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Penfriends in Greece
We were lucky a few weeks ago, through our membership of the Cambridge English Penfriends site, to have the opportunity to swap message cards with an English school in Greece.
The school, Yes You Can, is located in the town of Marathon, Greece. Aside from my students initially not believing there was actually a town called Marathon, we had a lot of fun reading the Greek students cards (pictured above) and discovering about their local area.
In turn my students produced message cards to send back to their Marathon counterparts. I was also in contact with their teacher so there was a good rapport and I look forward to swapping cards in the future.
As I get more accustomed to the Penfriend system I'm gradually introducing the message cards to the middle Elementary School aged students...I think it really gives them a study boost, as they see they can communicate with children around the world, all through the medium of English.
Ganbatte!
Penguin Kids
Yet more books for the school library. This time from Pearson ELT and their extremely popular Penguin Kids series.
I think we have all the Disney based books from this series, and have started replacing some of the books due to wear and tear (which after 100 rentals for each book I'm not complaining!)
I also took the opportunity to buy some of the non-Disney titles as seen in the photo, most are rewritten versions of Roald Dahl classics including The Twits, Fantastic Mr.Fox and The Enormous Crocodile as well as The Wizard of Oz and Thumbelina.
Happy Reading!
Christmas Party 2017
A big thank you to all those who attended the Christmas Parties on Sunday, I'm sure everybody had a lot of fun (hopefully!)
You can find some photos of the parties over on our events page englishpool.net/event
(As with the Halloween parties this year, I'll be making all photos taken at the Christmas Parties available to those who attended, look out for the slip of paper in your child's bag.)
Christmas Party
Just a quick reminder that tomorrow, December 17th, is the annual englishpool Christmas Party! Yeah!
We'll be transforming the classroom later today into a Chrsitmas wonderland, and the parties will start at 14:00 for the younger students and from 16:00 for the Elementary school aged students.
Ho! Ho! Ho!
More Halloween Party Photos!
We usually shoot 200~300 photos during the Halloween and Christmas parties and of course printing and displaying them is not practical, but we'd still like to share them with the parents of children who attended. So starting form this year we are making all the photos taken at the parties available for parents to view online.
The albums are password protected, so you'll need to have the slip of paper handed out in classes this week to hand.
If you didn't receive the slip, or can't find it, just send me a message and I'll sort you out.
Halloween Party Photos 2017
Please find some photos taken at this year's Halloween parties at the following link englishpool.net/event.
Thank you once again to all the parents who brought their children to last Sunday's Halloween Parties. I know it can't have been easy getting the children dressed into their costumes and then having to put on raincoats, rainboots etc. to brave the heavy rain. お疲れ様でした.
Next year I promise NO RAIN!!!
The Witching Hour
Well it will soon be the witching hour, and time to say goodbye to Halloween, pack up the Halloween decorations and stow them away for another year.
A big thank you to all those who attended the parties on Sunday, they were a lot of fun and I'm sure the children enjoyed themselves.
Hopefully soon I'll have some Halloween Party photos to share.
Until then, Happy Halloween!
Getting Ready for Halloween
Almost ready for today's Halloween Party, and the classroom is looking spooky.
It may be pouring down, but we're going to have the best Halloween parties ever.
Just a reminder of those times again
Sprouts/Kinder from 14:30 to 16:00
Elementary from 16:30 to 18:00
Happy Halloween!
AGO Card Game
The students, and myself, have been big fans of the AGO card games almost since their release, seven(?) years ago.
The students love the gameplay as it's as simple to play as UNO, and I love it because it gets children used to asking questions, and not just merely answering questions.
With this goal of becoming good question makers in mind I recently altered a pack of AGO Level One by removing the questions, the idea being that the children would have to think for themselves without any sample questions to read. The results have been spectacular, some of the questions the children could remember but where they ran up again question they really started to think for themselves...not always perfectly but with a bit of guidance they created their own questions and are well on their way to becoming good question makers.
Hope the folks at AGO don't mind my alterations, and if you need a name for this version we are calling it AGO Clear!!
More...
Cambridge English Penfriends
We've recently joined Cambridge English Penfriends. As the name suggests it's an updated version of the penfriend system.
I'd been looking at giving our students more chances to actually use their English when I stumbled accross the Penfriends website, and I thought we'd give it a try with our upper elementary class first.
The reaction from the students has been fantastic, and they really gave their best effort preparing their first cards to exchange.
Looking forward to making our first match!
Name Five Tropical Fruits Starting with 'P'
This one had us guessing in yestersday's JHS class.
We were playing the ever popular Word Up by TEFL Games, and as one of the crossword clues the students had to name a tropical fruit beginning with the letter 'p'.
Aside from the most obvious one, to our surprise there were another four possible answers...so the challenge was to name the other four...which we couldn't.
...so it's over to you;
Can you name five tropical fruits beginning with the letter 'p'?
"New" Books for our School Library
A big thank you to one of our older students for these three books she'd grown out of.
As you can imagine they were an instant hit with the younger girls in the school.
Remember, if you have any English children's books you no longer need we are more than happy to give them a new home!
Halloween Party 2017
It's that time of year, still too warm to be autumn, the leaves have yet to change colour but the supermarkets have had their Halloween decorations up for the past month.
So here at englishpool it's time to get in the swing of things and announce the 2017 Halloween Party. We'll be doing two parties on Sunday October 29th this year, the first from 14:30 to 16:00 will be for our Sprouts and Kinder students. The second party, from 16:30 to 18:00, will be for our Elementary aged students.
Still yet to decide on a Halloween costume for this year!