HAVE FUN WITH ENGLISH!

5th grade    /    6th grade

2003-2004    /    2004-2005

Links to our blog

Our Class (an Australian blog)

VImP links

Nationalities Contest

Oz Quiz

Tutorials

HandyBits

SitePal

Sites

Photo Story 3

My presentations about our blog

A Internet na Iniciação à Língua Estrangeira: Blogs e CALL lessons (ESE Setúbal, 27Sep04)

Have Fun with English! (Internet, 8Feb05)

Comments to this presentation

Bettina's blog

Tuchodi's blog

Have Fun with English! (Tagus Park, 7Mar05; in Portuguese)

Have Fun with English. A blog or a plog? (APPI Conference, 21Apr05)

Click Aiden's blog and see what Aiden is saying about your messages to her, her messages to you and CJ's message to you. Who's CJ? He is Aiden's son, of course.

And guess what? CJ plays the flute! You do, too! At school, right? See and listen to CJ play La Cucaracha! He's great! Congrats, CJ! Way to go!!!

Here's a list of the translated words:

Hello (Chinese= Ni Hao), (Tagolog= Kamusta)

Good Morning (Chinese= Tzao An), (Tagalog= Magandang Umaga)

Good Bye (Chinese= Tzai Chien), (Tagalog= Paalam)

That's it!

Your kids asked how many languages I speak, I speak 3 1/2 languages :-) English, Chinese, Tagalog and spanish. I learnt Spanish in School, from grade school to College, but I never really had the chance to practice it outside the classroom. So, I know quite a lot of Spanish words, and I could understand written Spanish, but my spoken Spanish is terrible.

Thanks again and I look forward to another voice exchange!

I'm also blogging this, Tere!

Aiden

6F was very motivated and well-behaved, and worked in a very disciplined way, while having lots of fun. They followed my suggestion for Aiden's message - two listenings -, and then moved to writing and recording the message. João Vasco was at the computer taking care of the clickings, etc, and Pedro G. was at the whiteboard writing the text they all decided on. He also recorded the HandyBits voice email for Aiden (see below). Then it was time to listen twice to Ramona's message, also recorded with HandyBits during my Wednesday APPI presentation on CoPs. They loved it and immediately came up with great ideas for the reply. João Filipe was at the whiteboard and João Pedro A. recorded it (see below). Congratulations to 6F for a great session. You did a lot of very good work!

6G is a more agitated group. There's always a lot of motivation and excitement in the air, but it's difficult for them to concentrate, even with something they love, so less is usually done in one session. They heard Aiden's message twice (André F. was at the computer), thought of an answer (they are much more creative and sensitive than 6F!), copied it in their notebooks while I wrote what they said on the whiteboard, and finally Teresa recorded it. It was a fun session!

Dear Aiden,

(click to listen to Pedro G.)

Subject: from 6F

Dear Aiden,

"Chéchia or Salamat" for your SitePal message.Now you are our Chinese and Tagalo teacher.

How do we say "Hello!, Good morning! and Goodbye!" in Chinese and Tagalo?

In Portuguese we say "Olá! Bom dia! Adeus!".

Obrigada! (Thank you!)

Hugs from 6F

(click to listen to Teresa)

Hi, Aiden!

"Chéchia" or "Salamat" for your message and nice words.

How many languages do you speak? We speak Portuguese and just a little English.

What is your favorite food? We like Duck rice (arroz de pato).

Obrigada! (Thank you!)

Have a nice day!

Bye-bye from 6G

(click to listen to João Pedro)

Dear Ramona,

We really appreciate your message.

If you want, you can learn Portuguese with us. (Se quiser, pode aprender Português connosco.)

Adeus! (Goodbye!)

Hugs from 6F

Dear 6F,

Thanks so much for your reply.  I loved it!!!!!  You are very thoughtful and sweet to offer me some assistence in learning Portuguese.  I might just take you up on your offer ;-).

Let me return the favor by saying that if I can help you all in any way, I'm there!!!!

Have a great week,

Beijinhos,

Ramona

Dear kids,

My presentations at the APPI Conference went very well. The first was on Wednesday afternoon. It was about the Webheads in Action, my Internet group, and our work as a community of practice. There were 30 people in the room, among them (= entre eles), my husband, a very close friend and two Portuguese Webheads. And there were 9 friends online.

