4+ Ideas for Mother's Day

Though the date differs in other countries, in Portugal we celebrate Mother's Day every year on the first Sunday of May - in a week's time. This has led me to collect some materials and gather ideas to mark this date in my classes, but without spending much time with it and using the few resources we have.
I would like to start by sharing here a very clever ad (maybe you've already come across it) that left me speechless the first time I watched it. I plan to use it as a lovely motivation in my classes to challenge kids to thank their Moms.
See for yourself! It is just awesome: a touching and heartelt tribute to all Moms who have the toughest job in the world.



Here is also a fab infographic on Mother's Day and Motherhood, definitely worth checking, and a video with the history of Mother's Day.
As for "Thank You" ideas for our students and classes, some tips would be ...

• to create and send a free Mother's Day Animoto video: students surely have pictures on their own and with their Moms and those photos can be used by themselves to create a 30sec free video or they can also share those pics with the teacher who will then very easily create a video;
• Students can also be challenged to (temporarily) swap their facebook covers to honour their moms using (the same) pics, whether with a simple photocollage or using a great free tool, Smilebox;
• As mentioned before, a photocollage is always an amazing choice and there is no shortage of free tools, even for mobile devices;
• The easiest, and also the most common, is to send a free ecard. There is no lack of alternatives here either, but sts can try 123greetings once it also includes some videos / songs.
• ...

My Sts are not into drawing and Ts don't have much time now. These ideas will therefore save us time in class, motivate Sts for something so personal and we will be including something they all love: technology. Even if their moms don't have FB accounts or email addresses, our students do and can show them; besides, there is always the possibility of printing, at home or at school. What do you think?

Happy Mother's Day, y'all!

Visit to IH Coimbra

Some years after our first visit to IH Coimbra, once again in the morning of June 1st the doors were opened for us / our students and as always we were warmly welcomed by all - teachers and staff.
Dave, Jenny and Ben had planned three different activities for our students and they were split into 3 groups that swapped every half an hour. Dave had planned an activity on movies I found awesome (both the film and the activities), Ben had planned a very interesting activity on music and Jenny on computers. Wow! I can assure you that all were FUNtastic and students loved every single bit - check for yourselves in the pics they are about to share here.

There are no words to express my gratitude as a teacher to IH for always being there for my / Soure students no matter their ages. I've already lost track to the number of times that IH and Dave Tucker have been welcoming "kids from Soure" and last year (as published here ) there was even a most generous offer of a summer course to an adult learner of mine. As for the school, both colleagues and students were amazingly helpful: Helena helped with the bunches of flowers, Isabel and students baked the cakes we were to offer in the morning before leaving, Isidoro and students built a "Metal Dave" (Dave's words) as well as a "Metal Jenny", Filipe brought all the flowers and Marco two bottles of home-distilled aguardente from 2010.
Many, many thanks to all!

Thank YOU!

Just a short note to all those readers who sent me a card on Saturday, 26th September, The EUROPEAN DAY OF LANGUAGES: a big hug and THANK YOU!!!
Please keep on :)))