Learning english with songs. SENA Socorro

Here we were in our "English song festival" at SENA Socorro classroom with this wonderful team from         " Tecnico en ventas y servicios" We found this a very nice way to integrate the four skills, making the classroom atmosphere a less formal, where students feel confortable learning English. This is an excellent motivational strategy to increase the students' participation in activities that promote the use of this language. Let's watch the following video of this talented girl...

By Diana Hernández

GOOD ENVIRONMENTAL PRACTICES VIDEO!

This project was carried out by apprentices of Técnico en manejo ambiental 686151 in Barichara. 
They were committed to this project from the very beginning of their english learning process. 
First,  they looked for Environmental vocabulary and made as well a   glosary of this vocaulary and its definitions.   
Second, They made oral presentations 
Third, They were split up into teams of 3 people and they  chose an environmental practice to work on.
Fourth,  They made their scripts and I helped them out with the pronunctiation.
Finally they recorded and edited the video and submitted a flyer. 

                                          You shouldn´t miss it!  

BY: V.A

Charala REVESTIMIENTO EN PINTURA ARQUITECTÓNICA

This wonderful people were well focused on learning their issues related to building and construction, besides basic topics such as introduction, greetings and routines.

These is a video of their final class project.
Hope you like it!

BERT

Watch a video here
CHARALA PROJECT DEC 2014

MOGOTES ATENCIÓN INTEGRAL A LA PRIMERA INFANCIA

This is the ATENCIÓN INTEGRAL A LA PRIMERA INFANCIA TEAM at MOGOTES,

Very dynamic students who put into practice their knowledge through games.  

These following images show just a short sample of all that this team did in a very short time!

Watch and enjoy!

Cepita ATENCIÓN INTEGRAL A LA PRIMERA INFANCIA Activities

Hey There..!!

This time we have our CEPITA, Santander students having a practice of many activities in the Classroom.
 They belong to  team and these are their first English lessons. They really make a big effort and look for a better English improvement. 
Enjoy this Images. 


BERT

P.U.P.P.E.T.S     S.H.O.W

Students from Técnico en Seguridad Ocupacional and Sistemas designed their own puppets to recreate different stories using the language studied in the classes, related to physical descriptions,weather and personal information. This show was really fun and appealing! The apprentices really enjoyed this project.

Posted by Candy Duarte
Photo by Nelson Gutierrez

physical appearance

Students from Técnico en Sistemas were learning parts of the body while describing physical appearance by this interactive activity where each student had to add a feature to the description.

First Integrated Guide

This activity was addressed to apprentices from group 813277 CONTABILIDAD Y FINANZAS. Initially they were taught about greeting in English, meeting each other for the first time, and common expression we use to know more about people. On the other hand, most of the topics and activities were integrated with what apprentices were studying on their technical subjects.  So they were taught about accountancy phrases and words which helps them develop vocabulary, pronunciation and reading comprehension skills regarding their training area. 

Cheers!

What a nice day! Students of level 8 showed up their final projects!

They created and edited a video from topics that they enjoy doing. In groups, they wrote the line, then we made some corrections and finally, we kept focus on pronunciation and intonation.  We edited on different programs like Sony Vegas, Adobe Premier etc. In the Picture, we were celebrating with a nice Orange wine. This was one of the projects from the group.

Thanks everybody!

By Lily Rojas

FREEZE!!

They were.............????
In this activity students were acting different situations and the opposing team had to guess what they were doing .  At the shout of  FREEZE they stopped, and the results were a little bizarre, making guessing really tricky. We practiced grammar and have fun which is always a nice combination. D.C

Role-play activity!

Students of "gestion empresarial" 598428 were eager to show their customer service skills in certain roles like attending a coffee shop, attending a restaurant, or even like a professional welder. They understood that being a client is not easy and that attending a client is even harder, specially if it is in english.
They had fun and learnt something useful for their professional careers.

