A colleague from work gave me a little recipe booklet from Elle magazine (French version) entitled "Our best Italian recipes for the summer". I have tried the Ricotta cake which my youngest son absolutely loved.

You need:

• 500 g ricotta ( I only had 250g, but I mixed it with some mascarpone I had left)
• 5 eggs
• 1 tbsp flour
• 100 caster sugar
• lemon zest
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 2 tbsps rum (optional)

Heat the oven to 150 degrees.
Separate the whites from the egg yolks.
Mix the ricotta with the four egg yolks, then add the flour et sugar (reserve 2 tbsps sugar for the end). Also add the lemon zest, half the cinnamon and rum if using. Mix everything well until obtaining a smooth consistency.
In a separate bowl, beat the whites until they reach a soft peak and carefully fold them in to the ricotta mixture.
Put the preparation in the oven for 45 minutes. Leave it to rest for 15 minutes then sprinkle over the reserved sugar as well as the cinnamon.

You can eat this delicious cake warm or cold, but we personally preferred it cold (I mean my family!).

Thank you Freya for the recipe ;)

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Last week, I went on holidays with my family to a small country called Slovenia. We stayed in a farm in the small village of Spodnje Gorje, two kilometres away from beautiful Bled. Before going there and after having booked the farm, I started to get slightly worried. Every time I would talk to someone about going to Slovenia for our fall break, he or she would ask with a surprising tone: "Slovenia??? Why Slovenia?" or "Why don't you go to Italy? or Austria? It is very near to Slovenia, you know?". I started to wonder why I wanted to go to Slovenia in the first place and as a matter of fact why not going to Italy! The point is we chose to visit Slovenia because we had never been there before (and yes, we already had been to Italy or Austria), it looked like a beautiful country when I did some research on the Web and it was much cheaper than Italy, for example!

Coming back from Slovenia, I am glad we chose this destination and we stuck to it! Slovenia has beautiful landscapes. It is a very small country but it has everything: big mountains where you can ski and beautiful sea where you can swim! We didn't manage to go to the coast but we did wonderful hiking trips in the amazing Julian Alps. Slovenia also has beautiful people: they are hospitable, they always smile at you even if they don't know you. Coming from Germany, this was a nice change! We were amazed at the fact that they all speak English. We were eating in a local restaurant in our village where there were no tourists around. The waitress could not explain one dish on the menu, so an older woman at the table next to us turned around and translated it in perfect English and with a smile on her face! Moreover Slovenia has delicious food. Because it is located between Austria, Italy and Croatia, it has lots of different influences. At last but not least Slovenia has very few tourists! We didn't see many tourists when we did our walks which was very pleasant (as we don't like to see people when we walk!). We found out that it was not the tourist season. It is in the summer. But still, the locals were complaining that there are not enough tourists, which for us is a good reason to go!

All in all, we found an amazing country which makes us want to go back and see more of it.

It was also a good idea to stay in a farm as our boys loved to see the animals and we got to know the local people. We had already experienced it last year and I do think it is a great option when you have small children.

If you want to read our holiday diary, go to my family blog. However, it is in French (but there lots of pictures)!

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Instead of buying expensive (and not so good) vanilla, coffee or chocolate puds (those in little pots) from the supermarket, why don't you make your own? They're easy to prepare, you know exactly which ingredients are in there (no strange additives!) and they come out to be cheaper!

For chocolate pots, all you need are the following basic ingredients:

• 200g dark chocolate bar
• 50cl milk
• 6 egg yolks
• 100g caster sugar
• 1 tbsp bitter cocoa powder
• 200g thick or double cream (crème fraîche)

First, chop up the chocolate.
In a pan, bring the milk to boil.
Whisk the egg yolks with the sugar until the mixture gets white.
Add the cocoa powder. At this stage, you can add a bit of the hot milk to get the mixture smoother.
Pour the mixture into the hot milk pan. Now turn down the heat and stir constantly with a wooden spoon until the cream thickens.
When the cream has thickened, remove the pan from the heat and add the chopped up chocolate. Incorporate it until obtaining a smooth consistency.
Add the double cream and stir well.
Pour the cream in six ramekins, cups or small moulds (or anything you have!) and cover each one with cling film.
Leave to cool down for at least two hours before savouring them!

You can also try the Minute Cake from the same cookbook.

