Wonder

     Como cada año, cuando se acercan las fiestas navideñas los departamentos de lengua inglesa y bilingüismo organizan la salida a una sala de cine para ver una de las novedades en cartelera más atractivas en versión original con subtítulos. Este año fue el turno de Wonder, una verdadera maravilla que todos los niños y niñas deberían ver.







     We were phoned by the cinemas with no time to react when they told us it was impossible to watch the film we had chosen and we were (nearly) forced to see "Wonder". It has been like a Christmas miracle, Wonder is a movie which every child, or everyone, should see because of its plot, characters and moral: it is an excellent prize to our students after their first term exams.

     This trip is one of the only two when all the classes at school have the chance to participate so the number of buses (four) and kids (more than two hundred) is remarkable.

     We visited la Cañada, some even got time to do some shopping after having their popcorn watching such a lovely film. No one missed a scene as the plot hooks you from the very beginning and, what is better, I am sure everyone  has learnt a lot about empathy, bullying, friendship and family.

     So, do not hesitate and go to the cinema during Christmas and "enjoy" with your family this breathtaking story... but bring kleenex!

Sciences videos

     El alumnado del profesor D. Emilio Bustelo en las asignaturas de Biología y Geología (en 1ºA y C) y Física y Química (en los grupos de 3º) ha utilizado frecuentemente unos videos (la gran mayoría en inglés aunque con alguno en castellano) para hacer las explicaciones de muchos de los temas más sencillos y visuales, sus links son mostrados a continuación.

     Biology and Geography and Physics and Chemistry are subjects where sometimes "an image helps better than a thousand words" and Mr. Emilio Bustelo uses videos from youtube of diverse styles, from songs to animation short films, to illustrate his explanations; below, we can find the links to them all.
 
          -The 1ESO A and C groups have worked "Earth and its galaxy" and "Mineral and Rocks".  
(Click here)
              -The 3ESO groups videos show "Sciences" and "The Atomic Model".   
(Click here)

 

E-Twinning training

     Aunque muchos desconozcáis tal detalle, el profesorado está en constante reciclaje para su buen funcionamiento y mejora. Una de los recursos principales que encontramos para este fin son los cursos de formación. Estas semanas el profesorado de nuestro centro está realizando varios de ellos con diferentes temáticas; uno de ellos es el curso del CEP Marbella/Coín sobre el uso de la red intercentros europea E-Twinning.




      Every school has an interesting teacher training program so that teachers can improve their knowledge and skills about different subjects and fields, for instance, in Profesor Tomás Hormigo, we teachers are attending different courses (School Linguistic Planning, ICT for Diversification, Transgender in Andalusian Education...) during these weeks of November, December and January.

     We had also the chance to attend the lecture on E-Twinning, a valuable tool to work with different schools from many European countries making possible the future co-working with them about projects of any subject.

     It was an interesting lecture with the attendance of head figures of the program in Madrid and Sevilla and the illustrative speeches of teachers already using the advantages of such a felpful program.

School of Rugby 2017/18

     Aprovechamos que nuestro auxiliar de conversación es galés para que nuestros alumnos conozcan de primera mano una de las principales tradiciones de su país, el rugby, por medio de algunas sesiones especiales de la clase de Educación Física.

 
     Rugby is the most important sport in Wales as one of their most remarkable traditions. Ben Jones, our Welsh English-language assistant got "into the pitch" and taught some of our students the main rules and played diverse games related to this exciting sport. 

     It is the second year we include sporting activities in our bilingual program through the practice of rugby and it is something we would like to continue carrying on in the future.

Stories to Stay Awake

     Una curiosa iniciativa más, salida de las actividades del día de Halloween: esta vez se trata de un audio-libro de historias de terror en versiones en español e inglés realizado por los alumnos de primero de la profesora Marisa para la actividad de música.

     Our younger pupils have developed an amazing work with the help of their music teacher Marisa. Stories to Stay Awake (Historias para no Dormir) is a compilation of horror tales both in Spanish and English, written in the form of a book and also recorded as audio tales to really make us all freak out.

