Day 4: philosophy for children or Thunks

The first thing to do is remember one of the words that came yesterday to put the mural vocabulary. Then continue with a new activity, in this case My friend Tessa. The task is to say what things have in common sentences that the teacher is saying. "My friend Tessa likes swimming, but she does not like water; she likes beer, but she does not like wine; she likes running, but she does not like walking ..." All the activities and things Tessa likes have the double letter (swimming, beer, running ...). This is related to Thunks, a kind of philosophy for children who want to take advantage of the critical thinking of the children.

We continue with the class and passed back to the vocabulary. Now we try to present the words in different ways to better understand its meaning and remember the relationships established with other words. We can use the definitions and background, photos, antonyms, mime, scale graduation ... but always remembering the initial MPF (Meaning, Pronunciation and Form). In this session appears the concept of Lexical Approach by Michael Lewis that relies on that to learn a foreign language, it is more useful study the vocabulary and placements of certain words than study  the grammar. To see how a few words, with verbs that are usually or structures that appear, we can go to the page Just the word and there, to enter the word coffee in paragraph Combinations, see all the statistics related to it. Another tool that is used for this type of activity is The Collocations Dictionary. Once you enter the word in this dictionary, are its main combinancións with other verbs, adjectives or names. In addition, there is a wide range of apps such as My Word Book, The Learn Pronunciation or Learn Bots.

The trick that gives the teacher to memorize new words we learn is to relate their sound with a word that sounds similar in our language, connections between the mother tongue and the language they are learning (Psychology for Language Teachers) .

And in the afternoon a new workshop, this time with Lindsay Warwick: What did you say? Helping Students listen. Then visit to the Botanical Garden and to end the day, a Shakespeare's play at outdoors. It is to celebrate the Cambridge Shakespeare Festival and have the chance to see in the gardens of Homerton College the play A Midsummer Night's Dream. A real delight!