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As Kevin Mclaughlin mentionned in his great post Set learning free in 100 words, we as teachers should "try not to overplan, forget the detail and be confident in changing direction as and where learning takes you." This is exactly what I attempted to do with this project I set up last year with grade 7. It all started when we were listening to a Spanish song at the start of each lesson. At that time, we were listening to Manu Chao's song Clandestino. The students were really enjoying the song and I started to think about what could be done more in depth with the lyrics, rather than just translating them. I decided to leave out the curriculum for a bit and to initiate a creative project.

First, the students completed all the activities related to the song which I found on the amazing website Formespa.
Then as we discussed the life of illegal immigrants trying to move to Europe and how they might feel being clandestine, I thought about making the students pretend they were one of them and make them write a diary about their journey to Spain. Of course, because it was a grade 7 class (which meant that this only was their second year learning Spanish), we had to go through several steps and I had to give them samples of work to help them start writing. I had to do some research myself to find out how the journey of an illegal immigrant trying to go to Spain was. I read a moving article from El Pais where two journalists travelled with a group of immigrants from Casablanca in Morocco to the Canary Islands; and I started from there.

Creative writing - Diary
(You can see and download all the resources used at the end of the post.)
Each lesson or sometimes each week (depending on how much and what they had to write) was about a new page in their immigrant's diary:

1. Describing the immigrant. Students had to decide on a name, family background, where he/she came from, physical description and reasons why he/she wanted to move to Europe. This page was a great way of revising how to describe someone and his/her family. Students not only reinforced their Spanish knowledge, they also tapped into geography as they had to look for a country in Africa to explain where their immigrant came from and also at reasons why immigrants would want to leave their own country to start a new life.
2. Getting ready for the trip and saying goodbye to family and friends. Again it was a great way of learning and revising vocabulary related to clothes, food, equipment you would take on a trip to a new life. At this stage, students also had to learn how to form the present perfect in Spanish. We spent a couple of lessons learning how and when to use this tense in Spanish. Grammar was learned for a useful purpose and therefore students assimilated it better.
3. The start of the journey. The immigrant was meeting his "dealer" and other immigrants taking part. He/she was scared and had to pay the "dealer" to make him cross the Mediterranean sea. This led to a discussion about who dealers were and what their jobs consisted of. As for Spanish, students had to convey feelings and emotions.
4. Reaching the Mediterranean sea.Students had to describe the journey by car crossing the desert to get to the Mediterranean sea. They had to use lots of different verbs in the present perfect and to describe the feelings of the immigrant.
5. Crossing the sea. Students had to describe the trip on the sea and if the boat was caught or not by the Spanish "guardia civil". Here, some students got very creative and imagined that their immigrant would drown. They even wet their diary so one could see the drama!
6. Future life. Students brainstorm on the future of these immigrants. They made two columns, one for an happy ending (they are not caught by the police, they find a job, they can get official papers/documents and stay in Europe...), one for a sad ending (they have to return to their country, they can't find a job and live in the streets, they die...).

Oral presentation
As we were going along with this writing project, I found out that grade 3 students in lower school were also working on immigration as part of their PYP unit of enquiry. So I asked their teachers if my students could present their diary to their students. Of course, they had to translate in English but I also wanted grade 3 to learn something in Spanish. My students had to do an engaging presentation which main goals were to explain the journey of an illegal immigrant to Spain and to teach some key Spanish words about immigration. Last year, I asked students to do an overall presentation to grade 3 but I thought it was not engaging enough so this year I decided to change the format. Each student would present his/her diary to a small group of 3 to 4 grade 3 students. When planning their presentation, they had to think about the format (PowerPoint, with pictures, with music, map...), how they were going to teach some Spanish words (cards game, repeating the words...), how they were going to know grade 3 had learned something about their presentation (quiz, game, competition...). We also talked about the way to present a diary in an exciting way. Just reading it was going to bore grade 3 students to death! My students had to think of ways to make their presentation interesting to listen to. Not only did they work on their Spanish speaking skills, they also worked on how to give out a speech and how to teach others. They worked hard to deliver inspiring presentations and I was very much impressed by the maturity they showed when talking to the younger ones. Each one of them had prepared a game, a quiz or an activity for their group. They had brought pictures, maps, cards. At the end of the session, they were all eager to tell me how it had gone and how grade 3 students were engaged! Grade 3 teachers also told me how happy their students were to have learned from the grown-ups! It was a success!

