Hi everyone!
I’m going to share a super-motivating activity related to reading skills.
This week, in the 4th level of Primary education, we are working on daily routines and hobbies. In groups, we have read letters from different children writing about their activities and hobbies in the afternoon and evening.
Then, they’ve taken notes of the main information (activity/day/time), and using the Time Toast tool, they’ve created a Time Line.
Here’s an example of one of the texts we’ve used, and the time line they’ve created.
MARY'S WEEK
Hi! My name is Mary and
I’m 10 years old. I live with my family in Brighton.
I love going to school,
but I’m very busy in the afternoon and in the evening.
On
Mondays, I do karate with my friend Lola at seven o’clock, we are wearing the
orange belt!
At half past three, on Tuesdays, my brother and I learn to cook at
my uncle’s house, we make delicious cakes, yummy!
On
Wednesday, I go to the English Academy at six o’clock. My teacher Brian is the
best one!
Then, on Thursdays I play football with my friends, our team is “Red
lions”, and we are in the second place in the league.
On
Fridays, I practise the piano at home at half past four, because I’ve played
the piano since I was 6, I love classical music.
At
the weekend, I usually go to the cinema with my family and friends at nine
o’clock on Saturdays and we have popcorn and candy.
Finally,
on Sundays, we go to my granny’s house and we stay there all day long.
This
is my busy week!
https://www.timetoast.com/timelines/mary-s-week
In this activity,
we have practised all the structures of the unit, and also, we have developed reading
skills, searching for the main information in the text (scanning). Working in
groups and using ICT develop digital competence and learning to learn competence.
The advantages of using this tool are that is easy to use and very motivating, they have to search the information in the text, pictures to add to the time line and they also have a very attractive result, that is the best part of the process.
First of all, they read the letter and they take notes. Then, they search for pictures to add to the time line in the internet and finally they create the time line: add the events (we have stated dates using the specific days of this week), add the pictures (main picture and events pictures) and then they show the time line to their partners.
Time toast is a very useful tool, but we can only use it in a basic way at this level. Perhaps, this is the main problem I’ve just found. Children enjoy a lot using this type of resources and obviously, using computers instead of writing in their notebooks. At this level, children know how to use computers, and how to search for information in the internet, however we’ve found problems saving pictures in the computers, but it was not a big deal.
Next time, we can use different kind of texts, for instance short biographies or longer texts about interesting topics, and also, they can create their own time lines using information about their life (important events) and show them to the class.
Time toast is a great tool and there are huge possibilities!
See you!
Teacher Carmen María