Presentation of Memorable Moments

  

In this product-activity apprentices from different SENA programs shared with their classmates a meaningful celebration they had experienced. They chose some pictures from that special moment in their life and narrated the chief events of the celebration in order to depict the full scene. This activity allowed apprentices, first, to recapitulate their knowledge about grammar topics and vocabulary related to tell ideas from the past. Second, it was helpful to make apprentices realize how competent in the foreign language they had become, i.e. they were good enough to convey own stories through another language. 

[JP]

Personal Learning Environment in order to learn English idioms

A Personal Learning Environment  (PLE) called as Symbaloo.EDU was used by Event planning and Programing students. This group was given 24 idioms split into topics for each day. They had to research over the internet and organized the information collected on their PLE. After the assignment was completed, they created a Website.

 

The website idioms project was the final part of the “competencia producir textos en Ingles de forma escrita y oral”. The purpose of this assignment was to two-fold, first to use the information collected through the last 4 weeks in their Personal Learning Environment SymbaloEDU, about idioms and make them to relate them with images and meaning. Second introduce a Web 2.0 tool new that they could use for their personal lives, work and most importantly their studies.

They had to create a website using Wix where they followed the assignment given. The Website included the following:

·         The students were directed to add 10 to15 idioms.

·         Added the idioms chosen with their meaning in Spanish.

·         Added a clear description in English of the idioms meaning.  

·         An image was uploaded to relate each idiom with its meaning.

After all the students published their website and added the link in their SymbalooEDU account. In order to end their project, the students made a video using Camtasia Studio software to explain their feelings about the process and which idioms they like/dislike the most and why.

Click on links below to see some examples of their websites.
http://aparra991.wix.com/adriana-idioms
http://solivago.wix.com/sonia-idiom

Time to suit up !

This time the students from different programs decided to have a review about clothes vocabulary and present continuous (grammar topic) in order to be able to criticize other people's costumes. First they reviewed the main vocabulary and the grammar focus, then they started drawing different kind of clothes and writing their names bellow the drawing, and at the end they cut them all and mixed them so they could give it to another group, and so on.

They learnt a lot and realized about the importance of practicing english.

My Fairy Tale

Students of level 6 created a short story as part of their classroom project. The lesson was focused on Past Simple & linking words. After reading some Fairy Tales, practising pronunciation, rhythm, intonation, conjugation of verbs, the students had to write and tell a short Fairy Tale. The Audio Visual students helped them to record their voices and set the environment for each Fairy Tale. They created seven stories. Click on the link below to see an example. 

Audio: http://www.ivoox.com/fary-tale-1_rf_3629506_1.html

By Lily Rojas

Mastering vocabulary

As part of the first learning stage, students from Tn. Seguridad Ocupacional 751881 practice using English names of all the common school supplies they use in the classroom. Learners find it very useful to get familiar with everyday vocabulary. They are also confident about identifying things and objects by calling the learnt words.

Draw my life :D

Students of "Tn En medios Audiovisuales" 465468 were eager to tell each others about their lives. They knew they had the resources to create this kind of material "Cameras, microphones, edition software, etc." So first they started with creating their own dialog, followed by practicing its pronunciation, and finally making drafts of the video to see how it looked like. At the end, they bravely started the filming session and realized about the importance of having a good pronunciation. They had lots of fun, enjoyed a lot doing what they do "editing videos" and learnt something new.

A Big day, showing our Final Project: Videos

“Editing videos is not easy”, that was the big conclusion from my students. Some of them were very good at editing, actually they had fun! Others, felt very frustrated. Fortunately, we did a very good job using Adobe Premier as the main program for editing videos. By the way, we got some help form Audiovisuals Students, they really know about it, so we learnt and improved our projects. We did more than 17 videos. They have different subjects like extreme sports, Zombie makeup, art & craft, dancing, cooking and so on. Each one of the students explained in front of everybody about his/her project, the subject, and the experience. We were so excited because we showed up those videos to our partners and we shared a delicious snack!

