Competent learners

Besides learning the contents comprised in the syllabus, our students are constantly developing the basic competences that will make them better learners for life. Recently, in the 2nd Year Baccalaureate English class, students embarked on a project that involved most of the seven key competences included in the curriculum of the Ministry of Education. 

Students created a poster which reviewed a music festival held in 2017. They used their communicative competence throughout the process, especially when they presented their results in front of their peers and answered the teacher’s questions. Their mathematical competence was used in the design of the poster, in deciding how much information to write in each category or how much space to take up with festival images.

The learning to learn competence was applied when organizing the information they found online into the sections that the review had to feature; and to obtain the information students used their digital competence to go online in the iMac room and find the details of the festival. They worked autonomously during parts of the process and used their social and civic competences for those parts in which they had to cooperate with the members of their team. Finally, since most of the festivals they selected take place in English-speaking countries or feature English-speaking performers, students were also exposed to the cultural and artistic competence.

It was a motivating project that had students engaged in creating a product about a topic of their interest. Throughout the experience they used English meaningfully and in a realistic way. 

Who knows, perhaps some of them will want to be music critics or festival organizers, and at School we try to give them the tools to be able to pursue their dreams in an ever more globalized world.

Javier García

English teacher

On the road to IB English

As you may know, the Levante International School is a candidate school for the International Baccalaureate DP and MYP programs, but, what does this all mean? And how is the teaching and learning of English different in the IB from what we have been doing so far in the Spanish Secondary and Baccalaureate programs?

The International Baccalaureate (IB) program wants its students to be thinkers, communicators, people with integrity and with an open mind, bold, and balanced. It asks teachers to provide intellectual challenges for students. At school, we will start teaching the Diploma Program (DP) the next academic year, and gradually we will also incorporate the Middle Years Program (MYP), equivalent to the Spanish Secondary years.

For the time being, let us look at the DP and at how English works within this program. The Diploma Program is one course that lasts for two academic years (equivalent to the Spanish Baccalaureate), and students work on six subjects in this program: one Language A (their mother tongue), one Language B (English in our school), one Humanities or Social Studies, one Experimental Science, one Maths and one Arts. Students choose one subject from each group, and they can choose two from one group if they do not wish to do an Arts subject. Besides the six subjects, the DP has three compulsory components: Theory of Knowledge (TOK), Creativity, Action and Service (CAS), and Extended Essay. These three core components interact with the six subjects. For example, a student can do their Extended Essay in English or use English to carry out their CAS project in their community.

Normally, three of the academic subjects are taught at Higher Level (HL) and three others at Standard Level (SL). English at school will be taught at Higher Level because of the extensive background knowledge of the language that our students possess when they reach the DP course. This implies a minimum of 240 hours of class over the two years, instead of just 150 for the SL subjects and, in the case of English, it also involves the study of English literature, which is not dealt with at Standard Level.

The English subject curriculum has three compulsory topics that every class needs to work on: communication and media, global issues and social relationships. In addition to these, teachers can choose to work on two optional topics among the following: science and technology, customs and traditions, cultural diversity and leisure and health. Both the core and the optional topics are divided into more approachable sub-topics. Attention to sociocultural aspects is as important as communicative skills and linguistic components, and grammar is always meant to be taught in context. As far as assessment is concerned, there is both an internal and an external evaluation. The external part is sent to the IB organization to mark, and the internal one is assessed at school, but also forwarded to the IB for moderation and feedback. Rubrics are employed to assess the different components.

Teachers preparing to work in the IB must study their Subject Guide published by the IB organization and attend a training workshop in order to be certified. The workshop covers areas such as course planning, teaching techniques, the different exam papers, the intercultural dimension of the IB or the links between Theory of Knowledge and a subject such as English. Workshops are a great opportunity to meet and network with teachers from other schools who are in a similar process and to exchange information and help each other.

All in all, it is an exciting process to be a part of, a process of adapting to a new methodology that has been tested for many years and that produces students who are much more prepared to face their university degrees in an increasingly international reality.

Javier García Sebastià

English Department Coordinator

Hotel Brochures

Our 2nd Year Baccalaureate students started their writing tasks this school year with a group assignment. Their first unit dealt with leisure and relaxation, and they had to create a brochure advertising a hotel. We decided to use real hotels in Spain, that the students had visited or knew about, and we used iPads and the Pages app to create a layout that would look professional. They wrote about the hotels’ locations, restaurants or spas, and they chose photos and color patterns to go with their text. 

The results were amazing, quite like a real brochure any of these hotels might create to advertise their services, and the experience made the students realize how English can be used in the future if they want to pursue a career in advertising or in tourism.

