The 12 joys of teaching: Day 7

On Day 7 of #12jot15 I am sharing the joy of singing a Hungarian song together with my Year 5 pupils. They will perform it at the Christmas Carol night, the theme is "Christmas around the world", where every class will represent a different country, and I am so pleased that Year 5 have chosen Hungary! 

It was such an emotional experience to be in the classroom practising the song... I really understand this quote now:

"If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart" (Nelson Mandela)

Update on 26 December: You can listen to them sing here: http://youtu.be/DFlXuoiqUF4

The 12 joys of teaching: Day 6

On day 6 of #12jot15 I am sharing the joy of belonging to the etwinning community! I love working with teachers from other countries and collaborating on projects like learning languages together, making cookbooks or teaching each other playground games. The playground project will be published in the Languages Today magazine ( by the Association of Language Learning) which is amazing! 

Thank you Natalia, Carmen and Sarah for being excellent partners and inspiring me and the children:-)

Some links: 

My visit to Valladolid last year: 

http://zapatitoingles.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/my-etwinning-visit-to-valladolid.html

Carmen's blog:

http://spanishrv.blogspot.com/

The etwinning website: 

https://www.etwinning.net/en/pub/index.htm#

Today I am sending you greetings from the etwinning training event from Nottingham! (With Vikki Bruff and Lisa Stevens)

The 12 joys of teaching - Day 5

On Day 5 of #12jot15 I remind myself of one of the most inspirational people I know: Joe Dale. He is the founder of #mfltwitterati and knows everything about technology! He is very supportive and approachable, make sure you follow him on Twitter (@joedale).
I learnt many things from him, the latest is green screening on the iPad with the Do Ink App.
Thank you, Joe:-)

The 12 joys of teaching - Day 4

On Day 4 of #12jot15 I am copying the Facebook post I wrote this afternoon:-)

Erzsi Culshaw feeling proud.

6 hrs · 

Well, I don't make £65k and not even the lowest amount mentioned in the government teaching advert, but I feel very rich because an ex-pupil just told me that his high school teacher said that his primary Spanish teacher must have been very good:-)

What a lovely thing to say, it feels good to be complimented!

The 12 joys of teaching: Day 3

On Day 3 of #12jot15 I am sharing the joy of teaching with TOYS! I love taking toys in to my lessons to illustrate and aid learning.  Yesterday I took these Happy Town people in for my Year 5 and 6 pupils to "play with". They had to choose a person and describe their clothing using the right agreement for the adjectives. It was an exciting and engaging activity!

The 12 joys of teaching - Day 2

Today I am sharing the joy of having friends who are like me! Sue, my French teacher friend made me these shoes last Christmas... aren't they pretty? I could even use the idea for the Reyes for January! 

Here is the link to the template: http://www.eugeniakatia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/sapatinhos-menina.html

Thank you, Sue!

The 12 joys of teaching - Day 1

The 12 joys of teaching is trending on Twitter (#12jot15) and I have decided to jump on the bandwagon and share my joys with you! 
Day 1 was yesterday, when I remembered how much joy I find in learning from others and seeing other people's ideas develop and change in my primary Spanish lessons. 
With Year 6 we played Jenga to practise opinions and connectives, I took this photo, and here is the link to my previous blog post explaining the game. Thank you for the inspiration Rebecca, Eleanor and Morgan!