alice’s posterous

First you need about 140g hazelnuts. I didn't toast them but I finely chopped them in a food processor.

I then added 140g self-raising flour and 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda (and I completely forgot to add 140g sugar!).

I whisked 3 egg whites until stiff, then I quickly stirred 140g butter melted, 75ml milk and the 3 egg yolks into the dry ingredients.
When the mixture was smooth, I stirred in one-third of the egg whites, then I gently folded in the rest. My son wanted to give me a hand :)

I poured the mixture into a tin,  and baked it for 40-50 mins until the cake was golden and springy to touch.

Whilst the cake was baking, I prepared the dark chocolate filling. I microwaved 100g dark chocolate with a bit of water and 1 tbsp clear honey and mixed it well to obtain a smooth consistency.
When the cake was out of the oven and had cooled down a bit, I splitted the sponge in half. I gently spooned the chocolate filling over the first half.

To finish, I put the other half of the cake back on top to obtain this delicious torte (even without sugar!).

Continuing with my series "Get active in the classroom!", here is another activity by Marc Helgesen which worked very well to reinforce directions in another language. I did this with my grade 12 group (17 years old). Although they are grown up students, they do need a bit of action from time to time as they tend to be a bit lethargic! We learnt how to give and understand directions in town. Then, as a follow up activity, we did the Tour guide in Madrid. I created cards to put on the walls and tables in the classroom. They were showing La Plaza Mayor, El Parque del Retiro, El museo del Prado, Atocha on them and some shops in Spanish we had learnt previously. It was a double lesson and students had a 5 minutes break so I had time to fix the cards in the classroom without them watching. When students returned from their break, I asked them to stay in the corridor and I explained the following:

1.  Students worked in pairs. One was a tour guide. The other was a tourist. The tourist is blindfolded.

2.  The tour guide directed the tourist around the classroom, giving directions and pointing out things that are interesting. (The tour guide may not touch the tourist). Only spoken instructions are allowed. The tour guide encourages the tourist to touch and pick-up objects. Naturally, the tour guides need to be careful so the tourists don’t hurt themselves, bump into things or other people, etc.

3. When each pair of students had finished their tour, we had a discussion of what makes for good directions, things that were easy or difficult to explain. We also talked about the main sights in Madrid.

Students really enjoyed doing this, they thought it was a fun way of practicing the directions.

What about you? Which engaging activity do you do to practice directions?

I happened to stumble on an interesting video whilst re-watching this other interesting video embedded in the presentation The PDO's are coming in my earlier post about using personally owned devices in the classroom:

Do you think Joe is joking? I don't think so. I think he is serious: a book is a foreign tool for him!!!

This is the other very interesting video about students talking about their personally owned devices. It really is time we, teachers,  should start using them, don't you think?

To me, Luz Casal represents Spain. She sings el amor, la pasión, la fatalidad, la muerte... she covers all the Spanish themes with her beautiful voice. I first met her when she sang her famous Piensa en mi by Agustín Lara', which was chosen by Pedro Almodóvar for his film Tacones Lejanos.

She has now released a new album called La Pasión which is a wonderful collection of South American songs. This is the first time that Luz Casal devotes an entire album to already known songs. I love her voice and when I listen to her, it just reminds me of Spain...

This week, we have been learning members of the family in Spanish with my students and how to describe them. An activity that went well and is based from the excellent textbook Gente Joven is to ask questions about other families.

1. Students write the names of 3 members of their family on a card. They go around the class with their cards and ask each other for each name on the card "¿Es tu madre/ padre/ abuelo...?" (Is he/she your mum/ dad/ grandad...?).
2. Students then stay with a partner. The partner chooses one person from the other's card and ask different questions about this person:
   ¿Cuántos años tiene?
   ¿Cómo es?
   ¿Qué le gusta?
   Whilst asking those questions, they write the answers down.
3. Students write a paragraph using their answers about their partner's member of the family. They memorize their paragraph. They go around the class telling each other about their partner's member of the family "Ellen tiene una hermana. Tiene trece años. Es rubia, alta y delgada. Tiene los ojos azules. Le gusta mucho leer y chatear con sus amigas pero no le gusta nada estudiar."

Students enjoyed finding out about other's families and telling the class about each other. It was also a good way to use verbs and expressions in the 3rd person a not only in the first person.

What about you? Have you used an engaging activity to teach family members in another language?

Isabelle Jones sent this wonderful link on Twitter the other day about getting physical in the classroom by using movement and language.

Marc Helgesen from Miyagi Gakuin Women's College has listed numerous activities which can be used to introduce or reinforce a topic.I have already tried one of the activities listed called FonFs (Focus on forms). The good thing is that there is no preparation required and you can practice different structures and new vocabulary.

