Silvana's Box

Mindmaps are diagrams used to represent and outline information . It's a dynamic graphic technique we can use to translate what's in our mind into a visual picture. Since mind mapping works like the brain does it allows us to organize and understand the information faster and better. Furthermore, mind mapping enables us to sort through different details a recognize relationships among these details. In this entry, I am going to speak about my experience using  Creately .  First of all, I decided to develop a Geography Project intended for 6º graders. After putting in order my ideas, I arrived to the conclusion that it would be awesome to use a Mind Map   in order to explain to my students the aims of the project and it's procedures. The project is based on the topic  "The 7 New Wonders of the World" and the students have to work in different teams and each team is going to make a 3D Display and they will present their displays in the classroom. By using t...

Hey yaaa mates! You right? It's always a pleasure to share my resources and discoveries with you. In this entry, I will speak about Comics as Educational Resources in the classrooms.  In my opinion,  Comics are useful in the classroom due to three main reasons. The first one, is " Engagement" , students can create characters for their own comics and readers follow a story so we can see a real reading engagement . The second reason is "Efficiency"  , because it gives a lot of information in a short story and in a short period of time. Last but not least, "Effectiveness" is also important because with Comics students not only learn the material faster, they are also learning contents and values better. I used   Storyboard That   for my first creation. I chose this tool because is easy to use and suitable for the students to work in our classroom' projects and they can share and personalize their presentations with the whole class. Of c...

Exploration and creation are good, aren't they? Today, I want to talk about a site that I've discovered just one week ago, its name is  Genially . I discovered Genially when I was thinking to make a presentation for my Second Grade students'. I wanted to keep their attention and innovate a little bit more in the Science Classroom   .So, I decided to find and use new tools in order to make a different presentation instead of using the common presentations made by using  Power Point . The topic that I developed it is mainly focused on "Vertebrates" . I created an account in just a few minutes and  I was there exploring Genially .  I realised that  is an easy-to-use and free web tool used to create interactive visual content and this content can be used to enhance websites/blogs or as communication tool ( i.e. to make presentations, reports, posters, guides , etc . ). It also gave the ability to integrate many different types of third-party...

Today let's talk about Content Curation. So,what is Content Curation ? Content Curation is the act of discovering and presenting digital content related to a specific subject matter. In other words, it's an awesome resource for teachers and students because it's a time-saver. Through Content Curation we can find and share just the valuable content with our colleagues and with our students. So... How teachers can use Content Curation Tools in their CLIL Lessons? I opened "My cool CLIL Bank of Useful Resources" using Pinterest  which I would like to share with you . This is a Bank of Common Knowledge. I decided to create some different boards which in my opinion are really helpful for our CLIL classrooms. The "pinboards" that I created are: Science Projects , Literacy , Music , Photography for kids , Literature , Social Science and P.E. All the boards have some interest activities, posters, vocabulary, displays and projects that can be usefu...

Hi guys!           Today let's talk about how to take advantage of banks of common pictures in our CLIL' Lessons. I chose three pictures to develop a topic related to "Puppets" 😃😃😃 . For example: In Literacy , we can practice the grammar structure "Have you ever..."   " Have you ever played with puppets?" "Have you ever seen a play perfomance?" "Have you ever created your own puppet?" . So, I found some funny pictures in a bank of common pictures in order to design my own flashcards to rehearse the vocabulary of this unit. Also, I thought that it would be nice to link the Puppets' Topic with other subjects such Arts  developing a small performance with a little help of the Music Teacher. We can prepare some funny dialogues and songs in which the whole group of students can participate....it sounds like a plan, isn't it? Pictures from  https://pixabay.com/es/  Picture by Gellinger .  CC0 Creative Com...

Hello guys!!! Lets talk about an useful resourced called "Learning Journals" . Learning Journals are collections of notes, thoughts , observations and resources over a period of time. The aim of a Learning Journal is to improve our learning through the process of writing and thinking about learning experiences inviting the reader to take an active role in order to create new resources, get new and better ideas and to share useful information. Why is useful to use a Learning Journal? - Because they provide us a picture of our growing and understanding of a subject or experience. - They help us to  demonstrate how our learning is developing. - They allow us to record our thoughts and ideas throughout our experiences of learning. - Learning journals also help us to reflect our teaching and learning process. - They allow us to communicate our feelings and our thinking process. - Last but not least, Learning Journals help us to teach and share information ...

Today let's talk about creating avatars. I decided to create my own avatar using "Voki" . First of all, I registered myself following just a few simple steps: writing my email, choosing a password and then activating my user. Once I finished the registration process I choose a character for my avatar and I change some features such the color of her skin, the length of her hair and also I put some ornaments to my avatar such glasses and then I changed her clothes. After I've tuned my artifact, I recorded a short welcome message with my voice. Finally, I added a wallpaper related to the character that I've created. So, I chose a picture from the "Banco de Imagenes y Sonidos"   and I couldn't believe because now I have a second Me! And the result was absolutely brilliant!!! Nickname: Sil. Gender: Female. Occupation: English Teacher. Age: I am in my 20's Languages: Spanish, fluent in English and Italian. Currently improving my Portu...