1st Term over!

     Christmas holidays are close and we have succefully finished our first term. 

    Our bilingual program keeps going on following the regular guidelines of the latest years: working non-linguistic areas with English language, by the use of different resources and devices and even with the result of English spoken/written outputs (expos, works, posters, performances...). 24 Lessons a week are being supported by our new language assistants: Amber (from Belgium) and Deepriya (from India).  

     Besides, our program takes a prime role as usually when celebrating certain important dates such as  Halloween (with its traditional diverse contests), Thanksgiving, European Dayof Languages...

     Bilingual program is an element which has settled as an essential feature of the life of our school.

E-Penfriends

     I remember when I was fifteen and I made my first penfriend, it was around the year 10 B.I. (Before Internet) and telephone and post were the only means to contact friends abroad. Writing letters was the only way to keep in touch with my friend Dave in Manchester and get fresh news about Oasis, Man City or the latest fashions in the British Isles as well as one of the best devices to improve my English.

     This year we have begun an e-correspondence program (e-mailing) with a school in Wales. Our former language assistant Ben Jones suggested starting an experience of this type together. Some ten of our ESO1 students (volunteers wanting to have a friend abroad and with the skills to hold such a relationship) have been given a penfriend from Pentrehafod School, the centre where our friend Ben teaches Spanish language. 

     We do not know how far our common interests will take us but I am sure that this can be the beginning of a beautiful frienship.

    

Virtual Trip to London

      We all are really looking forward to travelling and there is no need to talk again about retrictions.

      Thanks to a VR device, our phones and an app, we have been able to visit London without having to get an actual flight and in the cheapest way. Using Kim´s (our language assistant) recordings, all our pupils have had the chance to sightsee the capital of England: Trafalgar Square, Big Ben or Buckingham Palace have been visited by our classes, learning a lot about it by our own audioguide and the 3D/360 experience given by the app.

      Always keeping all the pandemic security measures, the kids liked this "trip" even though most of them keep their desire to visit the real places.

Bye Kim

     Being part of the Andalusian program for biligual schools has lots of advantages but maybe the most remarkable one is the choice to meet excellent people like our language assistants.

     Year 2020/21 has been Kim´s year. Kim, our favourite Londoner, has been shadowing the work of most our teachers as she also gave examples of British life by the exercises and activities developed. She has been an excellent colleague and a great new friend.

     Last Monday her contract with us finished and she gave us a yummy English-product breakfast. Our school also gave her a present since we are really thankful for her help.

     Good luck, friend!

Book Day

       This year we have had a very special Book Day at school. One of our teachers, Olivia Cózar, has recently published a novel (La Noche de las Dos Lunas) and we had the oportunity to listen to an author's words and advice  when we are dealing with such a close writer (We had previously had other poets and novelists having a chat with our students but never so familiar).

     

 

      Despite pandemic measures some activities to celebrate this day took place as every year, even though our traditional book flea market could not be developed :( . One remarkable activity has been the recommendation from most of our children, they have chosen their favourite novels; it is surprising finding diverse titles besides usual magic and zombies sagas.

Keep on rocking!

 

    Our work continues, maybe our more colorful activities have stopped for the last year but bilingual education keeps taking place inside everyclassroom: our bilingual teaching board combines Spanish and English activities (games, exercises, videos...) during our Maths, Science, Technology, PE, History and Music lessons as well as the support and explanations of Kim, our helpful assistant.

   I would like to point out that an anonymous family have donated an incredibly huge amount of books in English to enrich our English library: modern collections, classic tales, new fashions, best-sellers, appealing readings from Harry Potter to the literature must-reads... books about history, travels, animals... some hundreds of amazing books to let us learn and dream... and in English. Thank you!!!

 

First term's over

      Pues a pesar de las dificultades y medidas además de los augurios confusos que llegaban en septiembre, hemos llegado a las vacaciones navideñas con una cierta normalidad.

 

     Christmas break, this year it seems even more miraculous than another. In the beginning of this school year, in summer, most bet that our classes would be interrupted by the pandemic measures. Now just before the Christmas holiday we can be proud of our students' work (and teachers' too). 