I guess Kevin Mclaughlin is entirely right: "Let the learners control the learning, give them opportunities to decide what they want to learn. Take back learning in your classroom."

What about you? Have you changed direction in your planning?

You may want to read similar projects:

• Teaching higher level Spanish: family relationships and the dictatorship in Argentina
• Teaching Spanish: successful sequence of lessons related to TV
• Fun project: wanted poster
• Spanish book project
• End of year project: poster conversations
• Students creating a grammar game

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According to scientists from Pennsylvania in the US "Walnuts are the healthiest nut ..... because they contain the highest level of antioxidants compared to other nuts...The antioxidants found in walnuts are also two to 15 times as powerful as vitamin E, which is known to protect the body against damaging natural chemicals involved in causing disease."

Walnuts can be also fun if you don't know what to do on a cold and rainy Saturday afternoon! After cracking them and picking of the nutmeats with my two little boys, we baked a delicious walnut and coffee cake from the BBC Good Food website.

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As you may already know, I teach Spanish in an IB (International Baccalaureate) school which means I am fortunate to teach Spanish B to some grade 11 students (16-17 years old). Spanish B is part of the Diploma Programme which is designed for students in the 16 to 19 age range. It is for students with some previous learning of Spanish. The main focus of the course is on language acquisition and development of language skills. These language skills are developed through the study and literary texts, and are related to the culture(s) concerned. The material should be chosen to enable students to develop mastery of language skills and intercultural understanding. It should not be intended solely for the study of specific subject matter or content. The language B syllabus approaches the learning of language through meaning and students cover core and optional topics.

One of the core topic we have covered so far is Social Relationships. For this topic I chose to focus on family relationships through the study of a book about the dictatorship in Argentina.

The book is entitled "La memoria de los seres perdidos" by Jordi Sierra I Fabra. It is about Estela who is born in Argentina and lives in Barcelona. She is  a happy young woman in love, and with a good family. Suddenly someone appears on the scene, from her past in Argentina, and disturbs 'the happy picture'… Estela finds out she is one of the daughter of the thousands of dissidents who disappeared during the Argentinean dictatorship in the 1970s. 
We spent several lessons reading the book and discussing it as the book (the Easy Reader version) comes up with questions for each chapter. As well as improving reading skills, the book provided numerous opportunities to develop speaking, writing and listening skills:

Writing a diary entry: students had to pretend they were Estela and had to write several diary entries on how she felt about finding out the truth about her real parents.

Having a conversation: students had to imagine a conversation between Estela's real aunt and her adoptive parents. What was the point of view of the auntie? What were the point of views of the adoptive parents who were part of the dictatorship?
They also watched a short documentary on YouTube about the "Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo".

After watching it, they had to pretend they were one of them and they were asking where their missing children were. They had to be desperate and to convey their feelings.

Watching testimonies: students watched another documentary where different people testify about what they have endured and still endure from the dictatorship.

What about you? Which interesting topics do you cover with your higher level language students?

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This is the first year I try to read a book in Spanish with my classes. I must admit my students are fantastic!!! They are well motivated and they will get on with the work I set no matter what! I believe that if you are not immersed in a language 24 hours a day and if instead you only have language classes 3 or 4 times a week, then you should read as most as you can to improve your skills. By reading in a foreign language, your brain memorises the words, how they are spelled and also the syntax as it is very different from one language to another. You can start by reading children's books with few words and lots of pictures and then get on with "proper" books. The publishing company Difusión has a set of Spanish books graded according to the Common European framework of Reference for Languages. I decided to choose an A1 (equivalent to beginner level) book for my grade 7 students. The book is entitled Persecución en Madrid and it is about a group of friends and one boy who is involved in a robbery. There is plenty of action and lots of cultural elements related to Madrid. With the class, we tried to read one chapter every week. We would listen to the CD which goes with the book and we would translate the story in English. I didn't ask my students too many comprehension questions in Spanish, the objective was to show them that they could read a whole book in Spanish and understand it.

What about you? How do you encourage your students to read in a foreign language?

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As we are starting a new year, so it is time to look at new goals. Last year I set different goals, some of them I have achieved, some of them I was/am in the process of achieving, some of them I did not achieve.

So what is my list for this new year coming?