I used it in French with grade 4 students (8-9 years old). They have been learning items of clothing, so I explained to them I went on holidays and I wrote on the board:
Dans ma valise, j'ai emporté.... (in my suitcase, I had.......)
Students worked in pairs. They faced each other. One partner held his hands in front of him, palms up.The other partner said the target sentence (Dans ma valise, j'ai emporté un pull) and slapped the first partner’s hands. The first partner said the next sentence. That sentence included the first item from the previous sentence (un pull) and a new item (Dans ma valise, j'ai emporté un pull, un pantalon) and slapped the partners hands.
Students loved slapping each other's hand! and it was a good way to memorise the different items of clothes, plus they learnt a sentence in the past tense.

I used it in Spanish with grade 7 (12-13 years old). This time they practiced a mi me gusta bailar, navegar por internet....(I like....).They enjoyed it so much (there are all boys!) that we did it a second round with a mi no me gusta.....(I don't like...)

The version from Marc Helgesen includes saying a word starting with every letter of the alphabet, so that students play the game from A to Z. But I thought it would get too complicated for my students so we just did the activity randomly.

There are many more activities I want to try on this web page so I will be posting more to tell you how I adapted them and how they went.

What about you? what are your warm-up activities?

There are straightforward, easy recipes using seasonal fruits and vegetables with funny comments. Now, on the market just one minute away from where I live, they are now selling beautiful spinach leaves:

I used them to make this beautiful Spinachio pie from the recipe book:

first make the pastry:
mix 100g wholemeal flour, 100g white flour and a pinch of salt into a bowl. Rub 100g butter into the flour mixture to breadcrumb consistency and gradually add enough cold water until the pastry sticks together. If the pastry is too watery, add flour until you obtain the right consistency. Then leave it to rest for an hour or so. Preheat the oven to 200 degres.

Cook the spinach:

wash the spinach leaves.

Then place them in a saucepan with a lid and steam the spinach for 5 minutes or so. When it's steamed, drain the spinach to extract as much liquid as possible.

Blind bake the pastry for 10 minutes. While the pastry is baking, separate an egg and whisk the white lightly with a fork. Take the pastry out of the oven and pour the whisked egg white into the base. Swish it around until it is covered, then pop the pastry back into the oven for a few more minutes to set the white. This will stop the pastry going snoggy when you put in the filling.

Make the filling:
Beat 225g cream cheese (ricotta, curd cheese, quark, fromage frais...) with 2 eggs and the yolk from the other egg. Add salt, pepper, nutmeg, the well-drained spinach and 25g grated cheese (parmesan, gruyere, cheddar...).

Pour the filling into the pastry case. Scatter 25g of grated cheese over the top.

Bake for 30 minutes or until set.

You can eat this delicious pie as a starter or main dish:

What do I remember from school? a song by Sting we learnt in my English class,  a trip to Verdun during my history class. This trip made me understand the word "war" as well as this book our enthusiastic History teacher made use read A l'Ouest rien de nouveau by Erich Maria Remarque. Apart from that, I don't remember much. Why? maybe because lessons were boring. We never took an active part in our learning, most of our lessons were about listening to the teacher's monotonous voice and to take notes. I have found that since I have a PLN, Google reader, Twitter and Friendfeed I have learnt so much more than I did during all the time I spent at school!
Maybe because now I can explore and discover new things, whereas before I was just a passive learner. And maybe that's why many students are not involved in lessons.

This video I found on Shelly Terrell's blog shows what learning should be about: FUN!

I have noticed there is a lot of talk at the moment about cell phones in schools: should they be banned or could they be used as a learning tool? Teachers I know from my PLN, twitter and from the blogs I read are mostly pro cell phones. However, the policy at my school is that cell phones have no place in the classroom and that students shouldn't be using them during lessons. I understand that if a student uses his or her cellphone to answer a call or a text message during a lesson, then obviously the teacher should stop it. But I have read an excellent post by Steve Dembo where he explains that " a teacher requires that the cell phone be out and ON the desk. In plain site. Not hidden in a pocket or backpack. So if the student is using it, the teacher KNOWS. And if the student is using it when they shouldn’t… Well, that’s when there are consequences. Phone is confiscated until the end of the week, or the parent can pay a $25 fine to get it back for their student. Sure, there were plenty of students who lost their phones, and plenty of fines paid. They used the money to pay for a field trip before the end of the year. But the point is, the students learned when it was ok to be using the phone as a learning device, and when it was inappropriate. Believe me, no student wants to go to his parents and let them know that they need $25 to get their phone back… and explain why."

Now my school has a tight budget and clearly lacks new technology and as Steve Dembo mentions "here we are with millions of dollars in technology that’s being paid for by the parents VOLUNTARILY… and most schools refuse to leverage it because of outdated policies and teachers that don’t want to modify their own classroom management strategies."

I must admit I love my computer but I am not really good with cell phones or other personally owned devices, I have the most basic one just in case of emergency. Most of my contacts are by emails or skype calls. However after watching this wonderful presentation from this other excellent post by Lisa Nielsen, I am tempted to have no fear and give cell phones or ipods a go, especially because we don't have many computers in my school. If in any doubt about whether or not you should allow your students to use their cell phones in your lesson, watch this, it's great!

The POD's are Coming