The second session was on Thursday morning. It was about our blog. What a success! The face-to-face audience and my four online friends were extremely impressed by your work in 5th and 6th grade, and especially loved the voice messages. After the session ended, people stayed 15 minutes more, because they wanted to see how HandyBits voice mail works.

Ramona Dietrich, an American teacher and friend in the audience, recorded a for you. It's so sweet! Listen to it! Click the icon above! One last thing: I had a great surprise before the presentation started! My son, Miguel, showed up (= apareceu) to see "mom's presentation"! I was sooooo haaaaappppyyyyy!!!!      He was also very impressed by your work!

Enjoy the long weekend and send messages!

Hugs all!!!

What a beautiful message! Thank you! 

VImP: Ana Maria, there was a problem with your email address, so you didn't receive my email? Or did you?! >confused<

"Hi teacher.I love the interective map and I love the call lessons. Bye and good week!!!"

It's great to get/receive such enthusiastic messages, Joana, from students and from colleagues! Wow! You've made my day!

AND THE WINNER IS...  RODRIGO!!! 

Subject: And the mystery is....

Hi teacher I'm Rodrigo , this is my new e-mail acount.

I found out what the phrase means.


A MYSTERY GUEST . The language is Wingdings isn't it?
My mother helped me.

1 st - I copied it to word.

2 nd - I changed the language to arial

And the mystery was gone .

:):):):):)

Good bye... and have a good weekend!!!!!!!!!!!!

A Mystery Guest  =  A Mystery Guest
 

Hi Teresa,

Thank you for your interest in Oddcast and spreading the word!

There is a time limit for the amount of time our demo VHosts will speak.
 This is to prevent people from using them on their Web sites.

In your case, we really do not mind that you are using our demo Scenes,
but we cannot change the system for one specific case :(

We are going to soon have discount policies for SitePal for education
purposes.  Please check back with us at a later time. 

Best Regards,
Isak
Oddcast Support

This has been a very special day! I had two very nice CALL lessons with two of my classes and, when I got home, I had two lovely and heartwarming messages from two wonderful friends. One of them is an English teacher in Taiwan and sent a voice message with an avatar! The other teaches Portuguese at my school and sent a very enthusiastic message in Portuguese. I tanslated it with her permission. Both versions are available.

To top my day (= para acabar o dia em beleza), I just had a wonderful voice chat with Sharon, my dear friend from ???? Oh, no! That's for my students to find out in two weeks' time, when we have our next CALL lesson. And no hints from anybody. Please!!! Sharon and I are preparing a joint activity for them!

Next week I'll be at the APPI conference in Lisbon giving two presentations. One of them is about this blog.

Enjoy the messages below!

Hello Teresa!

This is Aiden Yeh in Taiwan. I'd like to 'thank you' and your kids for giving me the inspiration in creating my own character in SitePal. Your work is truly inspirational.

I'd like to teach you and your students how to say Thank you in Chinese and Tagalo. In Chinese we say [chéchia] and in Tagalo we say [salama]. So if you could practice these two languages together, then there you go. You've learned two new languages for the day.

Goodbye and I'll see all online soon!

This is a summary of what happened in CALL lesson 3 this morning. 6F was the first class at 9:15. Verónica was at the computer. He opened the interactive map (very slow!) and everybody noticed that Ivânia posted two new entries. Then they read Luisa's entry, but it isn't easy, because her entry is very close to others. They also tried guessing Müzo's country and someone said it was Turkey when they saw the flag!

Next they went to the blog and couldn't open Rodrigo's SitePal voice message. Maybe the wireless connection wasn't fast enough!  :-(

So they read the fun activity below. I asked them to try the title activity at home, so they went directly to the second activity about the Hi Everyone message below.

I asked them to name countries where English is the mother tongue (as Portuguese is in Portugal, Brazil, etc). Answers:

America, England, Canada, Australia and South Africa. Fine!

Then I said: now think of where this person, s/he, was born and then moved to. Answers:

That's when I told told them that my friend was Sharon, a woman! But I haven't told them where Sharon lives.

Then came 6G at 12:10. The procedure was the same. Luis was at the computer. He went to the map first and they all looked at the new entries, starting with Guilherme's entry. Then he went to the blog and they all listened to Guilherme's SitePal voice message twice!

Finally, we started the Hi Everyone activity. I followed the same procedure and here are the results!

A Mystery Guest

This is a fun activity! It's also a guessing game!

