December - Village, Towns and Cities

Photo Source ©BT

In December, we learned about villages, towns and cities. First of all, I wanted to show them some British culture through these different types of places. It is my role as a language assistant to show them some British culture and develop their intercultural skills, after all!

I explained the definitions of villages, towns and cities with lots of pictures from across the UK. They loved seeing the UK and especially my home town where we could review landscape work we did last month. We discussed what different things you can find in differently sized places. For example, I asked them, 'Can you find an airport in a town?' and they had to think, answer and then eventually ask each other similar questions. This got them thinking about the differences between the places and particularly between Alcalá and Seville.

We did an interactive PowerPoint together where they had to identify different kinds of places in villages, towns and cities. For example, a bakery, a library, an airport, a pharmacy etc. Then they had to classify pictures of villages, towns and cities into the correct piles. The team that finished quickest would win! They also did a book activity where they stuck the correct pictures of shops etc under the correct kind of place (village, town or city). They worked individually in this activity and had to focus.

Christmas!

At Christmas time, we went to see Frozen 2 together, in English of course! It was great to go on a field trip with the students as it was a way of getting to know them in English outside of the classroom. It also meant that the week after (before Christmas break) we could play a game of charades using Frozen 2 characters! One student at a time had to act out a character in front of the class (or something else Christmas-esque, like carol singing). Then, the other students had to guess what was being acted out. They loved this game and had to practise their English sentences by asking each other, 'are you Else?' etc.

We also looked at Christmas in the UK so that they could think about how different cultures celebrate differently! We looked at some pictures of food and games played in the UK over the Christmas period. I also asked them what they do at Christmas so they could practise conversing in English about what they do and love at Christmas time. Then we did a Christmas Bingo to learn some Christmas words.