Skypals - speaking

Teacher’s name: Federica Biondi

Level: 2nd ESO

Developed language skill: speaking

Learning objective: the main aim is for students practice their speaking skills.

Task title: Skypals

Technological tools and justification: I have created an ICT activity using a Wiki. In this Wiki I have included the different steps that the students need to follow in order to practice their speaking. In particular, they will be communicating over Skype with kids at a British School in Milan. They therefore need to practice introducing themselves and then asking questions about their Skypals' daily life in and out of school.

I have chosen this tool as it allows me to give easy step-by-step instructions on how to carry out the task. It has also allowed me to embed another ICT tool (Popplet) which is graphically interesting and easy to use.

The students will be grouped in fours or fives. Each group will have a topic that they will be asking their Skypals about. In order to help them practice, they are given scaffolding for introductions and topics for discussion.

Another reason for choosing this tool is that I shall be uploading the video we filmed in class. This was made to introduce ourselves as a class to SJHS Milan. I will also be uploading the following tasks that the students will need to do to complete the project.
Finally, this Wiki shall be used to share the entire project with the school in Milan.

Click here to start the activity

 

 

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This is Lara Aguila Feijoo. The aim of the task I have prepared is to provide students with a listening activity which could foster their interest in oral input. Furthermore, since the majority of students are mostly used to reading material and to extra activities based on written texts, a reading activity of a textbook has been adapted to devise another one which reinforces the students’ listening skills and which is different from their English learning routine. The topic of the exercise is jobs; specifically, the feeling some people have regarding the money they earn in return for their work. Work is a general topic which appears in many textbooks from different levels and, therefore, the listening could be reused in many contexts and the tasks involved could be adapted to each audience.

In this case, the teacher would use a Prezi Presentation as the main support to present and to manage the activity. Students would have to listen and watch a video twice as to give the questions of the exercise a reponse. Next, they would have to work in pairs and compare their answers. In addition, they would have to listen and watch the video again to check. In the end, the teacher would proceed with the correction of the task making students participate voluntarily. In short, 6 podcasts were recorded, a video was created and uploaded on youtube, and a Prezi presentation was designed.

PODCASTS: The 6 little pieces of writing were read by 6 student teachers from the Master’s Degree and the podcasts were created on iTunes. Having 6 different accents is a way of providing scaffold to learners for real life situations as English is not only spoken by natives.

VIDEO: Firstly, 7 power point slides were designed and saved as .jpeg images. The first slide presents the activity and the rest show both the picture of the speaker and the questions which need to be answered. Secondly, Windows Movie Maker was used as to match each podcast with its corresponding slide. Finally, after the video had been finished, the file was uploaded on youtube. It is important to highlight the fact that a youtube channel had to be created in order to upload the video.

PRESENTATION: Prezi was used as to give an introduction to the task and as a way of guiding students when completing the exercise. Prezi enables students to start the task with a general image of what they have to do and to have a roadmap all over the learning process.

Alice in Wonderland (reading task)

Teacher’s name: Núria Guillem Buera
Level: 1st ESO
Developed language skill: reading
Learning objective: the main aim is that students practice their reading skills and reading comprehension.
Task title: Alice in Wonderland
Technological tools and justification: I have created an ICT activity which is a poster done with Glogster. I decided to use this 2.0 web tool because I believe it is a more visual and appealing way to present a project to students. Students are going to work individual in this project. In the Glog, students can find the instructions they have to follow in order to complete the project; in this way, students can work on their own in class, and the teacher becomes a consultant that helps students to accomplish the task. The instructions are very straightforward and simple: students have to download the first chapter of Alice in Wonderland, “The White Rabbit”, and carefully read it. In order to accomplish this first step, students simply have to click on the clip icon, which is located on the top right of the Glog, and choose the PDF document called “Alice in Wonderland 1. The White Rabbit”. Then, they download it and read it. The second step is then to answer some questions in order to check their reading comprehension. Students have to click on the word “following” and the questions will appear on the screen. When I created this second step, I used Google Drive, particularly, I used the application that creates surveys or questionnaires. The third step is more cultural; it is up to students to do it or not, if they are curious and they want to meet the author, Lewis Carroll, they can download a file with Carroll’s brief biography. In the final step of the project, students are asked to give their opinion on the task by clicking on a link and a Google Drive with a survey opens: there they have to opine on Glogster as a tool. Finally, once they have finished with the project, students can watch the trailer of the latest film of Alice in Wonderland which is a YouTube video.
Description of the technological tools: The following logos correspond to the technological tools used in this activity. (Glogster, PDF documents, Google Drive and YouTube). All the tools are free, and quite easy to use. If you want to use YouTube and PDF you do not need to register; PDF usually comes with the operative system of your computer, and you can freely access YouTube if you have Internet access. With Google Drive you only need to have a Gmail account, and you will have access to its apps. Finally with Glogster, you simply need to create an account and start using the tool.

Here is my Glogster, I hope you like it :)

Lola and the past simple (a writing activity)

This is Alexandre Casanovas López. I have created an ICT activity to develop writing skills, focusing on the use of the past simple tense. It is aimed at students from the higher grades of ESO (4th ESO) and Batxillerat, who will work individually on it.

They are required to use a song as a source for information and then write a short composition describing the story told in the song. In the process, they will have to read the song lyrics and, if they want, listen to it. Then, they must look for the verbs in the past tense included in the lyrics and write a short composition using them (and also changing the point of view of the story). If students want to go further, they can use the song topic –a boy falls in love with a transvestite- to discover some historical facts about the fight for the rights of the gay & lesbian collective. Taking the song as a starting point, the teacher can set a debate in the classroom about that movement (or other movements for civil rights), with students giving arguments for and against it.

To develop the activity, I have created a Webquest in Zunal where students can find all instructions and materials required to complete it. Instructions are easy and described step by step. Amongst all these materials, students can find youtube videos either with the band performing the song or with the lyrics printed on screen, and also some interviews with people who fought for gay & lesbian rights. In the Webquest I also provided links to webpages that include information about the song and the story of gay & lesbian social movements. In the “conclusion” page, there is a link to an online survey created with Survey Monkey where students can give some feedback about the activity.  The teacher can use the feedback provided to modify the activity or to develop new ones in the future. 

I hope you find this activity quite useful and complete, and appropriated to develop students’ writing skills. Please find below the link to the Webquest; the online survey is included in the "conclusion" page. Hope you enjoy it!

http://zunal.com/webquest.php?w=231354