Personal life

The main news coming up this year is the arrival of a fifth member in our family. He or she is expecting to arrive on February the first. Hence my list of goals is not so long as I will soon be busy. Well... There are not many goals but some of them are "big"!

• I am still working on learning German! I have made some progress and I can now buy things and understand a simple conversation, but there is still a lot of room for improvement! Now that I have started my maternity leave (in Germany, you have to stop working 6 weeks before the due date), I have time to focus on this goal. I plan to follow the Michel Thomas foundation course everyday as well as working on other resources colleagues and friends kindly gave me. After the birth, I plan to enrol on an intensive course at the university in Weimar and/or (time permitted with the baby) have conversation sessions with natives.
• Publish a free e-book with all the recipes I post on my blog. This is a goal I have had for years now and that I think is achievable this year. I also plan to try out even more recipes from all the cookbooks I have since I am now a stay-at-home mum!

Professional life

• Update my CV. It has been now over two years that I have not had a look at my CV and it's now time to upgrade it.
• Update my Spanish curriculum wiki. Little by little I am "filing" everything I do with my classes. So far, I have shared the middle school and the IGCSE programs. I still need to add the IB (ab initio and Language B) program to make it complete. The plan is to have everything more or less ready for when I will be back at teaching. This way, it will be a lot easier to plan lessons and I will have more time for my family!
• Keep on writing at least one post a week on my blog. Maybe find ways to earn a bit of money from it.
• Become more active on the Web. I have neglected my web 2.0 life last year and now that I am at home, it gives me a good opportunity to become more involved.

What about you? What are your goals this year?

Remember "it is okay and sometimes a good thing to modify and tweak your goals throughout the year. People change and circumstances change, be flexible!" from The Happy Housewife.

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In French we call them "cakes", but I guess in English we call them "breads" or "loaves"? They are savoury cakes and we usually bake them with any leftovers on hand! My dear man offered me six "mini-cakes" moulds and a cookbook entitled Mini-Cakes for my birthday last year. Therefore I decided to make good use of my present. I baked six little bacon and carrot breads (the recipe comes from the book) which we ate at dinner time with a green salad.

You need:

• 2 eggs
• 70ml olive oil (I thought it was too much as the breads came out quite greasy. Maybe try and reduce the amount a bit to 50ml)
• 70ml milk
• 120g flour
• 2 tsps baking powder
• 80g grated gruyère cheese 
• Salt and pepper
• 1 carrot grated
• 70g bacon diced
• Parsley chopped (I din't have any parsley, so I used chopped celery leaves instead)

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees.
Mix the eggs, olive oil and milk together.
Then add the rest: flour, baking powder, gruyère cheese, carrot, bacon and parsley with a bit of salt (the bacon is already quite salty) and pepper.
Mix well to obtain a smooth consistency.
Pour the mixture in any available mould you have (they don't have to be mini moulds).
Bake in the oven for 30 minutes or so, until the breads have risen and are golden on top.
Leave to cool down. I do prefer to eat them cold and dip them in plain yoghurt... Yummy!

You will notice that on one of the pictures, the bread "jumped out" of the mould ;)

If you like to bake "mini" cakes, breads or loaves, you may want to try this recipe:
Mini madeleines en folie!

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Happy Easter to all!!! Now that it is time to celebrate Easter, we can indulge in chocolate! I found a lovely chocolaty recipe by reading the French magazine Elle à table. La torta Caprese is a classic of Italian Pasticceria, born in Capri, one of the most famous Mediterranean Islands.

"As in many other popular tales about the origin of dishes, this one has Torta Caprese born by mistake. The person who invented it was planning to do another recipe and added uncalled for ingredients or forgot to add called for ones; in this case flour was left out. Which recipe she or he intended to follow remains unknown. Invention by mistake – “uno dei pasticci più fortunati della storia (one of the luckiest mess-ups in history) – is also the leitmotiv of another version on the origin of Caprese. Another version of the origin of this dessert, according to which a certain Carmine Di Fiore, cooking in an unknown Capri’s restaurant, received an order for an almond and chocolate cake from three American gangsters. Apparently, he forgot to put flour in it, but the gangsters liked it and asked him for the recipe. That was the beginning of the success. “No one in Capri knows about this version,” says Lello Sorrentino. Bur what is certain is that at Capri’s restaurants today you rarely see Torta Caprese served without a ball of vanilla ice cream." Source: http://www.itchefs-gvci.com/

