 and 2 by Carol Read and Ana Soberon. Personally, I tried not to put too much emphasis on coursebook work with my young learners (or any learners, for that matter), but I have to admit their other course materials such as storycards, flashcards, DVDs etc. were very valuable. However, they also seemed to be quite pricey ... Till now. Macmillam has decided to put their storycards and flashcards online. All you need now is some time, a printer and a laminator. Because we all know there is no such thing as too many stories! And even though this course was originally published for preschoolers, I find that the stories from the course are just as suitable for first or second graders as well.

Hello Robby Rabbit 1 stories: Hello, Robby Rabbit (emphasis on: intro, colours). Hickory Dickory Dock (counting), Buzz Buzz Buzz (face), I Like Bananas (food), Where's My Teddy Bear? (furniture), Five Little Green Frogs (counting)

Hello Robby Rabbit 2 stories: Robby's Birthday (birthday), Humpty Dumpty (clothes), The Little Train (farm animals/colours), Hurry Up, Gemma (morning routine), The Sun and the Cloud (weather), Old Macdonald's Farm (farm animals)

Upcoming workshops and seminars

Here are some new free (or reasonably priced) seminars/webinars:

• NLP Creative Focus (Ljubljana, Feb 18)
• OUP webinars (Feb)
• Cambridge English webinars (Feb - Apr)

• Creative Language Learning (Ljubljana/Maribor, March 1, 2)

• 23rd International IATEFL Slovenia Conference (Topolščica, March 3 - 6)
  
• Advance. Inspire. Teach. (Portorož, March 5)

• Super Minds (Mar 8 - Apr 6)

How many are you attending? 

Sharing is caring #3

I wrote a post about Mary Glasgow Magazines about a year ago and shared a password for Teacher pages with additional resources such as videos, printables etc. New school year, new password (OK so the school year started a  while ago but better late then never!). So, this year's password is fdjpu9 for teacher pages and queen1 for student pages. For promotional purpuses only, of course ;)