Midwayalready!

Hi all
Still havin´a ball and doing some teaching in between! No repeat of the foray into Laura´s swimming pool though as much cooler weather this week! Brr!

Following on from two successful lessons on conditionals with B1 and B2 classes on Monday, it was back into three evenings of CEFIRE teacher training sessions in Valencia. This is a real privilege to be able to interact and learn from Spanish teachers as well as help them improve their level of English. Their ideas for lesson activities range from the incredibly simple but effective to the more technologically brilliant but equally effective so benefitting all of us. This week after more 2:1 sessions, the focus moved to 5:1 team sessions led by all the native speakers in which the Spanish teachers have to work together to devise some activities for a lesson topic basedon a context and delivered using a specific grammar point. My group have to create teaching resources on the five senses for 2nd primary level and are using "like/dislike" as the grammar point. This week was a brainstorming session. Next Thursday the group has to prepare a short PowerPoint presentation to showcase their ideas with each team member to devise and speak about two activities. Presentations will be delivered to the whole CEFIRE group in the final session. This is a really exciting initiative to be part of and I´m learning as much as I´m sharing with others.

As I type this, it is now 16:45 on Friday afternoon and 15 minutes from my next A" class. We will again focus on celebration with a focus on usage of the vocabulary as well as speaking which builds on last weeks lesson. This will be followed by a B1 class on likes and dislikes and a B2 class preparing for Cambridge exams so covering writing essays and magazine articles. More to follow later folks!

It is now 20:15 and all three lessons safely and successfully delivered! I loved each lesson for different reasons. My A2 class organised a Mediterranean cruise to celebrate the end of their exams;and I thought I had big ideas! Then with my B2 class we explored how to write a good essay and discussed structure, form and I encouraged the use of adjectives and adverbs. This was a little tricky in places but I think I handled the lesson quite well. Then my B1 class was the icing on a great, three tiered Friday cake of lessons in which students were sat in two rows of three. I asked questions about leisure and spending habits which students discussed in pairs then feedback via mime or by giving clues to the class depending on the question! This was really funny at times and we ate much chocolate too!! The miming was especially funny. With each new question so the students moved one place clockwise and so spoke with a new person each time. This worked very well. I´m now off for a well deserved beer. I leave Schola Academy tonight a very happy bunny!! Cheers!!