I found out by searching on the Internet that the recipe I followed is not quite the authentic one since you should separate the eggs and whip the egg whites to foaminess. The one I did did not include this process but the result was still excellent. So you can decide to make the authentic recipe or to make an adapted French version which is as follows:

INGREDIENTS

200 g ground almonds
50 g of icing sugar + for decoration
200 g dark chocolate
150 g butter
5 eggs (I only used 4 eggs)
50 g caster sugar

RECIPE

• Butter a mold, line the bottom with parchment paper and butter the paper.
• In a bowl, mix the ground almonds with icing sugar.
• Chop the chocolate with a knife. In a small saucepan, melt in the chocolate with butter (I did this process in the microwave). Remove pan from heat.
• In a large bowl, whip the eggs with the sugar for 5 minutes, try to incorporate as much air, you must obtain a creamy consistency.
• With a spatula, gradually stir in the almond powder to the eggs mixture by carefully lifting the dough in a circular motion. Stop mixing as soon as the dough regains its soft and smooth texture.
• Stir in the butter-chocolate mixture. Mix well: the incorporation must be total.
• Pour into the prepared mold. Bake at 200 ° C for 5 minutes and then reduce to 160°C for 25-30 min. The torta caprese is ready when the top is crackling but the inside remains soft.
• Let the cake cool down for 2-3 hours before serving.
• Sprinkle the top with icing sugar and enjoy.

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It is a French tradition to celebrate the Epiphany on the 6th of January by eating la galette des Rois or king cake with a trinket (usually a porcelain figurine) hidden inside. The person who gets the piece of cake with the trinket becomes "king" for a day. Last year, I celebrated this event at my school with 45 middle school students. Coming back from France where I spent the Christmas holidays, I was able to buy 6 kingy cakes there and to bring them back to school. I kept one cake for my family so that my boys could experience this tradition as well.

This year is a bit different because I am on maternity leave and I didn't get to go to France over the holidays. I still wanted to celebrate the Epiphany with my family so I decided to bake my own galette with my boys. I followed the recipe from the Marmiton French cooking website . I changed it a bit by adding more almond powder and no icing sugar. When it came to make the "crème pâtissière" or custard in English, I watched the video on Marmiton too. Our galette turned out not to look like one at all because the puff pastry I bought was weird!!! But it still tasted like a real one! Below is a picture of a real one anyway from a Parisian bakery, courtesy of the scrumptious blog Haut Appétit.

For the galette à la frangipane, you need:

• 500g puff pastry
• 100g soft butter
• 100g almond powder 
• 200g  caster sugar
• Vanilla pod
•  4 egg yolks
  
• 1l milk
• 100g flour
• almond extract
  

• Celebrating the Epiphany with year 7 students (11 years old) the French way!
• 6th of January: the Epiphany in an international school.

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Pumpkins are still in season and each year I try a different sweet recipe. I already tried the pumpkin cake and the year before I did a pumpkin flan. I must admit that my family is not a huge fan of pumpkins, apart when in soups and I often found myself disappointed with the taste! I always assume by looking at the recipes that they are going to be very tasty and I always find there is something missing! This year I tried the classic pumpkin pie from the BBC Good Food website. It was good, as a pumpkin pie should be but again not the pie I would die for! For now, the overall winner is the pumpkin cake, maybe because of the walnuts which add taste.

For the pumpkin pie, you need:

• 750g pumpkin
• 350g sweet shortcrust pastry
• plain flour , for dusting
• 140g caster sugar
• ½ tsp salt
• ½ tsp fresh nutmeg , grated
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 2 eggs , beaten
• 25g butter , melted
• 175ml milk
• 1 tbsp icing sugar

Heat oven to 180 degrees.

To take out the flesh from the pumpkin, the easiest way for me was to bake the pumpkin. Cut the pumpkin in half and scoop out the seeds. Put a piece of aluminium foil in a large baking tin and pop the pumpkin onto it, cut side down. Cover well with more foil and bake for about one hour or until the pumpkin is tender. While it's baking, you can make your pie base and start mixing the other ingredients.

