The Flipped classroom, adaptable for primary?

This is a very interesting little JPG that I came across during my morning Facebook patrol. It was posted on the British Council website and talks of how we could turn the classroom inside out, so that effectively the class is studied home online via web and the homework is done in the classroom.

Now, how could this be implemented into an ESL classroom, and a primary one at that? The only way one could really integrate this would be to give students an opportunity to see vocabulary beforehand. Being such young students, self study is still not applicable, however by proving flashcard cards, games and word games, one could facilitate language acquisition.

Another benefit to this method is that allows students who are sick to not miss out on any valuable vocabulary, or those who go on holiday during term time(which frequently happens in Spain). I also feel it's a great tool for parents who have very little knowledge of English, as they can learn at the same time as their child. This is a issue I have heard many a time during parent-teacher conferences.

If anyone has any other idea on how this could work within the ESL classroom, please let me know!

Very pinteresting!

I have just become a fan of Pinterest, so, I really have very little clue about what I am doing, but I am going to "pin" different educational resources that I find interesting. I haven't gotten very far at the moment, but I shall be expanding as the days/weeks go by! you can find me at

http://pinterest.com/dougle2k/

Keep Calm!

OH WOW, this really made my day indeed! At the moment, the "keep calm" posters are really taking off, I found this fab little website that allows you to design your own Keep Calm posters, I really think this could bring some originality into the classroom, even having competitions amongst students to see who can come up with the funkiest slogan!

http://www.keepcalm-o-matic.co.uk/createPoster/

A delectable detail.....

Now we know that getting children to read at the best of times can be a tricky subject, but how about trying to tempt them with these gorgeous cupcakes? After a child reads a book, and they can explain what they have understood, you could reward them with a cupcake featuring a motif of the book? The cupcake come from a place called "Victoria's Kitchen", here is a link to her Facebook page, great name by the way, :-D

http://www.facebook.com/victoriaskitchen

Classroom Dojo

A few weeks ago whilst I was tweeting, someone from "Classroom Dojo" got in contact with me and asked me to have a look at their website. Naturally intrigued, I had a quick looksie and quite frankly like what I saw. As a technologically minded person, I have been looking for a good program that allows me to keep an accurate track of my students' positive and negative behaviour, whilst also cataloguing their attendance. Classroom Dojo does exactly this. It's a great app that you can also use on your IWB as students can self assess, something that I feel needs greater input in Spanish schools as children often seem less independent. I've taken some screen shots so that you can see how the setup works.
                                                                                                                                                                         

This is a screen of the main page, here you can add and edit your class list and click on students to add information.

This is the attendance page, easy peasy lemon squeezy.

This is the positive feedback that you can assign each student after every class. 

This is the negative feedback that you can give each student.

                                             

                               This is the end result, an easy way of creating report cards and teacher-parent       conferences.

The best thing about this app is that it also available for iPad and iPhone so if you haven't got access to a computer, you can keep on top of it easily and readily. The only drawback is that it will become time consuming to use, as I personally have hardly any free time during the day, however I do believe it's worth the extra effort! Fantastic job!

Autumn already....

Once again I find myself trailing the internets for different ideas for the start of the new Autumn term and I found some fantastic resources courtesy of TES NEW TEACHERS. Its a page that I follow on Facebook and often find that they have innovative new ideas, this shall give me plenty of food for thought before September comes...

Ohhh, beautiful bulletin board!

I must stop thinking about the new term, I must stop thinking about the new term....... But I can't help it. I came across another decoration idea for the beginning of term, I wonder if I could get it organised now and then maybe RELAX during my summer holidays! Hahaha! Click here I think I'm onto a winner here!