Inglés con Christina

Teaching Telling Time in your TEFL Classroom

Posted on October 30, 2018November 28, 2018 by cvillani042191

Telling time is one of my least favorite things to practice with the kids because they learn the British “half past eight” and “quarter to three;” whereas, I would usually just say “eight thirty” or “two forty-five,” so I have to really think about what I’m saying all the time, so I don’t slip up and confuse them.

That being said, I love this mystery squares game (it’s the second download featured in that post) to practice saying the time in English. The game can be edited to suit almost any topic (I obviously wrote a time on each square), and your students just have to choose one and say the time to get points. I especially like this game because anyone can win, and the fastest kids won’t dominate!

I also downloaded an AMAZING set of “I Have…Who Has…?” cards for FREE! Each student gets a card or two (depending on the size of your class), and the first person reads, “I have start. Who has 9:15?,” and the game continues with the next child reading, “I have 9:15. Who has 3:45?,” etc. You can have the class play multiple times to try to beat their best time, or you can have them switch cards, so they have to read out different times!

¡Buena suerte!

All About Me!

Posted on October 30, 2018October 30, 2018 by cvillani042191

Hello! You’ve found me, and I’m so glad you’re here; it’s meant to be!

eb2ac-img_9576 — Me with my one true love…beer!

So, I’m Christina Villani and welcome to my blog, “Inglés con Christina.” I started this blog in 2016, when I was living in Badajoz in Extremadura, to post things that we worked on in class for my students to find and review at home, but they never really used it, so I’ve re-vamped it. It’s now a place for me to post the different classroom activities that I use as an “auxiliar de conversación” in Spain.

ef718-img_9584 — There are two kinds of kids in the world…

After I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Spanish and a master’s degree in education, I moved to Spain to be a conversation assistant (i.e. procrastinate on real life) for a year. Three years later, I’m still here (now in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria) choosing love and travel over starting a career in America (but, don’t worry, my mom still sends me job postings from home at least once a week).

d257b-42600647_10212653736805872_4158721261104529408_o — An American and an Irishman walk into a jazz and blues festival in rural Spain…my life or the start of a bad joke?

When I first arrived in Spain and started teaching in my school, it was H.A.R.D., even with a background in education, and I found myself spending way too much time searching for meaningful activities to do with the kids, so I hope some of my posts can save you from that frustration and give you more time to go out and enjoy the vida española.

dc0a1-39999725_10212460817583012_7035196374043852800_n — Enjoying a rum distillery tour and tasting in my new home!

Teaching Halloween in your TEFL Classroom

Posted on October 30, 2018November 28, 2018 by cvillani042191

I love celebrating Halloween at school! And, since I work in a primary school, I mainly do CRAFTS!

This year, we made:

Haunted house pop-up cards (Make and Takes) – 3rd-6th Grade

Moveable bat paper dolls (Easy Peasy and Fun) – 1st Grade

Toilet paper roll bats (Molly Moo Crafts) – 2nd Grade

Their haunted houses look amazing decorating the hallway at school!

In the past, I’ve made:

Origami ghosts (The Spruce Crafts)

Cyclops eyes (Krokotak)

Paper strip pumpkins (Easy Peasy and Fun)

Bonus: The paper strip pumpkins can also be a Thanksgiving craft, if you write one thing that you are thankful for on each strip!

I also love a website called Match the Memory. You can upload your own images and create your own memory games to play online! Here’s my Halloween Memory Game, if you want to play with your kiddos.

And, last but not least, my favorite Halloween video to watch with younger students is called Room on the Broom. It’s the video version of a kids’ storybook of the same name, and there’s so many things you can do with it! I’ve had kids stand up when they hear certain words, choose which words appeared/didn’t appear in the story from a list, answered comprehension questions, etc.

¡Buena suerte!

Teaching Body Parts in your TEFL Classroom

Posted on October 30, 2018November 28, 2018 by cvillani042191

I love letting the kids be creative in English class, and this is one of my favorite activities to do with them. It’s so easy and they love it! All you need is big paper, pencils, and markers / colored pencils / crayons.

Divide your class into small groups and have each team trace around one of its members (I usually say the smallest person to avoid fights and to make sure they fit on the paper). If they are really young, you and their main teacher can do the tracing! Then, they have to use their notebooks to label all of the body parts that they have learned; they should draw the eyes, nose, hair, etc.

In 4th grade, they are learning all about anatomy in their science class, so we are going to do this activity, but I am going to give them print-outs of different organs to glue onto the body and label as a project to review at the end of the unit.

Note: Kids love drawing penises, so make sure there are no sneaky penises on the drawings before you display them in the hallways of your school!

¡Buena suerte!

Teaching Adverbs of Frequency in your TEFL Classroom

Posted on October 30, 2018November 28, 2018 by cvillani042191

Throughout October, my 5th grade students have been learning different adverbs of frequency. My two favorite activities (which I adapted from Busy Teacher) to practice this topic were:

1. Every student wrote five sentences about him/herself, each using an adverb of frequency (always, usually, sometimes, hardly ever, never, every day, once a week, etc.) Then, I collected the papers, mixed them up, and chose one list to read aloud. I divided the class into about 8 teams, and each team had to guess whose paper I was reading, and, if they guessed correctly, they got a point! Easy peasy and NO. PREP.

Note: if I were to re-do this activity, I would try to have the students write their lists at home because my classes are only 45 minutes long, and it took FOREVER for some of my students to write just 4 sentences.