     We are used to a long list of activities, some of them have become tradition, but this year has not been so busy because of that (I especially missed the Cinema trip done for the last seven years). Anyway teachers have kept working on our program: bilingüal activities (documentaries, vocabulary quizzes, real life simulation role plays, poster designing... and even a Christmas carol choreography) every single area has worked on this subject, including English in our everyday education. Kim's work, our language assistant, has been an excellent support, bringing British culture issues to our classes.

     Our school life goes on and that is something to be happy about. We wish you very happy Christmas holiday and we do it with this video where our students show that our facemask must not spoil our smile.

    

Strange Halloween

 

       No nos hemos podido resistir a tener nuestro día de Halloween, quizás con un repertotio de actividades menos vistosas que años anteriores pero con el espíritu de Jack O´Lantern merodeando las aulas del Tomás Hormigo. 

 

     No story telling by ghostly older students, no horror passageways, no monster-shaped cakes, team-worked carved pumpkins... most of the most horrifying activities programmed for this holiday annually have been avoided because of the reasons we are already sick  of speaking about. 

 

     But the creation of scary facemasks brought some shadows (and also colour) to our school: our students project consisted of the design of a fearful mask which was introduced by a video describing its process of creation and the inspiration for it (legends, movies...); some of the best masks were awarded. Also some of our students were allowed to wear a special dress code on Friday.

    The different areas programmed diverse activities with Halloween as central topic, from O.V. films and series episodes in English, to music according to the day in music or a "dark" gymkhana to make our little monsters sweat during P.E. lessons.

A new beginning

  

    Un nuevo año escolar comienza a pesar de las dificultades de la situación tan especiales que estamos atravesando todos. Desde nuestro centro y el plan de bilingüismo, y con la ayuda de todos, haremos todo lo posible para disfrutar del mejor año escolar posible.

     Facemasks, soap, distance... new normal school life or so they say. Anyway, as Stevie Wonder says, "The world keeps  turnin´ " and so"teachers keep teachin´" and our school life goes on.

    We bilingual program teachers keep working on the activities as we have been doing for the last years and increasing our activity year after year. Some of our "flagship" projects  have not arrived yet but most of them will (other will have to wait until future school  years), but our contests, day's anniversaries, holidays... even though we are afraid that our trips will have to wait.

    The different subject areas keep using English as a language in the classroom in order to learn using our two languages together with the use of activities in English (for instance, have a look at the awesome posters to learn abour cell for a science project).

 

    One of the main supports we get for that purpose is the help of our English languages assistants, this year it seemed very difficult to be helped by such an useful figure. But fortunately Kim has come from London to stay with us this year, we are really pleased with her visit and we welcome her and hope she is enjoying her time with us.

#stayhome

          Nuestra labor desde casa continúa, como bien saben, pero el profesorado no sólo no abandona su trabajo didáctico sino que trabaja iniciativas para respaldar el ánimo de nuestro alumnado. Un abrazo a todos, alumnado y familias.                                                                                                                                                                   
                                                                                                                                 #quédateencasa

       This situation is weird, our feelings strange... sometimes we are concerned about our daily problems and our future and sometimes this is not easier for teenagers; our work as teachers becomes a task more complex than just explaining contents of our subjects, as a measure to help with this state of unease all the teachers are using different devices to make our students feel closer and better. Most teachers use tool such as classroom, webcam meetings, audio diaries (like we said Matty is doing from London), video recordings for this puspose... For instance, this is a try of youtube-recipe-style review video about the main structures seen in ESO1.

      Maybe one of the most remarkable measures taken by the teachers board of our school is the shooting of a lipdubbed video for the tune "Resistiré", one of the resistance anthems for such a season; a kind video where we teachers encourage our guys by singing, dancing and showing what we do to feel better these lockdown days.                                                    
                                                                                                           #stayhome

       To finish this post I show you one of my favourite anthems for days like these (it is the soundtrack of my grammar video). Would you check the lyrics?      #stayhomestaystrong

 

Letters from home

        Uno de los puntos base de nuestro plan bilingüe es que el alumnado disfrute de la presencia y experiencia de un nativo de habla inglesa en algunas de sus clases. Este año, como ya os presentamos, tenemos la suerte de tener a Matty, una comprometida chica británica cuyo trabajo se hace notar en nuestro día a día, la interrupción de la asistencia al centro no ha paralizado su actividad, que sigue por medio de la tecnología ofreciendo su servicio a los alumnos y alumnas vía audios con sus experiencias en su país en estas circunstancias tan especiales.


