HAVE FUN WITH ENGLISH!

5th grade    /    6th grade

2003-2004    /    2004-2005

Links to our blog

Our Class (an Australian blog)

Dekita.org (an international blog)

VImP links

Nationalities Contest

Oz Quiz

Tutorials

HandyBits

SitePal

Sites

Photo Story 3

My presentations about our blog

A Internet na Iniciação à Língua Estrangeira: Blogs e CALL lessons (ESE Setúbal, 27Sep04)

Have Fun with English! (Internet, 8Feb05)

Comments to this presentation

Bettina's blog

Tuchodi's blog

Have Fun with English! (Tagus Park, 7Mar05; in Portuguese)

Have Fun with English. A blog or a plog? (APPI Conference, 21Apr05)

Blogging as a tutoring and mentoring tool in education (8May2005)

Only 6F had CALL Lesson 9 this morning, because 6G caused behavior problems in several classes the week before and has been acting lazy with the English homework. 

After speaking with their Home Room (= DT) teacher, she decided to accept the different punishment I suggested: take away a treat (= rebuçado) they love - the CALL lessons! - until their behavior gets better. We don't like to do these things, but they have been in our school for two years and should know better by now, especially after all that their HR teacher has done for them, as well as all their teachers. If I have good news from them by next Monday, they'll be back for CALL lesson 10. I certainly hope so!

6F was supposed to start with interactive exercises, but at the beginning of class I changed my mind. They started by looking at our blog to see all the new messages. They saw Alyne's and asked to visit her blog. They really enjoyed Uh Wa De He, the African song sung by children about different animals. It was very interesting to see them all humming halfway through the song. As I repeated the words in English, I immediately translated them to Portuguese. Then they looked at the message about Tommy and Wojtek's prizes, and sent them a message (see below). Finally, they looked at what I prepared about last week's lessons and loved everything!

It was time to move on to the interactive exercises I had prepared for them to practice the Simple Past of regular verbs. I created them with SpellMaster. I suggested that they start with Jigword, a drag-and-drop exercise they love, to get acquainted with the past forms, and then move on to Speed Word and Word Web, both spelling exercises based on the same verbs. The first had a timer, so the excitement increased and was contagious. There were different students at the computer to do each set of exercises, as you can see below. The second was based on a percentage score. Excitement again was in the air! Ana Luisa kept the scores I was writing on the board. Isn't it lovely work? Typical of an A-student, isn't it?

The bell rang and it was time to move on to the next class, but I'm sure that this was another session they totally enjoyed and learned from. I sure did!

BTW, once again we used the school network connection and everything went very well.

We had CALL lesson 8 last Tuesday. Two days ago! Well, my days have been so full that I wasn't able to update the page earlier (= mais cedo).

This lesson will stay in my mind forever. There were two first experiences: one for me (filming) and one for the students (playing for CJ, their colleagues and me, and having it recorded for the Internet).

Let's start with 6F, always the first class to go to Sala TIC, our computer lab. We started with a postponed treat (= rebuçado adiado) from the week before (due to connection problems): listening to and watching CJ play 'La Cucaracha' in the flute. There was absolute silence in the room. Their smiling eyes were glued to the whiteboard! What a sight to see! Comments: "CJ was a little nervous at the beginning!" "He played so well!" "It's a difficult music and he played very well!"

As a treat to CJ, three groups of students had volunteered to play Beethoven's Ode to Joy (which they had learned in Music) while I recorded it with HandyBits. At the last minute, I decided to surprise them! I was going to film a part of each performance, but... I forgot the camera at home. So I called my husband at the last minute. He rushed to school with it and in five minutes explained what I had to do.

After setting up all the equipment - laptop, video beam projector and the network connection -, the students started coming in. There was excitement and some nervousness in the air! (We had been together the first hour and a half in Estudo Acompanhado (Study Hour) and the "flute performers" had asked for some rehearsal time. Of course! I went down to the Students' Lounge with them and left them there.)

Joana, Ivânia, Diana and Pedro L.

