Survey about the English Club activity and its blog

   The school year is coming to an end together with 9 months of work of the English Club and eight months of life of our blog "Shake your English!".
   In order to be able to meet the expectations of the whole school community about the role the English Club should play as well as to improve the quality of the blog in the coming year,  we decided to ask some students and teachers about their opinion concerning the English Club activity and the blog.
  Here is what they said:

                                Reporter: José Cardoso (8th grade student)

Reporters: Mariana, Mafalda and Priscila 

                                        (11th grade students)

  Reporter: João Veloso (8th grade student)

                 Reporters: Viviana  Szczurek and Rita Terroso 

(11th grade students) 

Interviewing Daniel ( 9th grade student) and 

Joaquim (7th grade student)

  Reporter:Filipa (7th grade student)

 

Reporters:Yamine and André 

(11th grade students)

Students from 8th B express their opinions on the blog: 

The blog is interesting, complete and the games are well done.

By Afonso Pinheiro

"I like the whole blogue a lot. There are good news, videos and games. I specially liked the videos about our school. I would like to see a video of a contest where students played Gear. I think the blogue is interesting. Through the games and the quizzes I learnt new words and so I improved my English. " 

By Miguel Ângelo Pinto

"We like the blogue, specially the games: the interactive quizzes and the quiz shows. We enjoyed to learn more about general culture in English. The blogue itself is very well-organised. We will visit it more often." 

By Nuno Silva and Pedro Leite

" We loved the mob dance Gotta Keep Reading. It was an unusual and very interesting activity. We hope it will happen again in our school." 

By Ana Sofia Silva and Francisca Moura

" We are not alone in this school, we can get together in one place, in a single location and that is a good meeting point." 

By Daniela Moreira and Filipa Magalhães

" The games are really cool and interesting!"

By Maria Miguel Ribeiro and Teresa Aguiar

English Refresher Course

"Refresh your knowledge of the English language!" 
This was a challenge some teachers of Maia Secondary School decided to meet. And, how well they did that! After a five month course here they are receiving the diploma that certifies their success. Congratulations to them all and to their teacher as well. Well done!

Karaoke - final contest

Yes, the karaoke final contest took place last Friday and it was a success! Before you listen to the performances of the singers , take a look at this short film to get a glimpse of what happened during the show.

And the winner of the contest is .......
Mariana Domingues!!!
 Listen to her!

... and here's another excellent voice of our school. 

It's Ana Raquel Sousa's!

and now our invited guest, Inês Matias!

Would you like to listen to the other contestants?

On the right side of this page, under PAGES, click on:
" karaoke contest - final (more performances)" and you'll be able to listen to them.

Love Letter to my class

"Biodiversity plays a major role in the balance of our planet. What about diversity among people?

One of our classmates decided to use such a shallow festivity as Valentine's Day to pay us all a compliment as a class. Now, after all these months, we use this tribute as a "see you soon".

The 12 J  English class

Sing It For Japan, a new song by My Chemical Romance

A beautiful song by My Chemical Romance spreading hope for Japan and for the world...

Applying for a job - roleplays

Some eleventh form classes have been challenged to imagine a situation, related with the topic - the world of work, and roleplay it.  Here is what the creativity and commitment of two groups of students of classes 11thA and 11thB have accomplished. Watch and enjoy the plays!

 performed by Eunice, Mariana and Priscila

performed by Brenda Lima, Helena Branco and Inês Matias

It's the final countdown!

H
O
L
I
D
A
Y

Yes, we 're going on summer holidays!
This schoolar year was just great! We loved being here writing and publishing interesting posts for YOU. We are sure you liked them. Thank you for commenting and participating in our/your activities!

Don't forget to visit us! There will be some more surprises coming up the next days!

Yes, the Karaoke Final is approaching and it will take place on the 17th June, at about 11.30 a.m. in Polivalente.

Join us and enjoy the performances of the seven finalists!

