ERASMUS+ KA-229 'SUSTAINABLE CITIES': PREHISTORIC CAVE PAINTINGS IN EXTREMADURA

Our school is taking part in the Erasmus + KA229 Project 'Sustainable Cities' with partners from France, Italy, Greece and Poland.

One of the activities carried out by the students in 2nd year ESO is 'Prehistoric cave paintings', which has allowed them to investigate and value our heritage. First, they have analysed Prehistoric rock art: 

• Why did early humans paint? 
• What did they paint? 
• Which materials did they use? 
• Where are the main sites both in Extremadura and in Spain? 

Then, they have created some infographics and QR codes with all that information and, finally, they have made a mural imitating some of the most representative paintings, such as the bisons in Altamira Cave, in Northern Spain, Maltravieso Cave handprints, in Cáceres or the human figures in Levantine paintings, in Eastern Spain. It has been great team work and we are proud of the result, well done, class!  

A TEACHER FROM UNIVERSITY ( PART 3): NICE TO MEET YOU ALEJANDRA

This year we had the chance to have Alejandra  Alfaro  as a teacher trainee in the groups of 1º ESO 15 and 3º ESO 1. She has been an amazing teacher and showed us many different educational tools that we hadn't used before in class such as Bamboozle and Quizlet. 

It was especially in the group of 3º ESO 1 where she put into practice her teaching skills with a huge variety of activities that finally led to the final product shown below. We created a digital display in Augmented Reality ( with Cospaces Edu) where we described where we had been in our last holiday before the pandemic using a range of past tenses as well as the vocabulary learnt in the Didactic Unit that she had carefully planned for us. The truth is that we have missed travelling because of the pandemic but now we miss Alejandra too!! 

Thanks for your hard work and good luck in the future and please feel free to come and visit us again soon! 

A TEACHER FROM UNIVERSITY (PART 1): NICE TO MEET YOU ARACELI

Hello everyone! My name is Araceli, and I’ve been doing my Teaching in Secondary Education Master’s practices in the Centre. 

What can I say except I’m grateful? It’s been an incredible experience. The students were really welcoming and they made my stay really pleasant. I’ve learned how to treat them and how to improve my explanations during classes.

One thing which I had to struggle with was the English level of the students. I wasn’t sure if they really understood what I was saying or explaining, so keeping students focused on the subject was a challenge. Moreover, having two different grades of students, both with the same topic and in English, was also a thing that kept my mind occupied. I had to use different vocabulary and gain more language skills to reach the entire audience, also to speak slowly so all of them could follow the class. 

Students appeared to be interested in the subject and they were really participative, they helped me to explore my limitations and also my strengths. 

As for the rest of the teachers, well, no words for them. Just gratitude for how amazing they were. Guiding me around this adventure, giving me tips and tricks to gain ground with the children. I won’t say goodbye to kids, I would only say ‘see you soon’, because I’m sure that we'll meet again elsewhere. No doubt I would repeat it all if I could!

A TEACHER FROM UNIVERSITY ( PART 2): NICE TO MEET YOU ENRIQUE

     During the last few weeks,  in 4ºESO,  we have had the great company of Enrique Mera Burón, a student from the English teaching trainning programme from the Uex (Universidad de Extremadura).

  He has been working with us in our English lessons with a lot of funny and interesting activities he had designed for us.

  We'd like to say THANK YOU ENRIQUE for your classes, your effort, your hard work and your  sense of humour!!!                       

                                      Ana and students from 4º ESO  ;)

SMART LEGENDS OF CÁCERES ( PART 2)

 During the third term, students from 1st ESO 15 have continued working on their Smart Legends Project. In the second stage of the project, students transferred their legends onto an augmented reality environment using Cospaces Edu and Merge Cubes.

Thanks to this tool, pupils were able to put their knowlede of English into practice in order to write their legends in an attrative and motivating way, as well as gamified in a way as a set of small challenges were  created for each of the Merge cubes. We were, thus, developing not only their linguistic competence, but also their digital one since this tool includes a coding component that allows students to insert actions, movements and reactions. 

On this ocassion, students were asked to work individually although it has to be said that this kind of project promotes cooperative work, dialogue among peers as well as design, critical and creative thinking, that can lead to problem solving thinking when obstacles arise.

The final activity consisted of doing a virtual tour  through our augmented reality legends during the Cultural Week in our school using the QR codes and links that we inserted in a presentation created with Slidesmania. Students had th chance to take part in a competition in which they had to solve the different challenges in each cube. We really enjoyed it!