Roll out the pastry on a lightly floured surface and use it to line a tart tin. Chill for 15 mins.
Line the pastry with baking parchment and baking beans, then bake for 15 mins. Remove the beans and paper, and cook for a further 10 mins until the base is pale golden and biscuity. Remove from the oven and allow to cool slightly.
Increase oven to 220 degrees.
Push the cooled pumpkin through a sieve into a large bowl.
In a separate bowl, combine the sugar, salt, nutmeg and half the cinnamon.
Mix in the beaten eggs, melted butter and milk, then add to the pumpkin purée and stir to combine.
Pour into the tart shell and cook for 10 mins, then reduce the temperature to 180 degrees.
Continue to bake for 35-40 mins until the filling has just set.
Leave to cool, then remove the pie from the tin.
Mix the remaining cinnamon with the icing sugar and dust over the pie (I didn't!).
Serve chilled.

What about you? What is your favourite pumpkin recipe?

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I am back online after a while! I have neglected blogging for a while but the school year has started and I still want to share resources and other interesting stuff I see, read and hear. So the first thing I want to share with you this school year is the wiki I created a while ago to store the Spanish curriculum at my school. Three years ago, I started to teach Spanish in an international school in Germany. This was my first international job (as before that I was teaching in comprehensive schools in England) and this was also the first time I had the responsibility of starting a program from scratch. As a matter of fact, Spanish was not taught before I came so everything needed to be done! I took on this job mostly because of this challenge and so far it has been a lot of hard work but I have also really enjoyed it.

A year ago, I thought it would be a good idea to share the Spanish curriculum online. Not only with the web community but also with my colleagues at school. So far I am still the only main Spanish teacher but soon there will more Spanish colleagues needed (as Spanish is becoming quite popular) and they will need to know what is going on! The best and easiest way for me was to share everything on a wiki. It is easy to set up, easy to access and most importantly other people can contribute by editing the content. That is why I created http://spanishcurricula.wikispaces.com/. Obviously, it is still a work in progress and there is a lot missing. Little by little I am putting everything I do with my classes. So far, I have shared the middle school and the IGCSE programs. I still need to add the IB (ab initio and Language B) program to make it complete.

I hope you can use this wiki to help you in your teaching and of course, I am opened to any suggestions.

What about you? Where do you store your curriculum?

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To start the Christmas holidays, my dear man and I watch an excellent Irish comedy The Guard which is utterly non-politically correct, hence we laughed so much (maybe?). A long time policeman played by excellent Irish actor Brendan Gleeson in County Galway, has absolutely no interest in the international cocaine-smuggling ring that has brought FBI agent Wendell Everett played by American actor Don Cheadle to Galway. “If you take The Guard down to its bare bones essence it is just a buddy cop movie,” says McDonagh, the film director. The movie is in fact much more than that because of all the witty dialogues going on and the unconventional humour based on xenophobia, bigotry and race, experienced through the eyes of Cheadle’s FBI man. As a French person, I do connect with the Irish dark humour with lines like, 'I’m Irish; racism is part of my culture’!

I have just read in an article from the Telegraph that "as a filmmaker, McDonagh is self-taught. He is a writer and had no great desire to direct, his decision to step behind the camera prompted solely by a wish to protect the integrity of his script. “I had an awful time on Ned Kelly,” he says. “I hated what they did to the script, and if you do strip away the more contentious parts of The Guard, it becomes just another standard movie. My whole intention here was to subvert convention.” That is surely the reason why I enjoyed watching this film so much!

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Last week I watched a Finnish comedy entitled in French " A very cold trip" and in English " Lapland Odyssey". My dear man and I enjoy watching films from different countries because they generally have a different view on life. And this is the case with "Lapland Odyssey". It is about three unemployed young men set off on a desperate journey to locate a digital conversion box in the north of Finland. It should be a piece of cake but when you live in Finland far north where the sun rarely shows, it becomes quite an adventure. Full of twists, turns and unexpected catastrophes, this film is one of the freshest comedy I have seen in ages! It even won the Grand Prix at the Alpe d'Huez International Comedy Film Festival.

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After a beautiful month of September, the days are getting colder and darker. The real Autumn has started and so the soup season too. Since we had lots of sunny days recently, we also had lots of local tasty tomatoes on the market. Therefore I decided that our first autumn soup would be a tomato soup with crème fraîche (of course!). This version is adapted from Jamie Oliver's 30 minute meals and is very easy to prepare. And it tastes so much better than a carton soup!