     Do you want to have nightmares?
     Why don't you read it? (Link below)

                                 💀Stories to Stay Awake👻

It's Halloweeeeeeeen

 
   El pasado martes 31 de octubre adelantamos unas horas la noche de Halloween para dar los premios a los mejores trabajos de los distintos concursos organizados por los de departamentos de inglés y bilingüismo con motivo de dicha festividad.

     Zombies, vampires, ghosts, skeletons and goblins (in other words, our ESO4 students) surprised all our younger students when unexpectedly broke into their classrooms to take them to the gym... it was a funny way to give the prizes for the different contest organized by Bilingualism and the English Language department. Best Jack O´Lantern (ESO1), Best "Create your Monster" composition (ESO1 and 2) or Best Twitter Horror Tale (ESO3 and 4), you can read it in one of the pictures of this post, were awarded in such a ghostly environment. After the ceremony, all kids were able to buy cakes and cookies from their older monster schoolmates (in order to raise funds for the school trip).

    If you want to see more pictures of the event, visit our school´s activities blog by Mr. Cristóbal Navarro.

Here´s Ben

      Como cada curso desde que somos centro bilingüe hemos recibido a nuestro auxiliar de conversación de lengua inglesa nativo. Este curso trabajaremos junto al compañero Ben Jones, procedente de Gales; seguro que será una gran ayuda que, al mismo tiempo, él también aprenderá mucho de esta experiencia ¡Bienvenido!


      Ben Jones comes from Wales and he is 21-year-old who loves sports (including Spanish football) and music, after his music studies he is an expert on piano and drums. It is not his first time in our country and he likes it very much so that he decided to come around and give us a hand.

     An important part of the bilingual program in Andalusian schools is the assistance by a native English speaker so that every year we receive some girl or boy ready to learn a lot about our country, costumes and educational daily life as our student have a chance to listen and talk to someone from an English-speaking country and learn about their culture.

      He will stay with us until May and he will be working with our Maths, Geography, Sciences, Music and Technology teachers. All our staff welcomed him and, as we did the last two years, our library project coordinator, Ms.Olivia Cózar, gave him a welcome gift in the name of our school:  an abridged version of El Cantar de Mio Cid, to start with Spanish literature.

     We are sure that he will enjoy his stay and our school will be very lucky to have him with us.
    


     

Hard Times

     Nuestra profesora de ATAL (Aula Temporal de Adaptación Lingüística), Dª Margarita M. Mora, viene realizando estos días en diversos grupos una actividad, en apariencia bastante "loca" (si se me permite la expresión) pero con una finalidad magnífica: acercar un poco al alumnado ordinario las dificultades y el aislamiento que sufre un alumno que acude por primera vez a un centro, cuando se trata de un estudiante que no habla nuestra lengua en absoluto, situación más que frecuente en nuestro centro.

     You are a shy and vulnerable twelve-year-old boy or girl, new at school but that is not your biggest problem: sometimes, when someone talks to you, which unfortunately does not always happen, you cannot understand a word or a gesture, even a smile makes you doubt its actual meaning.

    This is a most common phenomenon is our school, lots of Ukranian, Romanian, Moroccan... arrive in our school straight from their origin countries and they crash into the language barrier. The ATAL (Temporary classroom for language adaptation) program is a great help, even though sometimes it is not enough since we need more hours and more teachers for this purpose. Anyway, by this program these foreign students get involved in the life of our school and learn Spanish very fast, faster than we could figure out beforehand.

     Ms Margarita M. Mora, ATAL teacher, has developed an activity which looks quite crazy as the jump from one chair onto another to bring that feeling of loneliness and confuson closer. After that, some of our former non-Spanish-speaking "foreigners" talked about their experiences with anecdotes and harder times to finally thank for all the support received during such difficult situations.

We start on the European Day of Languages

    Empezamos un nuevo curso y no hemos encontrado una efeméride mejor.

