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

Using music in the classroom

Using music in the classroom is always a good idea. It can provide a background for students to feel comfortable talking to each other in English without feeling listened to during speaking activities, it can be used for dictations, or to do research projects and work on a part of English culture.

In this case, we used the song “Where Is the Love?” by the Black Eyed Peas in 2nd Year Bachillerato to introduce the theme in a new unit and to do a Use of English exercise. 

At the beginning of the lesson, students listened to the song and jotted down the topics it deals with. They came up with concepts like “discrimination,” “terrorism” or “money,” and from that they had to guess the theme of Unit 8, which we were about to begin. Cristina was right in guessing that the unit theme was “Issues.”

After a couple of introductory activities in the book, we rounded off the lesson using the same song for a listening comprehension/grammar activity. This time it was not the usual “fill in the blanks” routine. Students were given a word from the family of the missing word next to each blank (if they needed the adjective, they were given the noun or the verb), and they had to practice the same word transformation routine that they need to master for the Use of English section of the First Certificate exam that some of them will be taking this year.

It was a nice way to use music both to make the introduction to a new unit more interesting and to practice the students’ grammar skills in an unusual manner. The students loved it.

Javier García

English Department

Question Tags in the Class

Our class has learnt about question tags for the first time. Question tags are mainly used in oral conversations so, after learning the theory, we did a very interesting activity: writing a dialogue including ten question tags so we could practise this new content. Afterwards, we recorded ourselves performing the conversation.

Like this, question tags were much easier to learn and remember. We had lots of fun!

By Ana Ferrandis, Marisa Rico, Andrea Ruiz and Sara Moreno

(Students of 1st Year Secondary B)

Class on USA Culture

Some weeks ago, our teacher Mr García asked us if we wanted to have a presentation and a class about life in the United States, and we accepted without doubting.

So finally, Elena Merino, the lady that was going to teach us something about the US lifestyle came and explained to us that she had lived there for approximately four years, from 2003 to 2006, and she had stayed in West Virginia, so she told us about the state, its nature, peoples, hobbies, food and many more things.

At the beginning, she asked if we could locate West Virginia in the US map, and we couldn’t… Then she showed us the flag of the state and the reasons for its symbols, so she talked about the symbols and the main economic activities of West Virginia. Later, she spoke about the different seasons and nature in the state, and the main sports they like to practice there (American football). 

Finally, she showed us a great variety of typical foods they have, and we got surprised, because the people from West Virginia are the fattest in the United States.

In conclusion, I would say that it was a very interesting activity in which we could learn many things about different lifestyles and practice our English.

Luis Mestre

2nd Year Bachillerato