Category Archives: Resources

A Glogster Project : My Favourite Sport!

Every year I find a reason to use Glogster in the classroom (click here to see my first article about Glogster) I think most of my students, though camera-shy, like to see their work published. I find that Glogster is the ideal tool to use with twelve or thirteen- year- old students because it ‘s very visual and students have a lot of fun deciding which frame to use for their photograph or text , which video they want to embed ( In English, of course) . Yes, they have fun but what they probably don’t realize is that they are using English from Step 1 of the project.
In fact, after finishing our Glogster, I wrote on the board  several of the words they had been using  (frame, text, wall, image, tools, gallery, upload, cartoon…etc) and they were happy when they recognised it.

Have you never tried Glogster? Give it a go! It’s a lot of fun!

Click here to see it better!

Ready-To-Go Lessons:Breaking News English

I cannot believe I have never posted about Breaking News English. I have been a subscriber for a long, long time. But, you know, sometimes   the things you are more familiar with are the things you more tend to forget to highlight but the site is incredibly helpful.

Breaking News English mainly helps you improve listening and reading but also if you read along it’ll help you with your pronunciation.
It has more than 1,500 lesson plans based on current events and news.

These lesson plans are very useful for the teacher as this site provides warmers, pre, while and after reading/listening activities, discussion ideas, writing suggestions and even homework activities, all related to the news story. There is an MP3 listening you can download or listen online.

A dream come true: Casa MariFalcón

I am dying to tell you about my new project , but first things first! and first is telling you about this very interesting site I’ve used for my little project. Everybody knows how difficult it is to build a professional looking website but with wix , it’s one of the easiest things in life. It creates a Flash website without any knowledge of Flash.

And now , about my little project

Some time ago we bought the ruins of an ancient house, Investing a lot of time, a lot of effort and, why not say it, a lot of money  we have finally finished . It is in the North of Spain and we have decided to rent it during the summer holidays. So , if you want to come to Spain and enjoy the beautiful landscape and the clean sandy beaches of the North , this might be your house.

Please, Have a look at the website http://www.wix.com/cristinaca/marifalcon created with wix.com.

5 students using MyBrainShark for their landmarks presentations

Did you think you have seen the last of MyBrainshark in this blog? Far from it!

Now I have engaged my students (level A2) into giving a presentation about a landmark of their choice. The fact that they did it at home and at their own pace , repeating as many times as they wished until they were completely satisfied and choosing their own photographs to illustrate it must have boosted up their confidence in using English because , with the exception of some students, most of them made a great effort and passed with flying colours.

Below are some of my students and their MyBrainsharks. They are: Victor Areces, Sara Días, Paula Fdez, Jesus Fdez and Paula García.

And here are their landmarks.
Grand Arch by Victor Areces

Petra by Sara Días

Ellis Island by Paula Fdez

Petronas Towers by Jesús Fdez

The Arch of Triumph by Paula Garcia

If you’re interested in using MyBrainshark  , click here to see my tutorial in Spanish ,

Wanna someone to read your slides?

welcome Helloslide.com.

So often , especially when giving a long presentation with slides where I need to  first type and then read and explain what I have written I have wished for someone to read and/or explain  it for me( call me lazy but my voice demands a rest after maybe four hours speaking maybe non-stop.

HelloSlide transforms your slides into a rich audiovisual format, recreating the experience of a live lecture. Simply upload your presentation, type the speech for each slide, and HelloSlide automagically generates the audio.

HelloSlide gives more exposure to your presentations, making them searchable, editable, and available in 20 different languages.

It’s simple to get started:

  1. Upload a PDF of your presentation to our website.
  2. Type the speech for each slide using our editor.
  3. Press play to hear your presentation.

My first experience with HelloSlide has been this PowerPoint Presentation on A For and Against Essay though first I had to convert the ppt file into pdf. I did it using this wonderful online converter http://es.pdf24.org/onlineConverter.html

Have a look now at my HelloSlide and tell me what you think. I like it when the robot says my name at the end (ha, ha) .