Pedro G. and Bruno practicing

A group volunteered to go first: the girls! Who else? It's more and more a woman's world!!! Since they were standing too close to the laptop mic, we had to repeat the recording. Then came two groups of boys. One of them also repeated the recording. When we played back the recordings, everyone seemed happy!

Ivânia, Diana and Joana	Bruno and Pedro L.	Rodrigo and João Vasco

At last, it was time for a surprise: Barbara Dieu's text about our blog and our work in Dekita! They were very happy and proud, and asked to write a message. This was the first time that they commented directly in a blog and saw it published instantaneously. Total amazement! Here's what they said (comment 9):

Teresa wrote on 24 May 05:
Hello teachers!
You have a very nice page!! :-)
Thank you for your comments,we are very happy,excited and drooling.

We hope to have a nice surprise in our blog/plog!
Pleassse, send us more messages!!!!

Bye-bye from the drooling class(6ºF)

There was happiness in their faces as they left for the next class!

At noon it was time for 6G. They had a totally different, but equally interesting, plan. I decided to give them a treat and start with CJ's video. They had exactly the same reaction as their colleagues before them! They asked to send CJ a message. I suggested leaving a comment in Aiden's blog. They had no idea that they'd be writing directly online in the blog and seeing it published at once! Wow! Here's what they wrote:

Hello,CJ!
You were very good playing the flute in the video. It was difficult, but you made it. We know that song, but we don't play in the flute. We learned "Ode to Joy".
Bye-Bye from 6G

Then came the second part of the lesson: recording messages for CJ in Chinese and also in Portuguese and English, based on suggestions I made in CALL lesson 7. To my amazement, when I asked who hadn't yet done anything in the computer this year, nor recorded a message, Pedro, a very shy and slower learner, raised his arm. I asked him if he wanted to record the message in Chinese and he said 'yes'! What an achievement! And he did so well! I was so proud of him and praised him so much!

Next came Guilherme. He taught CJ two new sentences in Portuguese. And then Matilde, the best student in the class as they all wanted me to say, to record a 5-line dialogue in Portuguese. Everybody was enjoying the lesson! Time was going by very quick, as always happens when we are doing something we like, but there was still time to read Barbara Dieu's text in Dekita, but not to write a message. Next time!

Pedro	Guilherme	Matilde

I believe these students will never forget these lessons. Besides, there's nobody else doing this at our school, so I think there's added motivation and excitement on their part!

Hello, Teresa and everyone… I’ve been recording my pupils’ voice as well and they are about the same age as yours thought they are not as fluent yet! So far, they have written to introduce themselves (http://6i63.blogspot.com/)and used their voices for “fiction”: they’ve recorded voices for little monsters they have created (http://alynepiazza.neuf.fr/pupils/monsters/accueil.htm). Everything is not online yet, but I think I may put a little extra pressure on them by suggesting they record their voices for you!
Next year, I intend to try using skype for real conversations… Have you ever tried that?

And here's my reply to her:

Hi, Alyne!
I’ve just listened carefully to your students’ recordings and read your blog. Very nice work! Kudos to you all! :-)
I will include your message and my comment in our blog.
I’m updating the blog and hope to have a couple of surprises by Sunday evening. They worked very well on Tuesday and we had a couple of first experiences.
I’ve tried Skype with friends,but not with my students. I plan to have them experience a voice chat before the end of the school year only 4 weeks away, probably at Yahoo Messenger.
Let’s keep in touch!
Teresa

I had a chat with Agata this evening and I have great news about Tommy and Wojtek!

Wojtek won (= ganhou) third place in a school Maths contest and Tommy won first place in a school Drawing contest. Kudos to our two dear Polish friends! Way to go!!! (= É assim mesmo!)  > clap, clap, clap <

Agata emailed me and said that I could write about this in our blog, because Tommy and Wojtek are very proud of their achievements (= proezas) and want to share their joy (= alegria) with their Portuguese friends. And she sent Tommy's winning drawing. The text in the cloud are the words  of Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, about Poland's beloved Pope John Paul II looking at the Polish people from his window in heaven and blessing them. What a beautiful message, Tommy!

Please read some comments from colleagues of mine about your work, and about the messages between you and CJ. Aren't you really proud?

