Day 14 - Back to Spain

05:00 a.m. - Bristol airport

Probably there will be nobody there. What!

Spanair decks are full, the queue is larger than the airport. More than 40 minutes for the check in.

Everything comes to and end. Today is time to take the flight back to Spain. To go back home and share this incredible experience with the family, friends, students and schoolmates.

It's the time to wake up from a fortnight dream.

Day 13 - Bye, Bye!

As yesterday the activities development took us too much time we have made the feedback early in the morning.

After that, the school atmosphere has changed completely. It's the last day and the teachers have been playing with emotions al the morning, in their 'Coffee' activity, where we have shared memories about our days in Exeter with some activity feedback among us.

Back to class, the traditional feedback for activities, school, home staying and the clausure, emotive, really emotive. 

Everyone has got messages from each other that, fortunately we have kept to read tomorrow in the plane and, finally, everyone has received the certificate from other colleague, with a farewell.

Lunch time today has been different. Our faces were showing the sadness for having to say goodbye to all those new colleagues.

After crossing the red door for the last time, time to go back home to pack the luggage and prepare the departure.

Day 12 - Course Activity Tasks

Today everyone must teach the lessons we'd prepared on Tuesday afternoon.

Starting with Karima, Mohamed, Veronique and Lise activity, that mixes library use and decimal numbers. Nice activity to review and relate different concepts including a Kahoot an a half crossword, and ending with a post r composition with number sorting.

After that one of the funniest activities, of course Kitty and Virginie activity, our lovely PE teachers. The have worked on emotions vocabulary and we had to match some emotions with definitions to finally get one adjective to define each emotion. After that all the groups have to play a small drama, so kinesthetic, as they use to be.

Odrej and Audrey have also prepared an activity about vocabulary about the spring. We have made different activities as pronunciation with images and words, crosswords and finally a fly swap, with some of us flying over the tables to win a point for our team.

Then our turn, Carlos and I have prepared a creative activity where, working in groups, all our collegues have to compose a song. Starting by getting a cloud of words they've said about our stay in Exeter, they have to create the lyrics for a song using these words. The song structure must be of two verses and one chorus.

After that, every group have to choose a chord progression, just by choosing random numbers related to the key grades, no one needs musical background. 

Finally, and incredibly, all the groups have played and sang their songs, ending all together with the sample session we'd composed as a sample for the activity task.

Najate turn. She has worked alone in an ABC dictation activity about Charles s been an interesting activity working on our own at the beginning, then in small groups an finally the whole group. To end the activity she'd prepared a battleship quiz.

And last, but not least, Pascale and Steppen. They have made a dices game about advantages of disadvantages of funny sentences inside the 'Mistry Box', that is the name of the activity. As it's a competitive activity, the have get the best of us, as usual.

Day 11 - Full day trip

Today is day off.

Always checking the weather forecast and, every day we have a trip, it is worst.

First of all we have gone to Dartington, a small village in the inside of Devon, with a free school from the first middle of 20th century, where some distinguished English philosophers took their childre because of the innovative teaching styles unseen in the school.

Lovely place, lovely gardens... but in less than half an hour it's been sunny, then raining, then hailing and then sunny again. That's British weather like, unpredictable.

After that we've moved to Blackpool Sands, a beach in the south coast, which was used by the American and Canadian during WWII and sadly remembered because german submarines sank a lot of those ships.

The landscape is fantastic and while we have been there we have seen a whale. It has shown us its water splash and some parts of her tail.

For lunch we have been in Dartmouth, where the river Dart meets the Atlantic Ocean. It's a sea port city put in the colines surrounding the river. The houses of different colours on the river sides and its strategical situation, makes this city a beautiful and historical place in south England.

Day 10 - Educational systems

Another day in IPC Exeter and incredibly, another sunny morning in Devon.

I like everyday when I enter in the classroom and the teacher has already put the planning in the whiteboard.

Today we have reviewed the British Educational System.
As most systems it has good and bad things, in my opinion.

I love this image because I've never understood that KS notation in the websites I use with the students. Finally I know exactly what it means.

The bad one is that as our actual system is based on final exams after each stage, exams that are mainly used to rate the schools and have little effects on students.

The good thing is the specialization on the subjects as the students grow up, having between 4-5 subjects at the end of secondary school.

At the end of the day we've been preparing the course task. Surprise!

Day 9 - Week 2 - Personal Language Development

...and back to school.

Today we have had a hard English language day, morning and afternoon.

Stress, pronunciation, tenses, irregular verbs, vocabulary, ...
Most of these activities can be used to work CLIL with our students, so I have taken so many notes about them.

But what I've liked most is the personality definition we have made to the other classmates, accurate and real.

Day 8 - Free day

Today is our first and last free day. Just one week ago we were flying from our countries and we still didn't knew each other.

Once here, you look for those more similar to you, making small groups to enjoy together your free time.

As brave French and Spanish we haven't paid any attention to the weather forecast and we have hired some bikes for a ride from Exeter to Exmouth, al along the Exe river estuary.

