Gracia Castillo's Blog

Let's start this lesson with an exercise! Analyze the following sentences and correct them, all of them have errors😜: I've been to most dangerous places in El Salvador. It's relaxing to see sun when setting. Amazon River is beautiful. There was a rabbit in Ana's garden; it was caught but minutes later, rabbit escaped. The children are the future of the world. The sugar in large quantity can be dangerous for our health.  Some people believe the love is more important than the money. I need an advice. My father is accountant and my mom teacher. Was it hard to find them? Did you think some of them were OK at first? You are not sure of some of you answers yet, are you? All of those sentences have errors related to articles, they may be seen correct because those are the common mistakes we make when we are not familiar with article rules. I will explain them to you the way I do  it with my students, my advice is to learn each use by heart💛! Articles are words we use to mod

Storytelling    When we are planning what to do in class and how to assess students during quarantine seems like a huge challenge because we feel we cannot do the same activities we would do back in the classroom. What I found helpful was to imagine my screen is THE CLASSROOM and that I could adjust ANY activity just by having the right resources; furthermore, I need to make sure to project what I see in my mind and make my students so engaged that they feel like connecting again next class. I also try wearing my pupils' shoes to avoid overwhelming them, that is why knowing about their environment and feelings is important.    As I commented in a previous post, my friends and I tend to share what we find effective and successful in our lessons, we always keep in mind every group of students is different but we also have a motto: DON'T LIMIT STUDENTS . We agreed on encouraging our students and trying any useful tool/activity; if it is not effective in class, we will simply disc

Warm-up activities for PreA1 -A1 Starting a class is a key point to all of us since that is the moment when we activate students'  prior knowledge, it is also that moment in which students say, "This is going to be a cool class!". I found two good sites to play hangman and crossword puzzles, I will show you how they work. https://www.hangmanwords.com/create  is a great tool because you can create the bank of words related to the content you are teaching, with predetermined games we have the con of getting a word our students may not be familiar with.  Using it is simple, you only access the link above and start typing the words, click on "Submit" and you will get another link, the one you are going to display in class. I created a sample for this post: https://bit.ly/2Vv2NoG Teaching tip: Make two teams, as you would do in a normal class, and have students take turns to say letters. (The last time I played it, one of my students' mic was not working but he

DESCRIBING MY DAILY ROUTINES Describing what you do every day is very simple, you only need to learn the most common daily routine phrases and combine them with the simple present structure. Analyze the following examples: I                take a shower         every day.  I               check reports        at work. I               do the dishes        after eating. Subject +        Verb         +   Complement + .  As you can see the three sentences follow the simple present structure. Follow that structure to describe your daily routines when writing or speaking. Let's learn some common daily routine phrases and build more vocabulary! Wake up Get up Take a shower Brush (my) teeth Get dressed / Put on (my clothes) Have breakfast  (You can say "Eat breakfast" but the collocation "Have breakfast" sounds more natural. NEVER say "Take my breakfast" .) Feed (my) pet Take the bus/train/subway Check reports Write reports Have lunch Have business meetings H

   When my "teacher-friends" and I started doing online teaching due to the COVID-19 quarantine, it was not an easy task at first; luckily, I surround myself with creative, ambitious and generous colleagues. My friends and I would meet online once a week to share resources and apps in order to help each other and provide a quality service to our pupils. In one of those meetings, my friend Gaby shared the online tool whiteboard.fi which is an online whiteboard for teachers and a set of mini whiteboards for students. What I love about this tool is that students find it user-friendly, they only need to enter the class code and it is ready to be used.     I use it mostly to do formative and summative assessment in a relaxed way, our pupils are dealing with too many issues right now and  I do not want to cause more stress by using the words "quiz" or "test"; therefore, I came up with the idea of doing what I typically do in class: A drawing "game". I

A collocation is a set of words that normally go together. These “phrases” sound right and natural to native English speakers, they use them all the time. What you have to do is to learn them by heart and start using them whenever you speak or write!😊 e.g.  I am going to make an effort and learn 10 new words on a weekly-basis. Let's start learning four different sets: MAKE make a mess make a mistake make an effort make a difference make furniture make progress make room make trouble make money make a noise DO do nothing d o business do the cooking do the housework do someone a favor do the washing up do your best do the shopping do your hair do your homework SAVE save time save energy save money save one's strength save someone's life save something to a disk save space save yourself the trouble save someone a seat save electricity KEEP keep a diary keep a secret keep a promise keep calm keep control keep an appointment keep in touch keep quiet keep someone's place

Analog clocks/watches always cause frustration among students when learning telling the time, yes, even to adults. I found this creative idea in Pinterest and always apply it in my lessons. It was my first time doing it online and it was a success! Resources: - A disposable plate - A marker - A thumbtack (or an earring) - Two small pieces of colored paper. Teaching tip: After having introduced the patterns for telling the time and having done some writing practice, I ask my students to show me their clocks with the times I say. If there is a student who forgot to make theirs, ask them to use their mobile clock instead.😋 

Our world has changed due to Covid-19 and we have to adapt to these new changes. We have to reinvent ourselves and ADJUST our "normal" habits to the "NEW NORMAL". Therefore, I will give you some tips which I learned from Mr. Gregg Sotiropoulos and applied them myself. They can help you get the best out of your ONLINE LEARNING PROCESS. Set a LEARNING SPOT 📗. Choose the best place for you to receive your lesson and study when we are not together. Create a new atmosphere, the one YOU LIKE! Improvise a desk if you do not have one, have a bulletin board, have a pencil case, get a calendar and display some visuals on your wall. That space is YOURS and will motivate you to sit down and study in a comfortable environment. Check mine in the image above (It's between the living room and the bathroom), I improvised it! Create a DAY TIMER 🕐. This will help you use your quarantine time wisely. No more wasted hours or minutes during your day, it will help you monitor your