And here are more comments!

Very, very nice work! John Hibbs (Oregon - 20May05)

Dear John,
Thanks for the nice words posted in Dekita. They feel very good inside. Actually, they feel extra special coming from colleagues outside of school, because only three school colleagues (literally speaking!) care about what my students have achieved. I think they're fantastic!!! Hurrah! for them!  :-)
Hugs,
Teresa (20May05)

Bee, Teresa, & Aiden,
Bee, I am so glad you shared what Teresa and Aiden are doing.  I was spellbound (= espantada) when I checked this project out. This is what I have often dreamed of students being able to do, as the ultimate exchange project, and here you two, Teresa and Aiden, are doing it.  I admire you more than you can imagine.  Also, Teresa, I was shaking my head with disbelief that your other colleagues aren't as spellbound as I am.  Then I was feeling a strong connection to you because most of my colleagues aren't interested in what I'm doing either, with connecting with China.  When I invited teachers to visit my classroom, to see what we were doing, 2 out of 150 showed up. No administrators came. Teresa and Aiden, you should get "Teacher of the Year" awards for what you are doing. Your students are so very lucky, indeed, to have you.  It's such a good feeling for me to know there are such motivated teachers as you, and all the other webheads, who truly care about how to make education the absolutely best
 it can be.  Since I have met Yaodong, and you, and all the rest of the webheads I have a much more positive attitude about education and our world future. Bless you all!!!
Candy Pauchnick (San Diego, California - 20May05)

Wow!  What a great project.  Everyday I am learning about some new
"webhead"-driven project. Every message is so inspiring! I will now be
putting on my thinking cap to consider how I could include such a
collaboration in my courses next semester.  When I figure it out, I will let
you know! Bee, thanks for sharing Teresa and Aiden's work with us.
Marleigh (Montreal, Canada - 21May05)

Hi everybody,
Tere's project has been going on for several months when I stepped in. I thought that what she was doing was something that my son could do and participate in. So, I asked CJ if he wanted to do it. He said 'yes' and we created his first Avatar in Site Pal. And in doing so, we spent about 30 minutes recording his voice and adjusting the physical features of his animated character. We had fun doing it and I think, as a mother, this is special for me.
My son has enjoyed the asynch. interaction and he's thrilled to hear his own voice. CJ also find learning new languages exciting. He would sometimes ask or tell me, "Mama, Hola means Hello, right?" and he'll give me a run-down of all the words that he has learned. I think this project with Tere has given my son a renewed spirit to use English more often, and I hope that he'll keep this spirit with him for a long time. Learning Spanish/Portuguese and Tagalog adds spice- and if he could master a few words then that would be great.
...
Cheers,
Aiden (Taiwan - 21May05)

What a surprise I have for you today! What a surprise it was for me, too!! Guess what? Your work is getting more and more famous and international!!! Take a look!

Do you know who wrote these wonderful things in Dekita.org? My dear friend Barbara Dieu from São Paulo, Brazil. She sent you a lovely voice email for Carnival with a photo of herself, "some" years ago, dressed up as a very cute little chicken. Remember? If not, click here.

Well, I hope you feel very proud (= muito orgulhosos)! I am!! 

Have a wonderful weekend!

Lots of kisses from your English teacher

There is a short article on your project on Dekita.org.
Send your students to see it!
Enjoy!
Hugs from Brazil,
Bee
http://www.dekita.org

Subject: Re: English/Portuguese/Chinese/Tagalog?

Dear Bee,

Thanks for such a sweet idea! My students will love the relevancy given to their work, especially Rodrigo, Pedro and Guilherme. And CJ, no doubt! We're preparing a surprise for next Tuesday. Let's see if everything goes well!  :-)

Hugs,

Teresa

Looking forward to hearing about it :-)
Hugs
Bee

Hello, teacher!
How are you ?
Yesterday I had an exam of dance with a Chinese examiner like Aiden. I was very nervous. Well, I had good luck.
See you Monday at half past ten (10:30)!
Bye bye!!!!
A kiss from Susana.