It's been a lovely day with some of my new colleagues with a first stop in Topsham for a coffe.

After that in a great bike path on the river side we've reached until Exmoth, where the Ex river meets the Atlantic Ocean.

But as good French and Spanish people we have spen too much time for having lunch, walk on the beach walkway and talk about us. It was sunny and we were feeling like if we were at home.

Consequences, just 1 hour to go back to Exeter to return the bikes. I think I've never run so much in a bike as today's, but finally we were on time. Exhausted, really tired, sweating but on time.

Thanks Virginie, Ketty, Audrey, Veronique and Carlos for sharing this wonderful day with me.

The prize for all the physical effort was at home. My dear Jackie knew that I was going to be tired after our journey and she has prepared a big an really good meal for us. Also trifle for dessert.

After the dinner we've been trying to solve all the world's problems for most than two hours of conversation in th living room, while watching a movie on the TV.

I'm I getting used to listen to English from two different sources at the same time?
Really?

Day 7 - King Arthur (Bosscastle & Tintagle)

Day off for being tought, day to travel.

Today, after waiting for the weather forecast, we haven't knew where we were going.
Finally, even it is raining in Exeter, and also in the coast, we are going to visit the West Atlantic coast of England.

The Cornwall county (Cornualles) is one of the poorest regions in Europe. They have no industry and mainly live from tourism, but because of the weather is a stationery business.

We have travel to Bosscastle and the worst thing that could happened was a foggy day. Although it was windy, the foggy was all over the cliffs. Roger told us to wait for an hour to stay or go.

One hour later the foogy scattered and we could see th cliffs, and the Atlantic coast that for ages has formed the English character.

We have taken our time to climb the cliffs and feel how the ocean reaches the coast, having a lot to do with the weather in this region.

After that, we have move to Tintagel, one of the many places where King Arthur was supposed to be born. And of course, one of the placements for the legend of King Arthur.

After many, many, many steps up, we reached of the ruins of the Tintagel castle. Then, after many, many, many steps down, we have to go again many, many, many steps up to arrive to the main placement of the castle, in a small peninsula into the sea.

The views were fantastic but the foggy appeared again making impossible to appreciate the coast line around and the ocean as well.

Under the peninsula, on the beach, there's a cave were it's supposed that Merlin were living.

Finally, after going up, up, up the hill to the Tintagel village, we took one of the famous Cornish Pasty, just to recover a little bit from going up and down.

Time to go back home to have some time with my hostess, Jackie.

Day 6 - Ideas for exploiting 'Text'

In the morning, on TV I could check that the same things happen everywhere.

Today at the school we have changed our teacher and the group components.
We all are with Julie and none of us are English teachers.

The topic for today is to know how we can use activities or texts to improve the students abilities for reading, writing, speaking and listening.

To begin with, we have made two posters to summarize the work done during the week.

After then, by using some examples we have seen different approaches to override textbooks and their activities, boring for students and teachers.

To finish we hav review phonetics. I think ever time I can understand it better.

As it's been a long week, we've ended before the lunch.

Today is special because two of our new colleagues are leaving tomorrow. That's why we've taken the guitar from IPC office and we've been singing songs all together in the basement.

After that I've going with some of the teachers to the RAMM museum.

Today's Sant Patrick's day, so we have had dinner together in Exeter having a funny time there and sharing experiences and our free time.

Bye Didier. Bye Jeremy.

Day 5 - ICT & Teaching in English

Today is another full-day lesson in IPC, but instead of being splitted in two groups, both groups are going to work together.

The first part of the morning is about the different apps, websites and tools we can use in the classroom or to prepare lessons and materials for our students.

I already use and know some of them, including one of my favourites, Quizlet. But as usual, I've learnt something new about this tool, it's online game mode, similar to how Kahoot! works.

One website that I find specially interesting is EdPuzzle, and many others. Since then, I can't start thinking in different way to use all those tools we have seen during the morning, some of them proposed by the teachers and others by all the students based in our experiences.

In this kind of courses always happens, there's magic moment, after a few days, where you notice a change in the way you're thinking. You stop translating what the teacher is saying, you stop thinking what to say and how to say it, and everything is coming from/to you in English. It's the time when you start thinking in English.

After the break, we have changed to the second part of our activity lessons.
We've discussing and pointing the main problems we find in our lessons with the students to use English, to speak, read or write in English. I've realized that the same problems are in everywhere, so let's move on an go to find solutions.

And that's what we've made, a running dictation, work in pairs running in IPC and risking our lives to win the competition.

With all the information gathered we have analyzed some actions and techniques we can use in the class to create the necessary conditions for our students to use English.

Then we've gone to have something hot, today winter came back to Exeter, with Esther, our teacher. She has taken us to a nice hipster pub I the quay, with really nice views and very peacefully for having fun, relaxing and speaking.

Finally, back to home. To finish a great day Jackie, our host, has prepared real and homemade fish&chips for Didier, my French colleague at Jackie's house, and me. I have to say that she is a nice cooker. After dinner we've been at the living room sharing some time and commenting plans and activities for the weekend and watching tv, in English, of course.