You need:

• 1kg (2lb 4oz) ripe cherry tomatoes on the vine
  
• 4 large tomatoes
• 4 cloves of garlic
• 2 small red onions
• A few dollops of crème fraîche, to serve

Turn the oven on to 220C/gas 7 and put a large saucepan on a low heat. Put the standard blade attachment into the food processor.

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Lately I have been using a lot of Spanish resources from the Mary Glasgow website. Mary Glasgow is the name of a teacher who started her career as a French teacher in the 1950s, and subsequently became a school inspector. Frustrated by the lack of enthusiasm shown by teenage pupils, and by what she felt was the limited appeal of the French textbooks, Mary decided to publish her own series of French magazines. The magazines covered all the subjects that her teenage students loved – music, sport, film at a language level that they were comfortable with. Nowadays, Mary Glasgow is a company which has developed a range of 16 magazines – for learners of English, French, German, and Spanish.

I find that the website is very clear and offers a lot of resources related to the different topics we have to teach at IGCSE level. Some resources are free, for some others you have to subscribe. My favourite rubric is "Noticias" where you can access Spanish articles (for free) which you can choose to read at the level you wish (basic, pre-intermediate or intermediate). Along with each article, you can download the audio version of it for free, which makes it for a nice listening activity in class. Each audio is recorded with a different accent (Spanish from Spain, Argentina, Mexico...) so that students can get used to different ways of pronouncing the words.

How do I use those articles? I copy and paste them onto a Word document and I then add some comprehension questions in Spanish. I also download the audio. In class I write some listening comprehension questions on the board. My students listen to the article and answer the questions on the board. I then give them the Word document where they can read and listen to the article. They highlight the answers in the article to the questions from the board. They then answer the reading comprehension questions. That way they do a listening followed by a reading activity. With my grade 10 class (they will pass the IGCSE exam at the end of the school year), we have worked on birthdays and celebrations and they have completed two activities on "la quinceñera" and "la Merced" which were articles taken from Mary Glasgow. You can download the resources I created on my wiki.

What about you? Which websites do you like to use to access resources?

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Since I am officially on maternity leave, I have time to reflect on my teaching and what my believes are about learning. Therefore I have decided to take part in the 30 Goals challenge for educators organised by the fantastic Shelly Terrell. Throughout the months of January, February, March, and April, I will try to accomplish one to two goals a week. The goals are designed to get me and other educators around the world to believe my/their plans of action will lead to positive change in my/their environments. Because, I do not teach at the present, I will not be able to accomplish the goals where students are involved but I do think this will be a positive thing for me personally. I have now been teaching for ten years or so and I have never really had time to reflect on my practice, apart from when I was a NQT (Newly Qualified Teacher) and I had to report weekly to my mentor. It will also be good for my CV. Remember that one of my professional goals this year is to update my CV. Well, this challenge will help me write an attractive CV and also letter of motivation.

So the first challenge is to create a Me Manifesto where I should share "what makes me tick. What I do believe about learning and what kind of ideals I do carry in my classroom."

I thought I would tell you my manifesto through a story. I chose Storybird which is a wonderful tool to tell little stories. However the biggest drawback is that you cannot embed your story. You can only share it with friends via emails. That is why I decided to use a screen capture tool Screenr and to tell you my story:

If you want to read the story only, go to the Storybird website.

And here is a little explanation of my manifesto:
I have always loved teaching and my brother and sister will tell you that when I was a child, I didn't play with dolls or any other girly toys. I played the teacher! And my lovely sister would always play the good student in my class!
Why do I love teaching? Because it involves real people, real emotions and real experiences. Because every day is never the same and is a new challenge, a chance to try something new. Because although it is very hard some days, there is always such a sense of achievement at the end of the day. I do really enjoy watching pupils language improvements, watching that they actually start to enjoy understanding and speaking a new language.

What are my ideals? A friendly and team atmosphere in the class: pupils wanting to learn something completely different and pupils supporting each other. In terms of teaching a new language, I want my students to be able to adapt to new situations, new ways of thinking, new cultures which is a key skill to have in everyday life. I want them to get to improve their own first language by finding similarities with the new language. Ultimately I want them to acquire "another brain". I have been trained to become a teacher but I now would like to change into a kind of mentor/tutor. By that I mean that I would like to deliver more personalised learning where each student is treated as a different learner. I am reading a lot of very interesting stuff about it at the moment (especially KevinMclaughlin's blog) and I want to draw a plan of action to be able to teach a new language to each student individually.