Let's start with 6F! The wireless connection didn't let us down (= deixar-nos mal) completely, but the signal was always low. Result: very slooooow access to the Web pages and voice messages that they wanted to hear. Diogo was at the computer. It was possible to hear Sharon's SitePal voice email, but not CJ's. They wanted to follow my suggestion and send him a message in Chinese - they had even practiced what they wanted to say - and another teaching him two new Portuguese sentences, but it wasn't possible! We also tried to listen to CJ play "La Cucaracha" with his flute, but the SitePal voice file refused to open.    Next week we have a surprise for CJ!

Anyway, we had time to take a look at the new entries in our interactive map and.... surprise! Sharon's post was there!    I also showed them Glenn Rutland and they noticed João Vasco, a classmate. By then, the bell was ringing!

During the break I tried connecting to the school network once again and... finally made it! Yes! I had tried almost every sessions, so I couldn't believe my eyes. It was much faster than the wireless.

6G was lucky today! Tiago was at the computer. I gave them the choice of activity and they chose the Interactive exercises below. They started with At a Party, then went on to Jerry & Ken and Find the countries, and finished with Scrambled colors. Every time they got one right in the first two exercises, there were "yeahs" and clapping. I had to ask them to turn their volumes down because of the classes around us. But it's great to see excited and motivated expressions! During the colors exercise, Alexandre commented that it was too easy. He had learned that in 4th grade. When it got to the last 5-6 colors, many students kept asking him: Did you also learn this in 4th grade?! 

They enjoyed themselves and revised a few things in a fun way! And I had my fun too!

How are you? The weekend is almost over. Are you enjoying yourselves?

I've just updated our blog with a SitePal message from Sharon, your new friend in Boston, Massachussetts. Take a look right below your message to her.

I'm also going to include some revision exercises. You haven't done exercises in a loooong time!!!

Maybe we can try some of these on Tuesday.

Enjoy!

Here's a summary of what happened yesterday morning in two very active, exciting and fun CALL lesson 6: 6F and 6G.

The first was the "Mystery Guest" activity. 6F had to find out where our MG lives in the United States. A series of clues were shown (= mostradas) one-by-one. I often gave a few more details, always in English. The same with the students' questions and answers.

The real fun started when we came to the clue about the city's baseball team. Naturally, they didn't get to the color immediately, but one student said the word 'socks', rhyming with Sox, almost at once. Then they just tried different colors. At this point, Pedro G. commented: "I'm learning a lot today and having fun!"  :-)

When they did the Internet search on 'tea party', they didn't notice the fourth-fifth link to the Boston Tea Party, but I subtly guided them to it. Boston was known (= conhecida) to some. Then they looked for the final answers: name of the state and its abbreviation. They wrote everything in their notebooks.

The highlight (= ponto alto) of the lesson was when they opened the GlobeExplorer map, keyboarded Sharon's address and saw where she lives. They couldn't believe their eyes! Here was a map showing them a small area with about 5-6 houses, surrounded by trees and gardens - one of them was hers - in a continent separated from us by the Atlantic Ocean.

The excitement increased when they asked if they could look for our school. I knew it! I'm glad I did my homework! Well, there they were keyboarding the address and then sitting there glued to the screen. First we saw the Marginal, the road that runs along the Atlantic Ocean (on our side of the world), and then many houses to the North. Rodrigo was at the computer. I told him to 'Zoom In' a bit and then click North and maybe East until he was in the area. Then it was just them. Everybody was giving suggestions, total excitement was in the air! They exploded wih joy when they saw our school!!!

Finally, they wanted to find their houses, but we still had to send Sharon a message. Several said they would do it at home. Below is the message they came up with and Ana Luisa even had time to record it.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

6G came in at 12:10. Their plan was different. They had to find a new entry in our interactive map, read a message from her, Glenn Rutland - a colleague with whom I did two joint email exchanges back in '97 and '98 -, and then reply to CJ.