Javier García Sebastià

English teacher

Das Perfekt-Spiel / The Present Perfect Game

Das Perfekt-Spiel

"Hast du dein Zimmer aufgeräumt?" Diese und andere Fragen und Sätze im Perfekt mussten unsere Deutschschüler der 9. Klasse (3 ESO) richtig formulieren, um das Perfekt-Spiel zu gewinnen. Spiel, Spaß und eine motivierende Art, um wichtige Grammatik Strukturen zu vertiefen.

The Present Perfect Game

"Hast du dein Zimmer aufgeräumt?" ("Have you tidied up your room?") Our 3rd Year Secondary German students had to formulate questions like this one correctly, using the right forms of the present perfect in order to win the game. Playing, having fun and revising important grammar at the same time.

El juego del perfecto

"Hast du dein Zimmer aufgeräumt?" ("¿Has arreglado tu habitación?") Nuestros alumnos de Alemán en 3º ESO tenían que formular preguntas y frases correctas usando el pretérito perfecto para ganar el juego. Una manera muy motivadora de repasar estructuras importantes en Alemán.

Conny Hellmann

Deutschlehrerin

Who said learning irregular verbs is boring?

It is really hard work for our students to learn irregular past tenses by heart. When they are asked to learn the past simple and past participle of irregular verbs they usually take the long irregular verbs list and try to do their best memorising it, but sometimes with little success. How could we make this monotonous task a little bit easier? Domino game can be helpful. The rules are easy: the first student who uses all his/her cards in the domino ‘snake’ wins the round.

We proposed the game to our 6th Year Primary groups and we realised that they were learning, spending a great moment in class and helping each other at the same time. Without noticing, our pupils learnt the famous ‘three columns’ by playing the board game and having fun. However, luck and strategy played an important role too. Not always the best players are the luckiest or the other way round! We still have a lot to practise!

Cristina Cutanda

English Department

Travel Agency Project

Students in 2nd Year Secondary have been carrying out a project in their Oral English subject.In groups, they had to imagine they ran a travel agency and had to choose two destinations for summer holidays to recommend to their customers.

Once they had chosen their destinations, they had to organise a pack of holidays in which they included pictures, different types of accommodation, most important places to visit and different trips around the city. Every group presented their travel agency to the rest of the class showing them what they had planned.After this, they made a short video giving their five top tips for going on holiday.

By doing this, they learnt about other cultures and about how to organise and plan a holiday. Also, they improved their expression and their fluency. It was good fun and they enjoyed it.

Thais Gomar

English Department

Practice Makes Perfect

In our English lessons in Bachillerato, we try to go above and beyond the syllabus that our students need to master in order to pass their university access tests. Even though the Reválida exam only includes a reading comprehension activity and a writing one, in class we work on the students’ speaking and listening skills, and cover a variety of topics which we believe will be useful in their future.

Nevertheless, it is our obligation to prepare them as well as we possibly can to take their access tests, since these will in some measure determine their future career. In this regard, this week we have been using YouTube videos as a resource in class.

The Universidad Miguel Hernández in Elche has a very good channel in which their professors give advice to students on how to choose option A or option B in their Reválida exam and then provide tips on how to solve each part of the test.

We played a video in class based on the 2015 English access test and pupils took notes on how to best approach each task and on how they would be graded. The group chose to work on Option B, and when they had finished the exam, they swapped exams and peer-graded their tests while watching a second video in which the UMH professor explained what the correct answers were and how to assess each section of the test.

It was a great addition to the normal preparation we do in class for their access exams, and it helped students to see the process from a different perspective. It is always good to learn from professionals.

Javier García

English teacher

MY IDEAL BREAKFAST

Research has found that schoolchildren who eat breakfast are twice as likely to perform above average at school than those who do not. We have noticed that it is really important to have a healthy breakfast every day and 3rd Year Primary pupils have prepared delicious meals to be shown in the class.

Most of them have chosen fruit, cupcakes and cereal or toast with jam, others have had snacks like nuts or muesli. To drink, they have preferred milk with cocoa and orange juice. Some pupils confessed that they hadn’t had a healthy breakfast during “Fallas” since they ate churros with chocolate.

We have learnt that breakfast foods are good sources of important nutrients such as calcium, iron and  B vitamins as well as protein and fibre.

We give you some advice: enjoy your breakfast but be careful with the calories!

 

Eva Furió

English Department

The importance of role playing

When children do role plays, they naturally become someone or something else. Role play stimulates their imagination, enhances their social development, encourages friendships, teaches children the importance of cooperative learning, teaches them to listen and take turns and increases empathy. They can also learn about other cultures and improve their language and movement skills, which is key to learning another language.

4th Year Primary had a great time doing their own role play in small groups of three. In the activity, two students were customers at a restaurant, diner or café, and they had to order from a menu using vocabulary from the unit and improving their manners by using would and wouldn't. Likewise, the third student was the waiter or waitress and had to make sure all their customers needs were met. The customers then got the chance to visit other restaurants and had to rate the service and the menu.