Great Experience! Thanks to everyone!

By, Lily Rojas

Pancakes for breakfast

The students of "Cooking" prepared yummy pancakes. Firs of all, they had to create a recipe for breakfast. Each student wrote their own and the best was selected to be prepared in the kitchen. This activity had the purpose to provide useful vocabulary and instruction on writing English recipes to the students in order to increase their ability to explain it in another language. During the class the students practice their pronunciation and highlighted the difference between similar words.

What did you have for lunch yesterday?

This activity was addressed to the apprentices of "Técnico en producción artesanal" ficha 512217 In Inpec San Gil. The aim of this activity was to encourage apprentices to talk about food and to use the simple past tense to talk about what they had for lunch the day before.

Since the first time I met them I realized that they loved drawing and that they were really good at it so I asked them to draw the food they have had the day before (Including breakfast-lunch-snacks-dinner and their favourite food). Afterwards they showed their drawings and told the rest of the class what they had had for luch the day before.

Guess Who

This activity was addressed to the apprentices of Tc en Panificación, ficha 683358 in SENA San Juan de Dios. The aimed competence to be developed was "Comprender textos en inglés de forma escrita y oral".
The aim of this activity was to galvanize apprentices into asking yes/no questions in order to guess the character of the other team. The group was randomly split into two teams, then each team secretly chose a character about who they knew personal information. Afterwards teams started to ask each other specific information of the other team's character so as to be able to correctly guess the character of the rival team.

Describing someone

This activity was addressed to the group “Contabilidad y finazas” 322172 which competence is “Producir textos en inglés”. The main goal of this task was to encourage apprentices build phases that help them to describe someone’s physical appearance and clothing.

The group was divided into two big teams and each was supposed to draw a person with specific features and clothing, then different sentences were written on pieces of paper and apprentices cut them all in order to have their apposite team organize them as quickly as possible.

Isolated words such as pieces of clothing were supposed to be placed matching what was on the picture. On the other hand, learners also had to form sentences with the rest of words that help them to describe this male or female-drawing features. 

Cut first and tie them up !

Students from Tecnico en Cocina were learning basic vocabulary about clothes, parts of the body and prepositions of place. In order to know whether they learnt it or not, we did a curious but funny activity to bond them in certain way. First, they were split up in three different teams, each one with a big piece of paper and some markers. They had to draw 15 different clothes and to put their names in front of each one. After that, they started to cut off everything and put those pieces inside a bag, which had to be passed to the next team. The next team had to look for each drawing and each letter in order to tie them up. They learnt a lot a understood the importance of writing and pronunciating properly.

Final Product! My Video!

This is one of the final products that Students of level 8th have made. Creativity was the key, so students and the teacher came together and worked as a team in order to learn how to edit videos, correct possible mistakes in the second language, check pronunciation, and so on.  First, we searched on the web and followed some instructions form YouTube channel about how to edit a video. Then we chose a program, install and finally, we practiced with a few clips, music, pictures. This is an exercise to be confident about what are we doing.

At the end, we planned a scene with titles, a speech, music, effect etc. Next we, started to edit and practiced a lot of pronunciation. At the end, students showed to the group the video and talked about their experiences. I was impressed about this videos. They did a very good job! Nice shot!

by Lily Rojas

KARAOKE NIGHT

This time students from "Produccion de Medios Audiovisuales" had the opportunity to show their singing skills while practicing English. Each one picked out a song of their preference and performed it for the class. This was a chance to relax and get more confidence with pronunciation.We have got some good talents here.

Let's keep on rolling

Students of Gestion Empresarial at Paramo were eager to start filming their performance showing their own client service skills, before doing so they had to create their own dialogue showing why colombia is internationally acknowledged by its kindness and excellent client service. After that, they had to practice a lot because they not only were afraid of speaking in public, but of the cameras as well. With proper support from the students of Producción de medios audiovisuales we had a perfect shooting and the results were beyond belief.

