Story Time: The Iron Man

On fridays we usually have our "Story Time" when we read poems, section of novels or short stories in a group. In the first term we read the first chapter of this famous story for children, "The Iron man" by Ted Hughes.

Open the video below to see an excellent and atmospheric, animated version of the first chapter. It is from the BBC children´s channel.
(1. Esto es un recurso que se utilizará en el aula)

Below that there is a video of the students in 5ºA doing a follow-up activity.
(2. Alumnos de 5ºA hablan del libro en el segundo video:)


The Iron Man from Atalía 5 Gijon on Vimeo.

5A The Iron Man Review from Atalía 5 Gijon on Vimeo.


Listening Practice: This is an abridged version of the story, we will be doing some comprehension questions based on this listening. Practice reading the text to yourself as it is read by the narrator.

Esto es otro recurso que se utilizará en el aula:

Kookaburra Videos (Art)

Photos and video from our recent art class: ...

Pupils follow the instructions from the video on the interactive whiteboard:

5B Kookaburra Drawing 1 from Atalía 5 Gijon on Vimeo.

... and then give feedback on their first attempts ... some are more happy with their work than others!:


5B Kookaburra Drawing and Comments from Atalía 5 Gijon on Vimeo.

Even though these photos and videos are from the pupils in 5ºB the drawings from 5ºA  were equally excellent! More photos of the finished drawings to come soon.

What did you do ...?

The students often tell the class their news at the start of the class. Part of the process is the use of verb tenses in context.  However occasionally we revise and focus directly on some grammar points.

Here the students from 5ºB are doing question and answer chains. They prepared their questions but do not know who they will be speaking to until their turn comes around again. (activity from October 2015)

Some students prefer to watch and listen ... which is fine!

5B Past Tense Chains from Atalía 5 Gijon on Vimeo.

Him Her Me Us Them ....

Working on pronouns is often difficult. But eventually after hearing and saying thousands of things in English they begin to sound right. Sometimes we do short "games" to check and revise.

In this activity the pupils from 5ºA are playing "Sergeant and soldiers" and have to think quickly (while practicing the use of object pronouns).

  
5A Pronoun Soldiers from Atalía 5 Gijon on Vimeo.

Draw a Kookaburra (Art)

We have been working on birds in Literacy. Our next project in Art class is going to be building 3D models of birds from Oceania. Before that we practiced drawing this super bird that is found in Australia: The Kookaburra

Here is the video with step by step instructions that we watched in class. (Message to pupils: If you don´t like your first version do another one!)

The Magpie Poem.

We are working on "scientific" and non-fiction texts at the moment. To coincide with the research on different types of birds we had a bit of fun with this traditional poem about the magpie (the urraca or "pega"). Throughout history the magpie has been the subject of superstition and folk stories.

In the first video the pupils of 5ºA have been given the words of the poem as a puzzle. They are deciding the logical order for the words by working out the "value" of each element and which of them rhyme.

5A Magpie Poem Class from Atalía 5 Gijon on Vimeo.

Here the pupils of 5ºB recite the poem in groups:

5B Magpie Poem 1 from Atalía 5 Gijon on Vimeo.
5B Magpie Poem 2 from Atalía 5 Gijon on Vimeo.
5B Magpie Poem 3 from Atalía 5 Gijon on Vimeo.

There are lots of variations on this traditional poem but this is the most commonly known one:

One for sorrow
Two for joy
Three for a girl
Four for a boy
Five for silver
Six for gold
Seven for a secret never to be told!

Jovellanos Museum (Art)

We went to the Jovellanos Museum in the centre of Gijón (Casa Natal de Jovellanos). In the first part of the visit we looked at portraits ...

and then in the second part we did a portrait workshop and made our own pictures using photocopies of faces of famous women and collage materials (photos 5ºA):

And a video from the 5ºB session:

5Bjovellanos from Atalía 5 Gijon on Vimeo.

The Strange Life Cycle of the Cuckoo.

This is a video that we watched in class. It was the introduction to focus our interest on the life and behaviour of a very strange bird: the Cuckoo.

Día de la Paz (Art)

Every year we celebrate "Peace Day" in school. This year we made a copy of Picasso´s Dove of Peace". We made a collective artwork with all the Atalía pupils making hand prints around the dove silhouette. In class each pupil also made their own versions of the Picasso drawing.

In this video the pupils from 5ºB are painting around dove templates which they had made by copying from the original drawing. Then they used their fingers to create a similar effect to the whole school picture which can be seen on the floor.

5Bpeacedayart from Atalía 5 Gijon on Vimeo.