Ribalta High School Activities

 We are some 4th of ESO students of Ribalta High School of Castelló, and we have written about three activities we have done during the year.

One was that we prepared some questions to ask to our grandparents about their childhood and adolescence and, after that, we invited them to come to our English class in order to comment their answers and draw conclusions about how they lived and how we live nowadays.

The second activity was one in which we were encouraged to prepare a presentation in English about a topic chosen by us. These presentations are the way we can particpate in the “Premis a ‘Excel.lència”, which our school organises every year.

The last activity consists of preparing a project in English about a topic connected with science. On “Science Day” all the students who  participated explained their projects in the language that they had chosen.

Finally, the excellence awards, in which we have to make presentations about a topic chosen by us; depending on our age, our presentations have to be more or less long.

Now we are going to explain these three activities in more detail.

 1-OUR GRANDPARENTS’ VISIT TO OUR CLASS

Last 30^th May our grandparents came to our high school, Ribalta, in order to explain to us what their life was like when they were teenagers.

This activity started when our teacher of English encouraged us to prepare an interview to our grandparents about what they used to do to entertain themselves, if they had access to school, at what age they started working, if boys and girls used to go out together, how often they used to travel, go out to restaurants.. as the teacher wanted us to practise the structure “used to” in a different way, by doing motivating activities. Using the structure “used to” we could compare the differences between two different generations. We thought doing this activity could make our grandparents happy and they could feel useful as nowadays many people think they are not important and they are annoying but that’s not true since we can learn a lot from them, and that’s what we did!

We translated the interview into English. Next our teacher chose the questions he liked the most and he asked us if our grandparents could come to our class to explain their answers in more detail. In this class, we read our grandparents’ comments to all the class and the ones that were in the class explained their own experiences. Although they used Spanish or Valencià, their lesson on Spanish history was really interesting!

Some questions were if they used to travel, if they had pocket money or at what time they had to arrive back home when they went out in their free time. We realised their life and the country they lived in was really different from ours!

Also, some of them told us that they had been born in their houses, not in hospitals like nowadays. We learned that many of them did not have the chance to go to school or had to leave it at an early age to start working when they were really young and how girls learned to sew and to fix all the pieces of clothes to reuse them again and again. Nevertheless, people weren’t paid very well. The little they were paid always went to the family to cover basic needs.

Furthermore, our high school organised a mini tour around the school where they could see the most important treasures of our beautiful high school, for example: the hall, the assembly room, the museum and the astronomy room; they told us that everything they saw was fantastic!

Everyone enjoyed the activity a lot thanks to our relatives’ explanations and we also could understand the difference between the Spain of the past and the current Spain, thanks to these incredible people. In addition, this activity was planned and carried out by the pupils, so we had a great time and we learned lots of things!

Fatima, Carolina and Neus prepared this activity)

2- Hello! We are Laia and Pablo and we are going to explain a little bit our experience in “Premis a l’Excel•ència”. Each year, the English department of our high school, IES Francesc Ribalta, organises a contest in which all the students who want can participate, and it consists of doing a presentation of a topic you can choose and you have to talk about it “x” time, depending on your age.

After all the presentations, the teachers from the English department decide which are the best. At the end of the school year, the winners get a little award .

We actually think we have improved a lot doing this, because you fight against the embarrassment of talking in public, In addition, you learn how to explore, search for information, talk with people that know more about the topic that you have chosen and to transmit ideas, information..in English as clearly as possible. Definitely, it is a really enriching activity. We absolutely recommend you do these things when you have the opportunity.

3-Science Day in Ribalta High School

Ribalta High School has been organising for 8 years an unusual activity, called Science Day, in which all the students can participate.

This activity consists of   showing some of the science projects that the students have done during the school year, like for example collecting plants, insects, playing music, students´ investigations…

The teachers and the students prepare a place in the high school hall to show the projects. We always display the projects in the hall so that  all the members of our community (the students, the parents and the staff)  have the opportunity to see everything we have done during the last week in June..

In addition,  we can also do a presentation in which we explain our science projects in more or less 10 minutes in our amazing Assembly Hall, which is full of students from 1st of ESO to 2nd of Batxillerat! To make the presentation scientific and more motivating we prepare a  power point presentation or a video, and we can use different languages like Spanish, English, Valencian or French.

Finally everybody is given a diploma for participating, but on  “Premis a l’Excel.lència” day” the teachers give the students a small present for the best projects and a biology or technology excellence award.

In conclusion, from my point of view, this is a very and pedagogical activity, because  it encourages students to learn and look for new things that appeal to them and everyone can participate. I have been taking part in this activity for 4 consecutive years and I have enjoyed and learnt and explained lots of interesting scientific topics thanks to Science Day. I recommend you visit Ribalta high school to see it next year!

Carlos planned this part.

Fátima Andreu, Carolina Vidal, Neus Doménech, Laia Meseguer, Pablo Porcar and Carlos Pérez