Blog
Staff meal
2012-05-17 13:30 by Graham Meadows
The Europa staff went out the other night to a new restaurant in Bournemouth called DAYS. There you can eat as much as you want (is that a good idea????) for about £14. There was Thai, Indian, Chinese, Italian and loads of different desserts. It was a great night. We started off in the mary Shelly. Graham had forgotten his keys and couldn't lock his bike up so had to borrow Claire's keys to lock it at work. Karyn had been waiting in a completely different place. Claire took lots of pictures with her new phone. The loos in the new restaurant were miles away in the basement. On the whole it was a good night.
Life in a English languge school
2012-05-16 08:26 by Graham Meadows
Claire has decided to move on and we are now looking for a new School Administrator. We have a few ideas but need to move quickly as we only have a few weeks. We did a phoneme transformation exercise – a sentence with at least 14 words. Tricky and caused decent debate. The academic team had a meeting yesterday and discussed whole range of issue about students’ levels, new wave of student tutorials, helping students to study better such as vocabulary mind maps that are to be done on a regular basis. We agreed that all teachers must do it. Spoke about whether it was a good idea to put errors on board. I lean towards not doing because I don’t think it is a good idea for students to see errors, only correct English on the board. The new photocopier allowance to be updated every 15th of each month. We spoke about writing aims on the boards but not labels, for example we would put learning about things we can’t change in the past instead of 3rd conditional. And to finish we had a great staff do out at a relatively new restaurant called DAYS in Bournemouth.
Learning English - building vocabulary
2012-05-14 10:24 by Graham Meadows
Graham has had a busy Monday morning having a brief morning meeting with Claire about the preparations for this summer’s British Council inspection. I then went on to do a couple of spot observations. The main point from each observation was the fact that drilling a certain grammar point would have helped students an awful lot. Missed opportunity. This will be discussed at tomorrow’s meeting as will vocabulary building. As a school we have helped students use dictionaries more to aid their studies. Now it is time to help them store and remember vocabulary better using ideas such as mind maps. Not revolutionary but something students don’t do, but they will. Changing students’ habits or people’s in general is often the most difficult part. Later I will be completing a last lesson with our FCE student who has her exam this week. I have been giving her one weekly 1-1 lesson to help her with her speaking.
A great English lesson
2012-05-11 08:37 by Graham Meadows
James and Ian put on a great English lesson yesterday afternoon. They decided to mix classes for an afternoon. James had been teaching poetry in class, and then moved in rhyming slang. Slang is always something students want to learn and use. I think students always have to be cautious when using it as they get it wrong and appear a bit daft, but to understand it is great.
Students had to get into group and perform a mini play including some new vocabulary that they had learnt. The mini plays lasted a few minutes and were really good, and fun. All afternoon, I heard the students enjoying themselves putting it together. This is obviously an English learning activity students like, and that teachers should think about doing more of. It also gives students an opportunity to get to know other people from the other classes. Unfortunately they wouldn’t let me film them. Maybe next time.
Odrann's Leaving Us.....
2012-05-10 12:26 by Graham Meadows
Here's what he had to say about the school.............
Odrann has been with us since February and his overall review of the school is very good. He was taught by each of the teachers here and stated that he found all of them to be very helpful, well organised, interesting and useful. He had enough homework during his time here. The school is very good and the facilities he said.
All of the staff at the school, as well as the students welcomed him on his arrival. Odrann's mother found the school for him and he was very pleased with her decision. He was very happy with the services we offer and also the social activities. He is looking forward to our International Food Party on Friday 11th May.
The homestay provider was very good, a bus stop being at the end of his road for easy transportation to the school and he also said that they were very friendly - he integrated well with them.
Odrann would describe the school as being friendly, welcoming, students to have fun with and great for learning and wouldn't hesitate in recommending us to his family and friends.