June 1st, INTERNATIONAL CHILDREN'S DAY

To celebrate this day here's a small video you'll certainly enjoy, 'cause whether you're a child or not, we're all children somehow.

British English Versus American English - Quiz

How much do you know about this topic? 

Test your knowledge! 
You can also solve the quiz online in the following site: http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/quizzes/quiznet/quiz120.shtml

                         Check your answers in the site :
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/quizzes/quiznet/quiz120.shtml

May 31st 1859 - BIG BEN struck for the very first time!

Aren't they eccentric?

Yeah! British most eccentric traditions!

British English versus American English

Just have some fun watching this video. British and American English are really, really different.

International Museum Day

Would you like to take a trip around the most famous museums and discover the masters?

 GoogleArtProject can help you with that. Just take a look at the two videos below!

Learn some more idioms with THE TEACHER!

Celebrating Coca Cola 125th birthday

Like it or not Coca Cola is part of our life...
Have a look at Coca Cola's site on the UK and learn something more about this trademark, its history, its environmental policies, health questions and much more.

http://www.coca-cola.co.uk/

Teachers...just a thought!

Friendship

FRIENDSHIP

There are many things that can change our lives, a word, a gesture, a story and even a song, but meeting you was the biggest turning point in my life so far and probably for the rest of my life. Before, I only saw a grey world, a sad world. I could not believe in happiness, all my days were monotonous and I didn’t enjoy them at all. I was just waiting for my life to pass by, back then I was only a corpse with no soul, a robot trained to do the necessary and the necessary only, I didn’t dream, I didn’t want to fly, I didn’t believe, it was like someone had taken the childhood away from me. But one day it all changed. It wasn’t an accident that we met, it was fate. Your bright smile your positive attitude was like the sun finally risen after all those years.

Suddenly the world had bright colors, and I could hear birds singing and what amazed me the most was that I smiled and laughed for the first time, it almost felt like I had reborn into a new human being. A girl who believes, a girl who wishes she could fly, a girl that now dreams excessively, for the first time I don’t think “what if it goes wrong?” anymore but “what if I make it?”!

If there is a person I need to thank to, is you! You gave me a soul, you sheltered me in your arms, you gave me your shoulder and saved a spot for me in your heart!

You could have been anything but still, you chose to be my friend!

By Rita Nanim

A Portuguese in the USA

As you could have noticed sometimes we post reflections of a Portuguese living in the USA. She is a doctoral student at Georgia Southern University and she sent us a small message thanking us for giving her the chance to participate in our blog and informing us that she has already written an assignment on our blog for her Curriculum Studies.

"I was accepted March 21, 2011 in the Curriculum Studies, Ed.D. program at Georgia Southern University. GSU is in Statesboro, one hour driving from Savannah and located in the state of Georgia. I am a doctoral student ;0)
I decided in one of my pre-requisite course to write about your fabulous blog. Here go my reflections, posted on March 23:

http://clubedeinglesesmaia.blogspot.com/
“Vygotsky’s curriculum offered open spaces for spontaneous learning and encouragement for students to use their newly acquired tools for their own purposes, thereby contributing to relevance and generalization” (McNeil, 2006, p.37). This type of Website is a web log, the usual term used is Blog. Maintained by the English Club of Maia Secondary School, Porto- Portugal, this Club exists since 1996 and has more than two hundred members each year. Students, teachers and collaborators (e.g., myself) provide regular entries of commentaries (Thanksgiving Day), descriptions of events (St. Patrick’s Day, St. Patrick’s Symbols, Quizzes, 4th of March School Day of Languages…) or other material such as graphics or videos ("Where there's a will there's a way", Discovery Ireland…). Entries are displayed in reverse-chronological order. This blog is interactive, allowing visitors to leave comments. This interactivity distinguishes them from other static websites.

The reaction of my peers was great. The ones who decided to visit it enjoy it very much. Thanks for helping, without knowing, in this assignment.

Promise to keep in touch,
Elisabete Carvalho"