Well, it took about 6 guesses to locate it. They learned that Florida is called the "Sunshine State". I told them a little about our joint work and they were amazed that we have never met, but have worked together. Then they read Glenn's message. They loved what she said about her area, "the UFO capital of the world"! It was time to send Glenn a message. They were so excited that they started asking to record it. Jaime did as the bell was ringing. But no one was in a hurry to leave! They wanted their fun 'grand finale'. Listen to their collective "alien sounds" at the end!!!  ;-)

Both classes had a wonderful time, and so did I! I'm sure many, though not all, are learning. But there's no doubt in my mind that new horizons are opening up for these students, as they never imagined, and that they are seeing for themselves how learning can be FUN!

Sharon and Glenn, thank you for making possible two fabulous lessons fro my students. I'm sure they'll never forget them!

CJ, so sorry that we couldn't get to your message. Next week, all right?

Subject: MG Activity!!!

Hi Teresa, My computer hasn't been working well for the past few days, so this msg may cut out and not reach you. Thanks so much for the sound file. Your students sound so sweet. I want to send them a sound file back and will do so when John fixes another problem....I can hear, but can't speak. It doesn't seem to be my headset. It's something in the computer

Sharon Holdner

Sharon, talks about a flower called "lilac" and sends this Web page about lilacs. Let's take a look!

Thank you, Sharon, for such a nice message!

Subject: aliens and UFOs

Hi everybody,
Yes, Florida is known as the "Sunshine State"----and it is just our area
(the Gulf Breeze/Navarre area) that is known as the "UFO Capital"....not the
whole state of Florida.  And to answer your question about UFO's---no, I
have never seen any, but I have friends who say they have....now, do I
believe in UFO's????? I am not sure....do you?
We also get many hurricanes in our area.  Do you know about hurricanes?
Keep in touch....
Glenn :)
 

Subject: interactive map

Dear Glenn,

I've just seen that you entered yourself in our class Interactive Map. What
a sweet idea! The kids love to be known by so teachers in so many different
parts of the world. I must tell them how we met and worked together in two
email exchanges!

Let's keep in touch. I also hope we will meet one day f2f.  :-)

Hugs,

Teresa

Hi Teresa,
Good to hear from you----on your map, I used the little alien looking
icon....because our area is known as the UFO capital of the world. :)
Keep in touch....and let me know if I can assist you in any way with your
adventures.
Glenn

CJ has sent an answer to yesterday's voice message. Take a look below!

6F wasn't able to have the lesson, because the wireless connection didn't work during classtime. It worked great during the 10.00-10.30 break, while I set up everything in Sala TIC, but played tricks on us during the first 10 minutes of class. After Rodrigo confirmed that it was working downstairs, I decided to go to Plan B and get on with a normal "computerless" lesson. The kids reacted fabulously well, because they saw how I tried to get things working. When I got home, I took the lesson from the Web page, so that no one could do the "Mystery Guest" activity at home. Maybe we can do it on Thursday.

6G was lucky this time and worked quite well. They looked for the "message with a question" in the interactive map, read it and wrote their collective answer. While I wrote it on the computer, Miguel wrote it on the whiteboard and everyone copied it in their exercise-books. We sent the message to Ana Cristina from class! This was a first timer!

Then they listened to CJ's message with the three words in Chinese. They heard it twice. I suggested they record their reply "in chorus", because most of them volunteer to do it individually. They recorded each word in Chinese, English and Portuguese. It's not very clear, but it shows their enthusiasm and motivation!

There was no time to do the rest of the plan: maybe next week. I guess it was a bit ambitious.

They had a great time, and so did I! 

Dear Teacher,

The blog is very cool and me and my father visited the blog and had a lot of fun with it!

Many thanks and big hugs; I’ll see you next Monday.

Pedro G.

Dear Teacher Teresa,

Pedro is always asking me to visit your site, so I did it for the first time, in his company!!

Brilliant job…I particularly loved the GuestMap, splendid idea….

Thank you very much for entertaining us, I had much fun !!!!!

Hugs

Manel G.

Dear 6F,

Thanks so much for your reply.  I loved it!!!!!  You are very thoughtful and sweet to offer me some assistence in learning Portuguese.  I might just take you up on your offer ;-).

Let me return the favor by saying that if I can help you all in any way, I'm there!!!!

Have a great week,

Beijinhos,

Ramona

Visitor no.