Madrid, 10th April 2013

Today, our American friends have visited the Museo del Prado, have walked along El Retiro -some of them have sailed in a small boat in the lake- and the XIX century streets. In the evening they went to Plaza de España to see the Monument to Miguel de Cervantes and Don Quixote, and to the Egyptian temple of Debod.
Madrid is really clean and beautiful.
They have enjoyed a lot his second day, and they start asking questions about Bilbao and The Basque Country, that magic place where there are a lot of people waiting for them.
Here is a summary of the day:

Second Day in Madrid from J. Carlos Martínez

Scituate High School Students visit Madrid

Our American friends have just arrived in Madrid. They landed at T-4 at exactly 06:15 a.m. local time.
They went through the customs and went to check in at the hotel. After having breakfast at the famous chocolatería San Ginés, they got enthusiastic and ready to visit the so-called Madrid de los Austrias.
In the following pictures we can see them enjoying every minute of the day. Puerta del Sol, Plaza Mayor, Plaza de laVilla... will be places and street names they will never forget.

Visit to Madrid from J. Carlos Martínez

In the afternoon they visited the Palacio Real, for many of them their first experience inside a real palace.
Dinner at the Café de los Austrias has been a good ending for their first day in Spain.

Scituate - Getxo Student Exchange

Time has passed. Memories from Scituate, Boston and Massachusetts come to our minds.

It's time to remember a most enjoyable passed experience with the members of the community of Scituate, the families, the school, the new friends, the new places...

But all these things belong to the past. They opened their houses and minds to live a time with us, together. Now time has come when they, our American friends, come and visit us. Now it's our time to show them the best of ourselves. It's time for them to have a new experience in a different country with a different culture with... old friends, and let's make them feel at home, "if home is the one place that will be in your bones for ever", as George Howe Colt wrote.
That's life.
That's the meaning of Student Exchanges.

ENGLISH AND CULTURE IN BACHILLERATO

In Coin, this subject in which our students try to develop their oral skills, we do a lot of activities. In January, we had a wonderful time watching all the videos about extreme sports. So in order to complete the second term, the teachers have made the students work really hard. These two months, February and March have supposed a lot of research, discussions, agreements, imagination, creativity...

As our fourth project ,we have been trying to learn a little bit about different countries related to English language and Culture in the world. We want to use a CLIL approach in our lessons and we believe that if our students research and create their own materials, they learn more and feel more motivated.

Our students have created Presentations together with documents. They have worked in groups and have given presentations, which have been evaluated by their peers. Apart from the advantages of working in groups, they have also  improved their oral skills. Each group worked with a different country and while they were listening and watching the presentations, they also had to fill in worksheets with the information they were learning. We believe this is a great way for them to listen to their partners and learn from them.

One of the projects we would like to share with you is about New Zealand. Click here to see the document. The presentation is this one here.

EXTREME SPORTS

Not everything is travelling and visiting countries, friends and schools in Europe. In COIN, in Bachillerato, we also work a lot.

After learning a lot about Entertainment  and seeing the beautiful and interesting projects created by our students in COIN about films in the first term, we decided to work on a new and entertaining topic: SPORTS.

We watched DVDs, read articles, learnt a lot of vocabulary, talked about advantages and disadvantages of different types of sports and to finish up with the activity, the students created amazing glogsters about Risky Sports.

This is one of the glogsters.

Glogster on the 20th Anniversary of Comenius

In the following Glogster we can watch some video recordings taken during the celebrations, both at Schools and at the Town Hall in Garbsen. There are also some links to watch other events of those days.

20th Anniversary of Comenius in Garbsen

Comenius 20th Anniversary in Garbsen workshop presentations from J. Carlos Martínez