HALLOWEEN AND BONFIRE NIGHT BOARD

I have prepared some information on the board about Halloween and Bonfire Night in Britain where you can find out about some of the traditions and origins of these events.

Also if you want to find out more about Bonfire Night, here is a video.

DAY OF LIBRARIES

Like every October 24th we celebrate the DAY OF LIBRARIES. Although our school library is not very big, we certainly are always preparing many activities all year round to share with our students books, stories, etc.

This year some teachers have proposed some interesting books to read (see picture on the left).

For more information CLICK here.
Below is also the 2016 manifest.

WEB LINKS FOR BACHILLERATO STUDENTS

Here is a document including some useful links for Bachillerato students of English. We hope you find something interesting... just in case.

Top links to learn English for Bachillerato students from José Antonio Alcalde López

WEATHER IDIOMS

In England we have a reputation of talking about the weather a lot and as you will see now, this is definitely true! We use lots of metaphors in order to express feelings and sentiments and many of these incorporate the weather. Here are some examples:

·      To be under the weather – to feel unwell

o   E.g. He has gone to bed because he is feeling a bit under the weather.

·      To save for a rainy day – to save something for a time in the future when it may be needed suddenly e.g. money

o   E.g. I’ve saved £20 for a rainy day

·      When it rains it pours – this means that when one bad thing happens, other bad things follow

o   E.g. I fell over on the way to the bus stop, missed the bus and then found out my essay deadline is tomorrow! When it rains it pours!

·      To be snowed under – to have lots of work to do

o   E.g. I have so many deadlines coming up I’m completely snowed under!

·      To break the ice – to do/say something that makes you feel more comfortable around others in a situation

o   E.g. We played some games to break the ice.

·      The tip of the iceberg – when something is the tip of the iceberg it is only a small part of the problem but there is much more to it than is obvious

o   E.g. Global warming has caused the sea level to rise but that is just the tip of the iceberg. (it has caused many other problems too)

·      On cloud nine – to be extremely happy

o   He was on the beach in the beaming sun of the Caribbean – he was on cloud nine!

·      Every cloud has a silver lightning – this means that good things can be a result of bad things

o   E.g. She lost her job last week but now she has the chance to go travelling. Every cloud has a silver lining!

I hope you will find these phrases useful!

TALK TO EMMA

Finally our Language Assistant, Emma Light, is here and we want to make the most of her stay with us (only 6 hours a week...) For this reason, we have created an interesting language club where every Thursday at breaktime she will speaking in English with those students with a higher level of English. The idea is to informally talk about different issues like culture, history, sport, society, media, teenagers life, etc. Although the inital proposal was for Bachillerato students, there are some ESO students also with a good level of English, good enough to take part in this activity.

We would like to thank her for her offering.

MORE INFORMATION FROM EMMA

Our new language assistant, Emma Light, has prepared some stuff from her home town, university city, hobbies, etc. It will be displayed in our Torre de BPaBPel along October.

Here is a video about Southampton if you want to know more about this place.
And remember that Emma is a big Southampton Football Club supporter. Click here for more information on this club.

TOUCHVIE

Some people think that life is changing in many ways thanks to multimedia contents, interactivity, multi-tasking processes, etc. For example, reading an e-book enables you to look up unknown words, visit links, bookmark some page, highlight excerpts from the book, add comments, etc. However, they think that watching TV series or movies hasn't changed much in the last decades.

 A Spanish company has developed an app to change this situation: TOUCHVIE. With this app (available for IOS and Android) viewers can get loads of information in real time about what they are watching (names of actors, locations, products offered, music used in the soundtrack, etc.) So far the offer is not that big but the catalogue is growing every week.

For more information visit http://www.touchvie.com/es/

NEW INTERNATIONAL PROJECT

Siempre andamos buscando proyectos de interés para nuestro alumnado. En esta ocasión nos ha llegado una novedad de la mano de nuestro profesor bilingüe de música. Se trata de una plataforma educativa on-line para poner en contacto centros, alumnado y profesorado de enseñanza secundaria
de diferentes países, usando el inglés como lengua vehicular.
Hablamos de MySchoolsNetwork y fue una idea que nació en Holanda y se ha extendido por todo el mundo. En breve informaremos a nuestro alumnado de la manera de formar parte de esta comunidad de estudiantes de diversos países.
Here is a simple video in English which explains the basic of this platform.

GOING PLACES!!

We LOVE traveling and our students do too!! Here is a project for ESO Year 2 students. They have to go on-line a create a travel budget in pairs. Here are the guidelines of this awesome project...

Project travel budget from José Antonio Alcalde López

ASK QUORA...

One good thing about the Internet is that we can find answers to virtually every possible question. QUORA is a good example.
This website offers a community of users worldwide that are willing to answer questions related to all topics: science, education, traveling, health, economics, politics, history, etc.

You need to register and create an account to access this service while you can also be part of the community by answering other people's questions.

Here is a short video explaining how Quora works in a very simple way.

ENGLISH SPELLING

Students of English can tell that English spelling is difficult because it is strange and many times out of any logic.

It was many centuries ago that pronunciation and spelling don't go hand in hand and this is a nightmare for many people!!

Maybe when you watch this short video you will understand a little bit more why this is so. The answer like in many other cases is in... history.