     After the lockdown order, Matty, our language assistant, decided to move back to her hometown with her family and, as we all supposed, she keeps being committed with such a situation. From home, she sends us voice mails with her experience since she is working with charity, living the coronavirus crisis in a different place and so she explains how her country is facing this problem we all are fighting. These voice mails are played by the teachers of the English board as listening comprehension exercises then adding some activities where our students think about this strange situation and other issues dealt with in the messages received.

    Thank you, Matty, take care!!

St Patrick anyway!

      Hoy es un Día de San Patricio bastante atípico, nuestro departamento ya tenía programada una actividad que desde nuestro programa de bilingüísmo estamos intentando integrar en nuestra programación anual a este respecto. Desde nuestro centro, como la gran mayoría de centros en Andalucía, estamos usando distintos recursos para continuar con nuestra tarea de forma telemática de la manera más efectiva. Esta semana era la elegida, evidentemente, para la celebración de nuestra gymkhana con motivo de la efeméride irlandesa de más tradición mundial, así que desde nuestro blog haremos un pequeño homenaje a Irlanda y la fecha más vistosa de su calendario.



      The world turns green on this day, Irish spirit fills pubs and parades around the world but our current situation makes this celebration different today.  We can say this year we are playing a different role to celebrate Saint Patrick´s Day, he was taken to slavery by pirates and we are enslaved to stay at home just to overcome this extraordinary episode we are going through, I am sure we will get it soon. Anyway we can have our St. Patrick´s at home, with our family our on our own: dress something green, learn about Irish traditions and sing and dance some Irish songs (anyway probably you were not going to visit Dublin today).

     Do you know why Saint Patrick? Who was he? I have found this funny video:

     Our program includes an exciting contest to be held today, in groups with questions about legends, geography and history of Ireland, including a dancing event and a karaoke competition unfortunately this time had to be cancelled. One of the songs chosen for that last part of the game, the singing moment, is Dreams by Cranberries, a beautiful tune for these strange days we are living, let´s listen to it and dream on everything we will be doing in a couple of weeks with friends and the people we are looking forward to meeting again. I hope you all are ok!!!

Visiting Málaga

      El miércoles 11 de marzo los alumnos de primero visitaron la capital malagueña para realizar la ya tradicional visita al cementerio anglicano, con su célebre gymkhana, y después pasear por las zonas más representativas del centro de la ciudad.

     Another tradition in our program is the trip to Málaga with its stop in the Anglican graveyard were some important figures such as writers as Jorge Guillén, Gerald Brenan or historical characters as Robert Boyd rest. There our guys discover a not very well known passage of our history as they enjoy a nice quest contest along such a lovely place. 

     Then we walk to the beautiful centre to stroll around charming sites like Alcazaba or the Roman theatre.

Sciences speak English

       El trabajo bilingüe de todos los departamentos implicados en nuestro programa no cesa. El funcionamiento de nuestro proyecto no sólo es patente a través de ciertas celebraciones ya arraigadas en nuestro calendario como salidas y efemérides o concursos, sino que se desarrolla en el día a día de nuestras aulas. El departamento de ciencias, por citar algún ejemplo, ha elaborado unos interesantes murales sobre distintas temáticas (Mendel, los diferentes sistemas del cuerpo humano...) aportando un vocabulario científico de una complejidad notable.


     Our bilingual program implies lots of activities during our everyday work; if you are used to reading our blog's feeds, we are sure you are aware of our trips and anniversaries but Science, History, Maths, Technology and Music lessons work with a myriad of activities in English supported by complex glossaries and explanations in English.

     Our Science board is one of the teachers' groups who have been an active character of our bilingual program since we started it eight years ago, their use of English totally involved in their methodology is remarkable besides most of their homework becomes really attractive: filmed experiments, models of planets, cells or molecules and presentations.