There are two things you need to discover:

-- what this title means!  ;-)

-- and then read the message below and try to find out the two things that my friend and colleague asks you. Read her clues/hints (= pistas) carefully and think of the different possibilities.

Hope to hear from you soon! And so does my friend!

Enjoy! 

I did some searching on the Internet this weekend and found (= encontrei) something that made me very happy. It's the description of The Spirit of Christmas email project I did with 6th graders in our school in 1998-99. It was included in Internet for English Teaching (TESOL, 2000), a book published in the USA. (Scroll down to A Primary School E-Mail Cultural Exchange to read the description.)

Take a look at the comments from some of my Webhead friends about our work with SitePal. It's cool, isn't it? 

Dear Teresa (and All),
that is really impressive, especially if you think about students practising their pronunciation. thanks for the link!!!
Best,
Jarek Krajka [Poland] (7Apr05)

..., let me show you the work of one of the brightest persons I
know...Teresa in Portugal. After I found oddcast, I thought it was
neat and informed a large ESL list about it...Almost instantly,
Teresa came back to me with work she is doing with same....
John Hibbs [Oregon, USA]  (7Apr05)

tere's example prompted me to follow her footsteps. If 5th graders could do it so can I ;-)  Creating my welcome message was fun and exciting. i loved it the most when I had to choose which lips to use... ;-)

Aiden Yeh [Taiwan]  (7Apr05)

 

Teresa,
I loved the way you adapted the sitepal to your class...
Rae [Washington, D.C., USA]  (8Apr05)

 

Dear Teresa,
I loved the animated voice messages you and your
students created!  I bet it was fun for you all.  Is
the program free for first-time users?
Hugs,
Leanne [BC, Canada]  (10Apr05)

Thanks All for your comments. My students will enjoy them for sure! 

I'm glad you liked my new look.That program it's very very very very very very
very FUN .

Good bye and good weekend!!!!!

Rodrigo 6º F

Here's a very simple tutorial - basic instructions - on how to create an avatar, record a message, save it and send it.

Click the SitePal icon above
Click Try Now!
Choose (= escolhe) a face in Click to Select a Model
Click a Mouth arrow (left or right) to choose the mouth (= boca)
Repeat the same for Shirt (= camisa ou blusa), Hair, Shades (= óculos) and Necklace (= colar)
Click Record below "Options"
Click Record Now (You may need to install software)
Drag (= Arrasta) the Mic Level to + (maximum)
Click Record (You have 1 minute!). When you finish,
Click the Stop Record button
Click Play to listen to your message
Click Save (= Guardar) and give your message a name
Click Ok when you see "Your new audio is ready". (Now listen to your avatar/ image saying your message!)
Click Send It and fill in the necessary information + Ok.

You will get the link to your message by email in a few minutes.

Have fun! And don't forget to send me a message! 

Rodrigo was the first to send me a SitePal message. I hope that many more will follow! (Click his avatar to listen to his message.)

Our CALL Lesson 2 (6.F and 6.G) didn't go exactly as planned, because my Website server was down, but I think it was lots of fun, wasn't it? You really liked the surprise I prepared for you with SitePal, didn't you? (Click the avatars to listen.)

But it was even better when one student in each class - Joana in 6.F and Alexandre in 6.G - created their avatar (image), recorded their message, listened to it. Wow! What excitement! Finally, the message was saved and sent to me. And here they are for everyone to hear!

The second part of the lesson was creating entries in our FwE Interactive map. This was the first time that we were able to Post (= put an entry), wasn't it? And it was the first time that 6.G saw this map!

The names included today were Linda Wettlaufer and Dafne Gonzalez by 6.F, and Cristina Costa by 6.G.

I hope your parents can see your great work!

BTW, I sent (= mandei) my Internet teacher friends your messages. A teacher from Taiwan followed your footsteps (= seguiu as vossas pisadas) and did the same! Isn't that cool?

I will include the link to Site Pal and a simple tutorial (instructions) above.

Have a great weekend and start sending those avatar messages!!! 

SORRY THE MESSAGE WAS FROM PEDRO L. FROM 6 GRADE

Hi,teacher!

how are you ?
im refering to message saying why i am sad in the other day
its in sala tic?
i dont no if it is
see you tomorrow, and when do you send e-mails, send them to my adress ok?
its....

There's a surprise that I think you will enjoy at the beginning of tomorrow's CALL lesson. Aren't you curious??!! I hope so! 

See you all in class tomorrow at 8:30 with 6.F and at 12:10 with 6.G!

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