SAYING HELLO, NOT A SIMPLE ROUTINE!

Laura Lorenzo19/04/26  

“Effective speaking routine in language classrooms help scaffold learners’ talk, making oral language development more accessible and less intimidating”

Andrew Wilkinson

Greetings are one of the first things you learn to say in a foreign language. When you travel to another country and already know how to say “hello!”, “good morning”, or “good afternoon”, you show respect for the other speaker’s culture and help create a more relaxed and friendly environment.

In English sessions, greetings play a very important role. Everyone is greeted and given an opportunity to express themselves and share anything they want or need within a routine that marks the start of every session.

Once everybody is sitting in a circle, the teacher throws the “world plushie” to a child, and the conversation begins: “Hello! Good morning! Good afternoon! How are you?” When the child has answered, it is their turn to ask another classmate, and the activity continues until everyone has spoken.

Although the conversation starts in English, when children want to express something for which they do not yet have the vocabulary or grammar, they naturally switch to Catalan or Spanish. This does not mean that the activity has failed—quite the opposite: they express what they want or need, and in doing so, they reveal the vocabulary they most need to acquire. The teacher, as an active participant in the routine, listens and monitors the conversation, asking questions, rephrasing and introducing the necessary vocabulary. Over time, through repetition, children gradually acquire the structures and vocabulary needed to say things like “Today I am going to the park with my sister” or “I am nervous because I am playing an important football match.”

Another important aspect is that they learn to recognise their emotions and expand their vocabulary to express themselves—not only in English, but also in Catalan. They learn to distinguish between being nervous and excited, bored, tired, or exhausted, and even between being happy and “over the moon.”

A familiar routine like this, with a clear, simple, and predictable structure, offers a great opportunity for everyone to practise speaking and listening in English. Simple, guided repetitions gradually evolve into real conversations in which all learners “build” knowledge together.

LET’S GO TO THE THEATRE!

Laura Lorenzo22/03/26  

“Don’t worry about the bits you can’t understand. Sit back and allow the words to wash around you, like music.”

Roald Dahl

Last week we had a lot of fun while practising English by going to Can Papasseit to watch a theatre play: Little Red Rocks.

Because watching a theatre play in English can be a bit difficult; we have been preparing this challenging activity for weeks in class. By meeting the characters and reading the summary of the story we realized it was an adapted version of Little Red RIding Hood, a fairy tale that we all know.

In this version of the story Little Red is a brave girl who lives in Barcelona that has to fly to London to help her grandma, a famous music star who needs an important document. In her adventure she meets Lupita and Olenka, a flight attendant and a perfumist that help her. She also meets Mr.Wolf, a greedy person who wants to steal grandma’s money and jewells.

We had a lot of fun singing the songs and helping Little Red write the end of the story… Our favourite moment, though, was when three colleagues went on the stage to take part in a smelling competition!

Watching a play or a film in English may seem difficult but, if we are familiar with the story and know all the basic language it can be a fun and motivating activity. Why don’t you try watching your favourite film in English?

OUR RIVERS

Laura Lorenzo19/02/26  

We are learning a lot about RIVER ANOIA and we decided to use all we have discovered so far to invent our own river. 
We had a lot of fun creating our river because we did not just draw.. We used blue paper and scissors to make our river with one continuous string. We had to be very careful when we used the scissors because we wanted to make it as long as possible without breaking the paper…

It was very difficult to cut thin paper and it required a lot of care. What a great way to practice cutting skills! When everybody got their rivers, it was time to measure them. Some rivers were so long that we had to help each other use the measuring tape. You can see how long our rivers are in this picture.

This activity offered us the opportunity to introduce big numbers and practice saying them. It was very fun and much easier than we thought!  After spending some sessions playing games to practice saying, reading and writing numbers in English we were ready to write the info about our rivers… We had to complete a table with the basic information of our rivers (including the length in KM!) which later served us as the prompt to start writing our text describing the river. Writing in English is not as difficult when we have the right support!

IS IT RIVER ANOIA?

Laura Lorenzo09/01/26  

As you know, we are studying how can we help our river, the river Anoia. We go to Parc Fluvial a lot and we are quite familiar with the image of the river in Vilanova but we know that the river is different in all its parts. We know the river starts near Calaf and that it ends in river Llobregat but… can we recognise the river?

We had different images and, in pairs, we had to decide if the images were river Anoia or not. We used a lot of strategies to get the correct answer: look at the animals, look at the plants around, look at the cities and towns around but it is not that easy! The best part is that it offered a great opportunity to talk in English and use structures like “I think it’s river Anoia” or “I think it is not river Anoia” to express our opinions. Do you want to try? Click here, look at the presentation and try to guess.

How many answers did you get correct? Did you recognise any other river?

PANELLETS: READING RECIPES

Laura Lorenzo26/10/25  


“Learn how to cook—try new recipes, learn from your mistakes, be fearless and above all have fun.”

Julia Child

As you know, Tanits have a very important mission: organizing the autumn activity of making “panellets”.  

We agreed on the recipe but… can we recognise that same recipe in English?

We had a set of dessert recipes among which we had to locate the “panellets” one. Difficult? Not at all!  Working in small groups, we discovered that every Tanit used a different strategy to do the task: looking at the numbers, finding the key words (almonds and sugar) in the text or eliminating recipes when we discovered ingredients that are not necessary in panellets (Milk- als panellets no hi ha llet!, aquesta no és!). Matching each recipe with its corresponding image was a bit more complicated but not impossible using the strategies we have shared. 

When we discovered the recipe it was time to read it more carefully and understand all the steps. Since last year we cooked pancakes in class, we were familiar with some vocabulary and it was quite easy to recognise words like MIX and ADD. We also discovered new words like SMASH and BAKE. 

Do you know these words in Catalan?  Just do like we did in class to guess the meaning: use what you already know about the recipe and the images to help you understand the text.