2. I created this ladder worksheet with rungs for each of the frequency adverbs that I wanted to practice (always, usually, sometimes, hardly ever, and never). The students started at the bottom of the ladder asking their classmates questions, trying to get a response using the word “never.” For example, “How often to you fly in the sky?” If a person got an answer with “never,” s/he could move up to the next rung and try to get an answer with “hardly ever” from another classmate. Students had to go from the bottom of the ladder to the top of the ladder (obviously), asking DIFFERENT classmates questions and getting answers with adverbs of frequency. If they ever received the wrong answer (the answer they didn’t want), they had to ask someone else.¡Buena suerte!

Teaching School Supplies in your TEFL Classroom

Posted on October 29, 2018November 28, 2018 by cvillani042191

My first graders are learning about school supplies at the moment, and I love this interactive notebook idea from Madame Belle Feuille.

She suggests printing the backpacks on construction paper, but I don’t have access to that, so I just printed them on normal white paper and let the kids color them. They like coloring and coloring is important for young children because it helps them to develop hand strength and, in turn, handwriting, so I don’t feel bad spending time coloring every once in a while!

I also cut out all of the backpacks myself, and their full-time English teacher, her student teacher, and I glued them all in the kids’ notebooks because this amount of cutting and gluing would have been WAY. TOO. MUCH. for six year olds, so it does take a bit of preparation; however, first graders work very slowly, so the activity will probably last at least 2 lessons. So far, we have finished gluing the backpacks in their notebooks, writing their names on the backpacks, and coloring the backpacks, and we still have to glue all of the school supplies in the backpacks and label them!

You can find the backpack in English and all of the school supplies that I printed to glue in the backpacks here.

¡Buena suerte!

Update (30/10): their finished school bags look great!

Teaching the Alphabet in your TEFL Classroom

Posted on October 29, 2018November 28, 2018 by cvillani042191

So many of my students do not know the English alphabet to save their lives, so I’ve been Googling fun, interactive ways to practice the letters in English and, hopefully, get them to stick in the kids’ minds.

During my search, I came across an amazing idea on 730 Sage Street‘s blog; she came up with a “Spell Your Name Workout.” If you are teaching P.E. in English, this could be a great resource on it’s own, especially if your students are more advanced. However, I mostly just want to work on the alphabet (and I would have to teach my students what push-ups, crunches, etc. are in English, which would take multiples classes in and of itself), so I made my own version that I call “Alphabet Actions.”

The idea is similar; however, the actions are much simpler ones (stand up on your chair, sit down on the floor, walk like a penguin, jump 2 times, etc.) that my students are already familiar with. I post the PDF on the digital board, and, then, I have one student come up and spell their name in English (and do the action for each letter). The rest of the class has to repeat the letters and the actions!

¡Buena suerte!

Teaching Geography in your TEFL Classroom

Posted on October 29, 2018November 28, 2018 by cvillani042191

As an “auxiliar de conversación,” I can almost guarantee that you will hear some version of:

“When are you going back to England?”

“Can you take me to England with you?”

“Is it cold in England?”

And the list goes on…

If you are, in fact, from England, this is not really a problem; however, if, like me, you are most definitely not English, this can start to grate on your nerves after a while, especially when it’s the director of your school asking if you’re going home to England for the long weekend.

Last year, I decided that I was going to figure out a way to get my students to remember where I’m from, so I decided to create some activities to drill it into their heads.

Little kids tend to struggle with abstract ideas, such as city, state, country, etc., so I wanted to create an activity that would help them visualize these concepts, and, as usual, Pinterest did not disappoint. I combined loads of different ideas (mostly from preschool and kindergarten teachers) to make the craft that I did with my students.

The students traced the names on the top of each circle (PLANET and TEACHER aren’t pictured, but they were the biggest and smallest circles), and they colored the planet, the continent, the country, and the state; drew a dot for the city; and drew my face on the TEACHER circle. Then, I stapled the circles together together, so they had a little visual of where I come from!

With my older students, I made task cards, and the students each made their own small map in stations (1 card per station, 2 minutes per station, 9 stations total). They drew in my city, the capital, the mountains, and the rivers.

If your students can’t seem to remember where you’re from, maybe these activities can help!

¡Buena suerte!

Teaching on the First Day in your TEFL Classroom

Posted on October 29, 2018November 28, 2018 by cvillani042191

The first week of school can be a daunting time, especially for us language assistants. Not only are we meeting brand new groups of students and co-teachers that we need to get to know, but most of us are also dealing with mountains of government paperwork, finding a “piso,” and adjusting to a whole new country, culture, and language. This means that getting into a routine can be R.O.U.G.H So, I’m sharing my “first week of school” activities to, hopefully, make this transition time a little bit easier.

This year, I’m working in the same school that I was in last year, so I decided to forgo the typical “All About Me” presentation because the kids all know me already. Every class screamed “CHRISTINA” when I walked in and asked me tons of questions on my first day back, which confirmed that re-introducing myself was unnecessary (and also warmed my heart).

So, instead of introducing myself, I decided to create “Back to School” time capsule activities with typical questions (favorite color, favorite animal, etc.) for my classes. This way, I can learn more about them in an interactive way, they’re practicing writing in English, and, hopefully, we can laugh when we re-do the activity and read their original answers on the last day of class.

6d2ed-img_9586 — Unicorn hand and a policeman foot! Why not?

I made 3 “levels” of the activity, one for 1st-2nd grade, one for 3rd-4th grade, and one for 5th-6th grade, each with increasingly “advanced” questions. I also wanted to include some way to see the students’ physical growth between the first and last day of class, so the 1st and 2nd graders traced their hands and feet onto their papers; I measured all of the 3rd and 4th graders with string, and they taped their strings to their papers; and the 5th and 6th graders measured each other with a tape measure and recorded their heights.

Click here to download the activities from GoogleDrive.

¡Buena suerte!