Infographics and education 

Infographics are ideal for teaching the basics of complicated processes or breaking down high-level data for all types of students. They have a similar function as we saw previously with mindmaps, they provide help highlighting, explaining, or enhancing text-based information. They are usually flashy, having the unique ability to capture your attention, convey information, and encourage data retention despite their complex nature.

Teachers can use infographics for example to illustrate a historical timeline for sciences, highlight important statistics in maths, increase awareness of an issue, provide helpful tips to organize information to prepare a presentation, offer step-by-step instructions, generate interest or encourage their motivation for an event. 

The ingredients for a good infographic are a clear and direct title, the body with visual information, an explanatory text to contextualize or complete the graphic information,  references to the sources, authorship and license. 

There are different digital tools to create infographics for our class. Some examples are easel.ly, canva, smore, tackk, mural.ly or padlet. After having a look at all of them I decided to use Piktochart. 

-Positive facts: They provide you with a big number of templates about different topics that you can edit and use for free. You can also upload your own images or videos, create lists, timelines or comparisons. You have many possibilities to change the type of letter to make your infographic attractive for the receptor. 

-Negative facts: If you want to embed your project you need to pay for it. 

Let me introduce my creation. This is an infographic about important developments in human history. It is aimed at the fifth grade of primary education for the social science subject. This resource is going to help to visualize the unit because it is very flashy, with different colours, types and sizes of letters, bold font and pictures. This features are going to catch students´attention engaging them in the lesson. 

Video-Top 10 inventions in human history 

Hope you have found this post useful!

See you in the next chapter👋

Mind mapping uses for students

Mind mapping uses for students  

Mind maps are a really useful resource for students. They help them to organize the most important information using keywords and making connections between ideas visually. Students can use mindmaps to make notes, plan an essay, study for the exams, solve a problem, make presentations or study in groups. You can create your own mindmaps or you can also encourage your students to do it.  It is very easy and they have a lot of benefits. So, go ahead! 💣

To create mine I decided to use  Creately. 👇

-Positive facts: It is free, easy to use, you can upload your own images and you can include different templates, ornaments and links to websites.  

-Negative facts: You can not add a background to make your word more visual, to do something "more professional" you have to pay for it and you just can embed it as an image. 

However, there are a great number of Online tools to create mind maps. I invite you to have a look at the following ones to decide the best for you.  

Coggle, Mindmeister, Mind42m,  SpiderScribe, Bubbl.us. 

My mind map is aimed at the third grade of primary education and it is called "Knowing the plants". We can see the main topic, four subtopics, important information or examples about all of them, and, finally, some pictures to make the content visual to the students. 

Mindmap about plants

Hope you have found this post useful

See you in the next chapter!👋

 The benefits of comics in education

Comics are more than just a fun art-enrichment activity. They are also a really interesting tool for education. They have plenty of benefits such us provide narrative experiences for children, encourage the use of new language, increase their creativity and motivate students in the process of learning. 

The second language learner specialist  Stephen Cary once said: “Comics provide authentic language learning opportunities for all students…. The dramatically reduced text of many comics make them manageable and language profitable for even beginning-level readers.” 

There are different online resources to create comics👏

   

I decided to use StoryBoardThat because it has a lot of different free scenes to add to your comic. Furthermore, it is very easy to use, it has a lot of different possibilities to create exactly what you have in your mind, change the characters or the dialogues, upload your own images and worksheets. However, I invite you to have a look at all of them to find the ideal one for you. 

Now, it is time to introduce my last comic.👉 It is about a new student that arrives at a school. At the beginning, he does not feel any motivation at all to attend the lessons. That is why the teacher starts to think about different proposals to increase his interest in the school. At the end, she discovered one of his passions, insects. 

Teachers always try to look for new alternatives to motivate students, and this comic is a way for them to realise that they can share their likes with the teacher and, maybe, he or she will use the students´ requests for the lessons. 

Made with Storyboard That

Hope you enjoy the comic, see you in the next chapter👋

Five useful resources for a CLIL lesson

 Five useful resources for a CLIL lesson 

Teachers are constantly looking for new materials and resources to engage children in the learning process, making the content more relevant and interested for them. It is important to have a high level of organization in order to look for these resources as fast as possible.

There are some websites that can help you to achieve that purpose, creating boards to order the different resources according to the year, the subject or the topic. 

Those are some of the websites that I visited: 

Today I bring you five resources to use in a second-grade sciences CLIL lesson about the Earth. After an intensive process of research, I decided to group them on a board from Pinterest. You can share different resources using the link, for example, a video from youtube, a song, a quiz or whatever you wish. 

The resources are the following: 

1. The world around us wordwall

It is an interactive wordwall about the Earth, solar system and other topics from the unit. It is an interesting way of joining education and games. 