 It was an engaging activity that allowed students to incorporate the things learnt in Unit 3: Fantastic Food, into a realistic life situation. We will definitely be doing more role plays in the future!

Alessandra Bell

English Department

Let’s go to the restaurant!

Our five-year-old students in infants have done a little role play with the theme “going to the restaurant“. There were four customers and one waiter or waitress. The customers greeted the waiter or waitress politely as they entered the restaurant and were then shown to their table.

They received a menu with six different meals to choose from. After taking the order, the waiter or waitress served the food and everybody started eating. After finishing their meals, the customers got up, thanked the waiter or waitress for the delicious food and left the restaurant.  

It hasn’t been easy to remember all the lines, but the teacher prompter helped out when necessary and we had great fun putting on the apron and/or sitting down at the table, ordering food.

Infants teachers

Learning the parts of the human body

In English and in Social Science, 1st Year Primary students had learned the parts of the human body, but in English we have been able to review them all together as a team.

Using different students as models, first they made the shape of a person on a card, including all the details, such as the toes. Moreover, one by one, each student wrote the parts of the body.

After this, we played two games; in the first one, they had to find on the mural a part of the body that another student had chosen and said. In the second one, a student pointed to a part of the body on the mural and their partners had to say the name of that part of the body. In both games the students swapped roles among them.

This was a fun way to review and secure their learning in a cooperative way, involving them in their own learning.

Jesica Simó López-Maroto

English Department

Research projects on Fallas

During the first week of March the students of 3rd Year Secondary were working on a project about Fallas. They did research on the evolution of the Fallas male and female costumes from their origin (Valencian farmers’ clothes in the 18th and 19th centuries) until nowadays. They designed posters that showed the different types of male clothing: “torrentí” costume and “saragüell” costume; and the female clothing. They also included pictures and drawings.

The students of 4th Year Secondary took part in the elaboration of the school “llibret” of Fallas. In it, they explained the main events happening during Fallas, which are: the Building of the Fallas, the Prize Giving Ceremony, the Wake-up call, the Firework display, the Parades, the Flower Offering, the Bonfire Night and the Burning of the Fallas. To do that, they searched information on the internet and added their own ideas since most of them are falleros or have lived the Fallas experience at some point.

Both 3rd and 4th Year Secondary students were very excited about this project because it was a very interesting topic and they love Fallas. They were motivated and we could see that in the oral presentations they did to explain to the class what they had done.

Thais Gomar

English Department

MUSIC & WATER PROJECT

Have you ever tried making music with glasses filled with water? You can play your favorite songs with water glasses turned into instruments! 

How does it work? The glass with the most water will have the lowest tone while the glass with the least water will have the highest tone. Small vibrations are made when you hit the glass with a stick; this creates sound waves which travel through the water. More water means slower vibrations and a deeper tone, while less amount of water means faster vibrations and a higher tone. 

MATERIALS you will need:

• Drinking water glasses (or glass bottles) – one per student 
• Water 
• 7 or more different color paint – one for each note
• Wooden sticks such as pencils
• Music sheet of a known song - one copy per student
• Karaoke/Instrumental version of the song as accompaniment
• Video camera
• Student evaluation sheet

INSTRUCTIONS for the project:

• Practice the song (singing only) with and without accompaniment. Each student sings one note only! 
• Line up the water glasses and fill them with different amounts of water in order to get the correct pitch for each note. 
• Put a drop of paint of a different color in each glass. 
• Practice the song (playing) with and without accompaniment. Each student plays one note only! 
• Record a video of the song using the karaoke/instrumental version as accompaniment.
• Show the video to the class. Each student has to evaluate his/her own performance and the group´s overall performance using the Student Evaluation Sheet. 

This activity guarantees a fun and motivating experience for your class!

Alina Pele

Music Teacher - Primary and Secondary

Talks about diseases

Third Year Primary have been studying diseases. As there are great websites with information written in an easy way for children to understand, it was a nice subject for them to research themselves. In pairs, they read about a disease, for example "measles" and presented the information to the class. 

By sharing the information, they not only learnt about the disease they researched, but also about those investigated by their classmates.

Annabelle Reece

Science teacher

The Jungle Experience

"Say it and I will forget it, teach me and I will remember it, but involve me and I will learn it" (Chinese proverb). 1st Year Primary students have put, one more time, in practice this proverb to learn the five senses of the human body.

This kind of learning is usually tough, but 1st Year Primary students have been able to discover all these five senses by their interaction with them, being able to learn them at the same time they were playing and having a lot of fun. 

For this, they went to The Jungle Experience and, working in teams, they experimented the five senses: sight, taste, touch, hearing and smell. In each sense corner they were able to hear an instrument; smell different things (for example cinnamon or tangerines); taste sweet or salty food; touch mysterious things that were in boxes trying to discover what they were, and to see things on different distances. 