    Hello again, we begin a new year and we think we do it in the best way possible: last Tuesday (Sept 26th) was the European Day of the Languages.

"we can´t spell that word!"

     As another warn-up activity, English used this day, addressing to the roots of our tongues to draw the main structural differences between a germanic language such as English and Spanish a romanic one. This is a good chance to introduce grammar in our ESO 3 and 4 classes but from a different point of view, analysing their origins as we study some features of latin and other germanic languages as we also focus on other side elements as historical events or legends and myths.

Well-earned homage

     Even after our students have left, teachers must stay at school for some three weeks, we do some administrative work to finish the ending school year and to begin to get ready the next one. So this week we had the chance to live a really moving and special event, Mrs Lola Portillo, great colleague and former school´s bilingual program coordinator, was honoured by the naming of one of our class-rooms after being an excellent teacher and being the first one to get retirement in IES Profesor Tomás Hormigo.

Congratulations, Lola, you have always had room for you here but now you do have yout own one.

Summertime

     Llegó el fin de curso y éste llegó cargado de actividades tan divertidas como emotivas.

     When the course finishes we are getting used to celebretring nice activities of different nature (theatre plays, prizes, concerts, graduation...) This end of the course has been also plenty of this kind of events, I would like to point out especially two of them.

     Oliver and Annie (after the successful Romeo and Juliet and Grease), 3ESO B and Mónica have performed another excellent musical play mixing the plots of  Dickens´ Oliver Twist and the movie Annie, amazingly performed and above all unbelievable sung (Gloría Luna, who played the character of Annie, must record a CD or deserves to win any TV talent show).

     The concert directed by "Monsieur" Jesús Alemeida  was a moving show where, by their French songs, almost all the students of our school honoured Mr. José María Moya, who leaves IES Profesor Tomás Hormigo after twenty-four years. Good bye, friend.

     Enjoy your summer.

Oscars 2017 (4th Edition)

     Como cada final de curso durante los últimos cuatro años, celebramos nuestro festival de cortometrajes en inglés, los Oscars Profesor Tomás Hormigo. Este año fue un verdadero éxito con la participación de más de 25 proyectos.


      Today, Friday June 16th, the fourth edition of our English short film festival, Oscars Profesor Tomás Hormigo, was a success. We can say so because we got 26 projects from which we chose seven finalists, among them, we found comedy (The Party, Pet Life, The Worst Super-Hero), Horror (The Last Meeting), Drama (Life without Colours, The Videotutorial) and a critical analysis of society, the Best Project winner, Human Race.

     As we said before, the seven finalist films which were shown today came out from the previous 26 projects worked out by our students, as a result of the involvement of lots of teachers: this has been the first edition which the whole English board teachers have taken part in, being this short film project prime part of 3ESO and 4ESO speaking skills assessment. Besides teachers of other areas have also helped with different duties like music, being jury, decorating... thanks to them all this edition has been a special one.

     The library was the place where the results of their projects were played, a great surprise for all the students since the seven finalist titles were top secret:
-The Party: An eccentric and funny plot about four posh girls invited to a party to be kidnapped... or not, something quite David-Lynch-like but much more colourful and in. Awarded with the Oscar for Best Actress, Candela García (4ºB).
-Pet Life: One of the most original pieces seen today, a hilarious story of cats and dogs where actual animals were the characters dubbed by our students´ voices. Awarded with the Oscars for Best Screenplay and Best Actor, Harrison Genders (3ºC). Click here to watch it. 
-Human Race: Actually, a masterpiece, it looks simple but it is a complex analysis with symbolism, animation and a moral. Awarded with the Oscar for Best Visual Effects and BEST MOVIE, to Romy and Taylor Hopewel (3ºB). Click here to watch it.
-The Last Meeting: The teenage horror film which is never missed on our festivals, a kind os I Know What You Did Last Romería. Awarded with the new category, Oscar for Best Non-Native English.
-Life without Colours: Some common, or not so, problems of our boys and girls are successfully depicted by this black and white film. Awarded with the Oscar for Best Message.
-The Videotutorial: Domestic violence and social networking collide in this excellent short, a work which moved most of us. Awarded with the Oscars for Best Film Editing and Best Soundtrack.
-The Worst Super-Hero: It is not easy to be a hero but you can really laugh at him when he such a mess. Awarded with the Oscar for Funniest Movie. 