What to watch?

Student of level 8 are learning about how to make a final product using TICs as a material resource. At the beginning, the purpose is to get engage students in the world of videos, infomercial, documentaries, cooking programs etc. This first shot was a speaking exercise where students were able to speak spontaneously about their favorite TV Show. They drew in a small piece of paper an image that represents his/her favorite TV program. Then, they exposed their feeling, reasons, and they invited people to enjoy their TV programs. Getting nervous when you speaking is normal, but they did a very good job.
By Lily Rojas

Who wrote it?

In this activity each of our level 5 students had to write down twelve sentences about his/her daily routine, after doing so they had to put them all together and mix them up on a box which was in the middle of the classroom. Then they gathered around the box and each one grabbed a sentence, after looking at it they started asking their classmates if he/she wrote that sentence. They learnt how to make fluent questions and had tons of fun.

Do you know who am I?

Guessing the character by giving some details, was the activity for this level 5 group. The purpose was to dress like the real character, make a short performance at the beginning, and interact with the audience. This is a small group willing to speak, thus everybody acted and showed his/her best body expression. We were focused on Colombian Characters in order to keep in mind our own talent. Characters like Fernando Botero, Margarita Rosa de Francisco, Mariana Pajón Londoño among others were set on the screen. 
By Lily Rojas

LEARNING PARTS OF THE BODY

Apprentices from Level 3 did this activity to learn about the parts of the body. On a figure on the floor each student had to place the part of the body written on the card they selected. The main purpose of this activity was to adquire new vocabulary while focusing on pronunciation.

TRUE OR FALSE? YOU GUESS IT

Level 6 students playing a game called true or false, where they have to talk about their experiences (they might be true or false) using the present perfect, right after each estudent has talked the students from the other group have to say whether they think that experience was real or not. The number of right guessings is the number of points they get.

Learning daily acivities while having fun!

Here we find a picture of level 4 based in San Juan de Dios in which apprentices were asking each other questions in order to remember the vocabulary about the daily routine. The idea of this warm-up activity was to review the pronunciation of different expressions we use to describe our daily activities. Then apprentices were supposed to have some practice of these phrases through a game. The classroom was divided into two groups and each was given a set of cards with pictures of the daily routine; while the English teacher was saying the word “hot” several times they had to pass each other a balloon full of water. As soon as their teacher said “POTATO” the student holding this balloon was supposed to run fast and get a card from a bag. They had to act out what was on this in order to have their classmates guess the English phrase. The more they guessed the merrier to win the game.

Chu chu chu…!

Students of Primera Infancia (Onzaga) a group around 20 women were doing a speaking exercise showing us some toys that they use to play with their kids. We learnt colors, geometric forms, numbers, fruits, & animals. We played & sang some song related to these subjects. Also, the students learnt about prepositions of place to locate those toys. Finally, we played like kids between us practicing pronunciation. By Lily R.

The game that ties you up in knots.

                                  


Twister is a game of physical skill .here students from the accounting program from Socorro are playing on a large plastic mat that is spread on the floor. The mat has four rows of large colored circles on it with a different color in each row: red, yellow, blue and green. A spinner is attached to a square board and is used to determine where the player has to put their hand or foot. The spinner is divided into four labeled sections: right foot, left foot, right hand and left hand. Each of those four sections is divided into the four colors (red, yellow, blue and green). After spinning, the combination is called (for example: "right hand yellow") and the students or players must move their matching hand or foot to a circle of the correct color. In a two-player game, no two people can have a hand or foot on the same circle; the rules are different for more players. Due to the scarcity of colored circles, players will often be required to put themselves in unlikely or precarious positions, eventually causing someone to fall. A person is eliminated when they fall or when their elbow or knee touches the mat. There is no limit to how many can play at once, but more than four is a tight fit. Here the students are trying not to be out of the game and survive. The game is awesome and fun.