Project 52 - Week Four

Another hectic week with me starting full time work at the Lake School of English, lots of family commitments, and checking in on the EVO Crafting the ePerfect Textbook session any spare moments, but in particular, late at night.  

On Monday morning I had a lovely welcome and met my new classes.  A2+ in the morning, and B2+ in the afternoon.  A nice mix of nationalities, including Arabic, Japanese, Swiss, Argentinian.

I usually like to focus on speaking skills, but also ensure a good mix of all skills.  I recorded me reading a text about the woman who invented Ragu sauce on my Android and used it as a listening activity. I am going to do a short writing activity every day and then do follow-up error correction with lots of spelling tests.  The students are taking a mix of KET and IELTS exams and so will need to do lots of authentic reading. I used a new tool called festitext to jazz up my intro text:

I encouraged my students to send me voice recordings of their homework and I was delighted to see how keen they were to send me their messages.  I replied by using Vocaroo. 

A Special Day

Lovely gifts from Marion

JibJab egreetings from K

A fun JibJab birthday ecard from K was in my inbox and it made me smile!  One full of cats, I wonder why, lol, plus another one of a Flamenco dancer!

Janet, the Flamenco dancer

Muzy collage below showing a set of cushion covers with a cat design given as a present, some lovely cards, beautiful flowers from the Lake School, and a birthday cake from my parents.  During the morning coffee break all the staff was treated to a fabulous array of cakes and special coffee ..... it was a lovely surprise!!

Also, during the day, I was touched to see many egreetings in the EVO session Google+ community, and that was so nice!!

Shelly also mentioned me and other birthdays in the fab Week 2 Google+ Hangout on Air video session held on Saturday, which I have just finished viewing, and this was so thoughtful :-))

Whilst I am writing this up, I'd like to add a belated birthday greeting for Natasa, a fellow blogger and EVO participant :-)

In the evening I went to Jamie's Italian in the city centre and had a lovely meal there, with a truly decadent chocolate birthday cake arriving.  Sadly all my photos came out blurred as earlier I had dropped my Smartphone and now am hoping I haven't ruined the camera part forever...

Continuing with the EVO session this week, I was blown away by all the enthusisam shown by the participants and was inspired to create a simple mind map, using text2mindmap, as seen below.

Catching up with hubby today, I finally heard from him after 3 days of no news from Abruzzo, due to our problematic and dodgy phone line, which needs fixing asap!!  I was relieved to hear all is ok, and all the furbies are behaving themselves.  I do miss each and every one of them, including K of course.  I had a peak at what he's been getting up to whilst I am away, by popping in to view his blog.

Roll on Week 5!!