     Later they met at the gym to know who the winners were. Conducted by José Luis Caballos, also as usual, the prizes were given by their English teachers and Inmaculada García, Olivia Cózar, Carmen Beltrán, Fernando Banda, Daniel Molina, Javier Orellana and our headteacher, Juan Manuel Campos, who thanked all our students for their amazing short films before giving the Best Movie Prize.

     As usual it has been a great day but usual doesn´t mean it was less exciting.

 

C U soon, friend

     Nuestro amigo George terminó su tiempo aquí y continúa con sus aventuras, por unos meses aún por España para seguir más tarde por el resto del mundo. Se lleva todo nuestro cariño allá por donde vaya.


      George H. Harman arrived in January, straight from New Zealand, to help us with our English but he didn´t only play that role, he became an excellent partner and appealling motivation for our students. He never said no to any of our proposals, being always ready to participate on any activity  and always with fun: teaching rugby, playing music, travelling with us whenever we had to (Isla Mágica, Selwo, Málaga University Meeting...).

    Several farewel events took place, both students (writing thank you letters, asking about his experiences among us, giving him presents...) and teachers having a dinner with him and giving him a gift for him to remember us too.

    Throughout our years of bilingual studies, we have met excellent people who came here to work hard and learn with us (Abbey, Preston... ) they will never be forgotten and George has earned a place among them, in our particular Olympus for speaking auliaries.

   CU soon, friend.

Lights, Camera, Action!

      Estamos contando los días para nuestros óscars y ya se empieza a  notar...

     One of the most exciting activities in English in our school is the Short Film Festival: this year we will celebrate the fourth edition of our Oscars; so it is not strange to find students shooting some of the scenes of their coming-soon masterpieces.

     We will be watching their thrillers, horror or love stories on Friday june 16th,  when all the best movies will be shown and then awarded with the prizes for the following categories: acting, screenplay, technical aspects and best movie.

All Blacks!

 

    Este curso estamos estrujando al máximo la versatilidad de nuestro auxiliar de conversación: no sólo hemos disfrutado de la presentación sobre su país en todos los grupos (bilingües o no), al tratarse de un neozelandés, no podíamos pasar por alto una de sus insignias nacionales, el rugby.

     Mr Paco Santoyo and Mr George Harman have given some original lessons inspired on rugby, prime activity in New Zealand and quite an unknown sport for many of us. Our students were taught about some of its main rules and practized some games related to this sport. Finally they tried something similar to a match XDDDD.

A Selwo Adventure

      El martes 18 de Abril nuestros alumnos de los cuatro grupos de primero de E.S.O. vivieron una aventura en plena naturaleza, más bien podríamos describirla como una aventura en la jungla. Mediante la experiencia safari que se nos ofrece en el  parque presenciaron de cerca el día a día de animales más y menos comunes, jugaron con ellos, los alimentaron y, sobre todo, aprendieron muchísimo sobre ellos gracias a la ayuda de nuestros guías en una nueva actividad bilingüe.

     It must be great to go to school and spend the whole school day enjoying a savannah safari. That is what our 1ESO students did last Tuesday, they visited Selwo Adventure Park with their Science teachers Mr Luis Hernández and Mr Luis Resina and their bilingual music teacher Mr Javier Orellana, and our Kiwi English-language assistant, who had an awesome time like all the kids. 

     Once they met their English guides they learnt lots of things about hippos, zebras, lions, elephants... tripping to and fro by safari jeeps and having the chance to play with these exotic animals, to touch them (not the lions, of course) and even to feed them. It has been a great experience just a few minutes from school. Definitely a different way to have a sciences lesson
     
     ...and it has been something WILD!!!