2. Worksheet to create their own planet.

With this kind of activities, they are going to increase creativity and the ability to think and compare the information. 

3. Video from youtube about the solar system.

Videos are always a good choice, however, the most difficult part is the intensive process of finding the ideal one for your students, which always takes time. 

4. Bingo game

The first time that I used bingo with my students was a success. Everybody showed interest, attention, implication and participation during the whole session. I absolutely recommend this game. It is really flexible, you can adapt it to almost every topic. 

 

5. Crafts about the planets. 

Children love every kind of crafts.  They are a way to "manipulate" the content, to more visual and realistic. 

You can find my Pinterest board in my profile! 👀

 I hope you like it, see you in the next chapter. 

 

Learning through images

Do you usually use images in your lessons?

Everyone is a visual learner👀, it is said that after 72 hours, you can expect people to remember 10% if you just speak. Add supporting images and you can see that number increase up to 65%.

So, today I bring you different images to use in a CLIL lesson in order to make the content more realistic and close to the students. 

It is important to know where to find these images. The ones that you are going to see then belongs to "pixabay" and "flicker". They are websites for sharing photos, illustrations, film footage and music, exclusively under the custom of the Creative Commons CC0 license it is very easy to use, and, there are a lot of possibilities to find exactly the picture that you are thinking about. So, I absolutely recommend this page! 👍

The CLIL lesson is about the solar system🌎. 

LESSON PLAN "ASTRONAUTS FOR A DAY"

Subject: Social science.

Year: Second grade. 

Content: The solar system. The Earth. Representation of the Earth. Planisphere, maps and planes.

Timing: Two sessions of 45 minutes.  

The pictures used would be the following:

The first image is useful to have a general vision of the solar system, to compare the size of the planets and to see how big the sus in respect to the planets. They can also understand the movements of the Earth, how the Earth spins around its axis and how the Earth spins around the sun. It is very visual, which is better than using just the theory. 

Sistema solar by Art Rocket  (CC BY NC ND) 

To just focus on our planet, to keep your eyes on the details. 

Earth by Wikilmages (CC BY-SA)

To have a model of what they have to do. It is a kind of scaffolding to help them to understand exactly what is demanded. 

Sistema solar by bibliotecaescola (CC BY NC ND)

To see how the movement of the Earth around its axis origins the days and the nights

Image by Alex Socha (CC BY-SA)

 

Hope you like the images, see you in the next chapter!✋

Five uses of avatars that every teacher should know!

Do you know what an avatar is?🙋

An avatar is an icon or figure representing a particular person in a video game, internet or forum. 

There are different programs where you can create your own and personal avatar, for example, 

bitmoji, doppelme or portrait avatar maker.

 

I chose Bitmoji to create mine! It is very quick and easy, just in a couple of minutes, you can create your own character!

This is mine! Her name is "Pacios the Avatar"🙊, she is a 22 years old teacher who loves teaching, music, cooking and sports. I hope you like it!

And the question is...How can we use avatars at school? Today, I introduce  you five ideas to use avatars at school with your students, I am sure they are going to enjoy it so much✌

1. They can create their own avatar. They can spend time changing it according to the different situations and changing their aspect every time they want. 

2. An interesting activity could be to introduce their avatars in front of the class to their partners. They can make drawings, dress up like them or make up histories about them to share with their mates. 

3. They can be part of interactive games and activities in the classroom. Having a representation of themselves is going to increase their interest and enthusiasm for the activity.

4. They can be introduced in an interactive world with their classmates, having conversations with them and sharing opinions about different aspects that take place in the classroom, encouraging discussion and communication. 

5. Avatars contest!  Everything in one day will be related to the avatars, we can decorate the class, for example changing the class list for one with the name of the avatars and... they will have AWARDS for the most original ones! 

Hope you enjoy it, see you in the next chapter💚

Welcome to my blog!

  

LET´S LEARN TOGETHER!💪

Once upon a time, there was a girl from Ponferrada called Sandra who dreamed to be a teacher. When she was little, she enjoyed a lot to teach children, and when she saw her teachers in front of her at the school, she said: “One day I will be like them”😍. 

That day has arrived!💥 

Sandra is 22 years old now, and, after studying hard at Leon University, she is an English Primary teacher. Related to education, she loves innovation, trying to engage the students into the learning process with activities that can increase their interest and motivation, and ICT´s are an exciting tool to get that purpose.

Outside education, Sandra loves travelling, discovering new places and cultures. She was living in Northern Ireland for four months, and she is looking forward to repeating an abroad experience soon. She also likes listening to music, sports, and watching series

That´s all for now! Hope you have learned more about Sandra! See you in the next chapter.

I want to finish this post with a sentence from Nelson Mandela: 

"Education is the most powerful weapon we can use to change the world". 🙏