What about you? Why do you love teaching and what are your ideals?

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I already mentioned the brilliant Spanish textbook entitled Gente Joven 1. I like this textbook because each topic is linked to the Hispanic culture and the exercises are fun, engaging and challenging. Although I know some of my colleagues are completely against textbooks, I do think they are still useful especially when you teach in a school which lacks technology. I do not use textbooks all the time in each lesson but it gives me ideas about what to teach and how. As I wrote in another post, I started from scratch in my actual school. There was no Spanish at all, so having a textbook really helped me developed the curriculum for the middle school.

I am using Gente Joven 1 with my grade 6 and 7 students (11-14 years old) and then I am moving on to Gente Joven 2 with grade 8 (14-15 years old). In grade 9 and 10, our students are preparing for the IGCSE Cambridge exams so I am then covering the topics of the syllabus which are basically a revision from the middle school years (sadly enough!).

It is actually the first year I am using Gente Joven 2 with grade 8 and I am thoroughly enjoying it as I enjoyed using Gente Joven 1. The tasks are still fun and students-oriented. The first chapter is aimed at revising the knowledge students have gained from the previous book and one of the topic is about TV and series. I can hear some readers say "oh no! Not again!" but what we did in class was different from what we usually do: the different TV programs...

We spent several lessons on this topic and practised the main skills: reading, listening, speaking and writing.

• Reading comprehension: First, we read a description and interviews in the book about the Argentinean TV series Rebelde Way. I put an episode from YouTube on the school blog so that the class could watch it and see how telenovelas are like.
  Then we read another resource I created about the Spanish TV series Cuéntame. Again, I put a link to an episode on the school blog.

• Speaking activity: I then asked the students to work in pairs and to pretend their job was to create TV series. They had to come up with a project of successful TV series. They had to think of a story, the characters, the music... They also had to show a short extract of the series: either a short episode or a trailer. Their task was to present their project to TV producers and sell it to them. They had two lessons to prepare their presentation and then they had to present it in front of the class (the rest of the class were the "producers"). I recorded the presentations and embedded their recordings on the school blog.

• Writing task: while the students were presenting their project, the rest of the class was to listen carefully to their presentation. They had to pretend they were big TV producers and their task was to choose the TV series which would be most successful. They had to take notes and then write a report about the TV series they chose, why they chose it and why they thought it would be successful. They had to use sentences such as "se recomendaria..."or "creo que esta serie va a tener éxito porque..."

What about you? Do you have any sequence of successful lessons to share?

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This week was important because on the 12th of October "many countries in the New World and elsewhere celebrate the anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the Americas. The event is celebrated as Columbus Day in the United States, as Día de la Raza in many countries in Latin America, as Discovery Day in the Bahamas, as Día de la Hispanidad, Fiesta Nacional in Spain, Día del Respeto a la Diversidad Cultural (Day of Respect for Cultural Diversity) in Argentina and as Día de las Américas (Day of the Americas) in Uruguay. These holidays have been celebrated unofficially since the late 18th century, and officially in various areas since the early 20th century."(from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbus_Day)

My colleague who teaches grade 6 (11-12 years old) and I decided to do a middle school assembly to celebrate this event and also as a way to promote Spanish at our school. My colleague gave me the script of a short play in Spanish about how Christopher Columbus discovered America and I decided that my grade 7 class (12-13 years old) would perform it. First, we spent one lesson reading the play and understanding it in English. It was a great way to practise reading skills and also to talk about Spanish history and culture. Each student was assigned a role to play and they practised during several lessons. The students who did not study Spanish were assigned a role in English so that the non Spanish learners would still understand the play during the assembly. Sometimes, I would deliver a normal lesson and we would then spend the last 15 minutes of the lesson rehearsing. Not only was this excellent for practising speaking skills: Spanish pronunciation and intonation, it was also an excellent way of learning how to talk and present something in front of an assembly. The class thoroughly enjoyed rehearsing and performing the play and it showed the other students at the assembly what they could achieve after only two years of learning a new language.

After the play, grade 6 sang a Spanish song entitled "El doce de octubre" which I found on YouTube.

All in All it was a wonderful assembly: students who performed it were very proud of showing their Spanish skills and it motivated other students to learn another language (hopefully!)! This was the first time I celebrated Columbus Day and I will definitely do it again next year!

What about you? Did you celebrate it with your students? How?

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