    Mr Luis' and Mrs Cristina's pupils' work is the latest showing of this daily work: posters on different scientific topics from Mendel's genetics laws to the complex practice of Amniocentesis prove this hard and important work.

O.V. Movies, another Christmas tradition

      Como cada año, empezamos nuestras tradiciones navideñas organizando una masiva excursión a La Cañada para ver una de las películas de la temporada en versión original. El film seleccionado en esta ocasión ha sido Jumanji.


      Jumanji is the sequel of the new adventures, a reboot of the awesome story introduced by Robin Williams some 30 years ago. 270 Students watched the exciting film in original version,  starred by Dwayne Johnson and Jack Black.  Then they had some spare time to go shopping in La Cañada. 

     This is a nice activity which puts English language in a real context and may let our students raise interest in cinema
.

Finalists

 
       Nuestro proyecto bilingüe ha logrado que el I.E.S. Profesor Tomás Hormigo sea reconocido como uno de los cuatro centros malagueños finalistas a los premios de Buenas Prácticas Bilingües en la Educación Andaluza.



      Last Monday during the conferences on Bilingual and Plurilingual Teaching Coordination, we could not expect we were going to be given excellent news: our school bilingual project has been selected as one of the four finalist projects in schools (out of the 173 bilingual schools in our province) for the Andalusian Government contest, "Good Bilingual Teaching Practices". Our project focuses on the whole daily work, our students enjoy through a myriad of contests, trips, conferences and other activities, giving a special protagonism to our noteworthy Oscars.


     Our real prize is our girls and boys' work, joy and learning but I have to admit we are proud for such a recognition.

     

It's Halloweennnnnn!!!

     Como cada año nuestro centro se ha volcado con la festividad de Halloween. Disfraces, dulces deliciosamente terroríficos, historias para no dormir, monstruos de una originalidad increíble, calabazas para todos los gustos e incluso un pasaje del terror de pesadilla.

 
     Witches, ghosts, goblins, zombies, psychokillers... welcome to our school. We have experienced lots of scary activities before the long weekend: dreadful cakes and candy sale, 3D monsters design, Jack OĹantern pumpkin and Twitter Horror tale contests.

    A lot of teaching boards  programmed special activities for this day as our English board have been doing year after year, we have to mention the terror passage performed by ESO4 students and developed by the Social studies board.

👻

Heading to London

     Ayer tuvo lugar la primera reunión informativa para lo que será nuestra tercera salida de inmersión lingüística para alumnado de tercero de ESO a Londres. En caso de que estando interesad@ no pudiera asistir les dejo la hoja con las instrucciones para la inscripción online (ha de hacerse antes del 15 de noviembre).

    About thirty parents attended last afternoon to our first meeting to inform about the trip to London which will have place in spring. This is the third time we will travel to the British capital and we are following the same pattern years before: English classes in the morning, visits to the city in the afternoons. staying with families... This is our first contact with this awesome expirience we are glad to repeat.

A new member in our team

 

    Como cada año hemos recibido a nuestro nuevo auxiliar de conversación de habla inglesa y el Plan de Lectura y Biblioteca, junto al de bilinguismo, hemos querido dar la bienvenida con un presente sin duda de gran valor.




    Maddy is our new British language assistant and she will be working with us until June. She has a lot to learn, not only about our kids but also about science, maths, technology, history... all the subjects she will be supporting in order to make our students achieve the best English level possible in different fields. Obviously she will find out lots of things about our way of life and traditions as well as, of course, our language. That is why we have not found a better welcoming gift than our most universal novel, Don Quijote de la Mancha. We gave her an abridged version for foreign Spanish-learners we are sure she will appreciate.

Here we go!

        Empezamos un nuevo curso con la ilusión de cada año o incluso más: seguiremos trabajando como lo venimos haciendo en los últimos cursos e incluiremos atractivas novedades.

       As we introduced by the headline, this a new year but we will work on many of the appealing and successful activities performed during school year 2017/18: Halloween contests, theatre plays, original version cinema, short film festival and English learning trip to London are some of them.

       We have to mention that, as our school grows, our program does so by adding a new language assistant to our lessons. Soon we will introduce Matty.

      Furthermore our new year program includes new and fun contents: visits, games... but we have a whole school year to let them show.