European programmes

Information about deadlines to apply for the different activities of the Lifelong Learning Programme (Comenius, etc.) has been published.
In Basque
In Spanish

British Council wiki

The organizers of the 'British Council Teachers Conference: Celebrating 70 Years of Quality Language Teaching' have created a wiki aimed at collecting information, feedback, resources and links related to the contents of the events held in Bilbao, Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia.

European Day of Languages

The European Day of Languages has been celebrated every year since 2001 on 26 September at the initiative of the Council of Europe. Its general objectives are alerting the public to the importance of language learning, promoting the rich linguistic and cultural diversity of Europe, and encouraging lifelong language learning in and out of school.

Information about events can be found in this web page.

Free Rice

I read in this post from Palabras Tendidas blog about Free Rice, a non-profit website run by the United Nations World Food Program together with the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University.

You can choose a topic from a selection of subjects (Geograhy, Art, English, Spanish, etc...) and try to answer questions in a quiz. For every right answer, ten grains of rice are donated by the UN World Food Program to help fight hunger in the world.

Teachers exchange

This is just a short informative notice about the 'intercambio puesto por puesto' a project within the European Lifelong Learning Programme.

Some ideas for short projects when working in a CLIL approach

Looking for some ideas and resources related to CLIL in Primary, I've come across the following presentation by Nina Lauder. I find some suggestions inspirational to introduce project work related to other curricular subjects in the English classroom.

Project Work and CLIL

View more presentations from Nina Lauder.

I see that several ideas are taken from the JET series of books published by Scholastic. Some sample pages on that site can give ideas of the contents in the books, such as this mini book on Sports.

CLIL Cascade Network

Laura tells us through the chatbox in this blog about CLIL Cascade Network , a project funded with the support from the European Commission as an activity in the Lifelong Learning Programme. Registration is required in order to access this web contents.

In this page you can find information about some CLIL courses organized by the Summer University of Lapland and the University of Jyväskylä, in cooperation with the CLIL Cascade Network partnership in autumn 2009.

School outings

These are some organizations that offer visits in English for school groups in the Basque Country:

Bilbao Fine Arts Museum has this Programa educativo. Among other activities, they offer a 'contact tour' addressed to students in the 2nd and 3rd stages (levels 3 to 6) of primary education.

Aquarium in Donostia a choice of visits that can be in Basque, Spanish, English, French and German.
Guggenheim Bilbao also organizes visits to theme workshops on the Permanent Collection, temporary exhibitions or the Museum architecture for primary school pupils.

Bubbleshare

Information about Bubbleshare, how it can be used and an example of photo slide presentation made by Primary 3 students can be found in this entry on Encouraging Learner Autonomy blog.

BritLit

BETEA (Basque English Teachers' Association) has organised a small event to introduce in the Basque Country the British Council's BritLit project. The event will take place on May 24th in Donostiako Berritzegunea.
More information

Published materials related to CLIL

MacMillan Education publishers have recently released these titles related to CLIL:
Methodology: 'Uncovering CLIL'
'Subject-specific' vocabulary: 'Science Vocabulary Practice' (with or without CD ROM and key). Further information: Onestopclil

Games and puzzles

These are some references of games and puzzles in English:
- Twister.
- Uno.
- Guess Who?
- Junior Scrabble.
- Junior Pictionary.
- Snakes and Ladders and Ludo.
- Pirate Snakes and Ladders and Ludo.
- Goosegame.
- Classic card games for kids.
- Happy Families.
- Top Trumps: Wonders of the World, Space, Egypt, Simpsons...

Poetry Space

The British Council in Bilbao has organised a group for people interested in reading and talking about poetry. For more details, click on this link Poetry Space

Some websites mentioned in the 6th session (11th Dec.)

Bristol schools:
Fair Furlong Primary School
Clifton College

Tools for creating puzzles:
Puzzlemaker

Education in Britain: information, documentaries, interests...

These are some links to websites related to primary education in the UK:

Teachers TV. Lots of videos about different subjects and issues related to primary and secondary education in the United Kingdom. Here you can find reports on classroom management, class routines to reduce disruptions, foreign language teaching, etc.

TeacherNet. Information on the British Education System, resources for assemblies, etc.

Starshine Music. This firm publishes scripts and supplementary materials for teachers and other people in charge of children's activities to organise musicals, choirs, etc.

Crickweb. Educational interactive activities linked to the British curriculum.

eTwinning

'eTwinning is a framework for schools to collaborate on the Internet with partner schools in other European countries. eTwinning is the main action of the European Union's eLearning programme. It promotes school collaboration in Europe through the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) by providing support, tools and services to make it easy for schools to form short or long term partnerships in any subject area'.

This is an example of project carried out through the eTwinning net:
Culture in a box

English classrooms: resources and organisation

Anglès 365 is a web for primary teachers of English. The section devoted to 'Learning Stations' or 'English Corners' shows pictures taken at different Catalan primary schools.

Montte On-line contains a catalogue of furniture and supplementary materials for schools and offices.

Phonics

Phonics is a widely used method of teaching children to read, although it is not without controversy. Children begin learning to read using phonics usually around the age of 5 or 6. Teaching English reading using phonics requires children to learn the connections between letter patterns and the sounds they represent. Phonics instruction requires the teacher to provide students with a core body of information about phonics rules, or patterns. (from Wikipedia)

These are two links to webpages offering resources based on this methodology:

Free Phonic Resources

BBC Words and Pictures

English Teaching Theatre Companies

Here you have some links to companies that offer plays in English for primary students:

Blue Mango Theatre

Hello Yellow (no webpage, phone numbers: 945410145 & 945410042)

IPA Productions