Each team started in one of the five corners and once they heard the bell, they moved to the next one. And this is not all! After all this experimentation, each student had the opportunity to share with their partners their experience lived during the lesson and what they learned.

Through this activity, not only did they have a lot of fun, they were really able to learn and understand each of the senses through experience.

Jesica Simó López-Maroto

English Department

OUR PERFECT HOLIDAYS

This term in 4th Year Secondary, we are learning about different types of holidays (‘niche’ travel, ‘flopout’ beach holidays…), specific vocabulary about locations and future forms. 

In order to put all these contents into practice, our students, in pairs, took turns to ask and answer questions to find out about their partner’s interests and hobbies, the type of accommodation and transport they prefer when they visit other places or the things they don’t enjoy doing while on holiday.

Taking into account all this information, they designed the perfect holiday for their partner and presented it to all the class. In their presentations, they used future tenses and included the name of the holiday, its length and location, the means of transport used, the accommodation provided and the main activities offered.

After the presentations, their partners told the class if they had liked the suggested type of holiday and gave reasons for their opinions. 

Eva Pérez

English Department

COOPERATIVE GAME BOX

The times have changed and with them our students, that's why their way of learning should be focused on their necessities. It is because of this fact that the cooperative game box was created for the English classes of 1st Year Primary.

This box contains all the main objectives that 1st Year Primary students should learn during the year, specifically vocabulary. What is more, inside each content game bag there are different games based on different degrees of difficulty.

The lessons with this methodology are set like this: there are five tables, each one with a specific learning objective, and each day students join a different table until they have worked on all five tables. The learning objectives for each table cover phonics, reading, numbers, vocabulary and free writing.

Once they are on the table they will work together on the same objective, so they can help each other with the support of the teacher. While they are working in teams on the different tables, the teacher goes around the class helping, correcting and supervising them. The topics will be chosen with the idea of reviewing past topics, present topics and future ones.

This method allows our students to learn according to their necessities in a fun and cooperative way, involving all the English skills.

Jesica Simó López-Maroto

English Department

BE CURIOUS

What does curiosity mean to you? This is the question we used to start our English lesson some days ago and it made our pupils think for a while before introducing them to a new activity. Students came up with several ideas and after a short discussion, we all agreed that curiosity was, in general terms, an eager desire to learn or know about anything, but a bigger problem came when they were asked how to represent curiosity in a picture.

It was in that moment when we introduced them to the Cambridge Photography Competition that allows students to give their imagination free rein and use English to describe it afterwards. Motivated by their bustling thoughts some of them decided to have a go and take part in the competition. They had to take a curious photograph, although there was no need to know a lot about photography. They only needed to have a mobile phone or something to take a photo with and be creative when writing an English description of the picture that stirred curiosity among the audience.

They loved the activity and did their best, so as you can see, they have done their part and now it’s time to wait for the results. However, there’s something we can do for them.

Let’s vote for their ‘CuriosiPics’! (http://www.curiosipics.cambridge.es/)

Cristina Cutanda

English Department

PHONICS

In 1st Year Primary, since the first day of school, students have been learning the alphabet but in a way in which they have never learned it.

The first day they discovered that every single letter has a name and also that they have their own sound (phonic). Furthermore, we saw how the composition of letters can make new sounds, sometimes a little bit tricky, or that there are words called tricky words, which are a bit naughty and try to confuse us because they are read in a different way as the letter sounds.

So in conclusion, we have been working with Jolly Phonics, where with songs, games, movements and sounds, 1st Year Primary students are learning how to read, write and talk properly in English. And the most important thing is that they are learning it while having a lot of fun!

Furthermore, pupils have been working on a phonic film where all the students are teachers: the alphabet, phonics (sounds of the letters), how to read properly using phonics, the magic e... And with all the effort we have put into it, now, everyone is able to see this magnificent production and learn English with 1st Year Primary students.

Hope you enjoy it as we have enjoyed making it!

Jesica Simó López-Maroto

English Department

WATER IS LIFE

The main idea of our project was to design a slogan to show different ways in which water is used. We designed pictures to go with our slogans, inside a huge drop of water, and pasted them onto a card.Then, we added some photos related to water and its uses like: drinking, washing, cleaning, painting, cooking etc. 

We talked about the importance of water in our daily hygiene routines to keep us clean and healthy. 

We have learnt that every single drop counts and we have done some fun exercises about this, imagining what could happen if we ignore leaks in our houses. 

As planet Earth is vital for us, we watched a video about the pollution in oceans and seas and we came up with some ideas to reduce pollution.

Now we know the importance of water and how to use it properly in order to sustain our planet.

Yes, we care. 

Eva Furió

English Department