THE FINAL TASK!

Hi everyone!

As teachers, we can find a great amount of resources in the internet, and the best ones will be created by our colleagues. Using their experiences and ideas, we can improve our job and including new tools in our daily lessons.

For instance, I’m going to develop an activity from Rocío’s blog

https://tictacenglishblog.blogspot.com/2020/03/my-book-using-storyjumper.html

I did an activity using storyjumper tool, it was a story “My best friend” (about pets). When I saw Rocío’s project, some new ideas came into my mind. What about a picture dictionary using storyjumper? So, here’s my new project.

In an ordinary situation, I would develop this project with my students from the 4th grade in Primary Ed. However, this new context forces me to imagine how it would be…

First of all, we need to establish groupings (2/3 members) and set the vocabulary we are going to use. Then, students will look for the pictures they need in the internet and save them in a folder.

               At this moment, we have to watch a tutorial about storyjumper working.

And finally, they are going to create the picture dictionary as in the example.

Read this book made on StoryJumper

Hope you like it! 

See you! 

Teacher Carmen María

Genial.ly and speaking tasks

Hi everyone! 

This is a great presentation about India, using Genial.ly application.

First, we have chosen the topics we have to work on, in this case, and as in the instructions you have posted, our presentations using Genial.ly will be related to English speaking countries.

               This year, I’m working with children from 3 to 10, so it will be difficult to develop this type of activities using this tool. Thus, I’m going to prepare this task for children from the 3^rd cycle (in a hypothetical case). We will give children a checklist to verify all the process.

1.      Establish the topic (English Speaking Countries)

2.      Establish the groups: I use Class Dojo tool.

3.      Before we start using Genial.ly, we need to set up the information and facts we want to present (brainstorming) in the whiteboard, set the pages and take a look at the structures we need to use. In this stage we need to guide students, because they’re not autonomous enough.

4.      We introduce students to Genial.ly tool, showing the main tabs in the website, we use “presentation” templates.

5.      Students select the country for the presentation (in groups).

6.      Students start surfing the internet to find the information they need (sometimes the research will be in Spanish) and a picture for each content.

7.      Students start preparing the presentation, they select the best template and they change it as they wish.

8.      The teacher will be helping them in all the stages of the task. At this point, we are going to give a feedback about their progress (using a checklist) and taking notes. (draft)

9.      Before they present their work to the class, we will check once again the final product.

10.   They have to read and prepare the presentation.

11.   Finally, they present the product to the class.

This type of tasks would last 4 lessons (3 lessons for preparing the presentation, and 1 to perform the task). These tasks, in my opinion, would be very motivating, although it would generate some difficulties in their development.

This year, I’m using Class Dojo in my lessons, so I usually use the group generator to establish grouping. However, we can distribute students bearing in mind the difficulties they’re going to find along the tasks and autonomy.

We are going to use checklists to control the progress of the task, and cheat sheets or tip sheets to remember some of the procedures we have to develop: How to search for information in the internet, how to save pictures in our folders, how to copy and paste information…

In conclusion, I find this tool very interesting and motivating, however it will be more useful in the Secondary Education, where students have the minimum contents to develop this task in an autonomous way. Using this tool, students get a great final product, developing oral and written skills, moreover, they will improve all the key competences we have to reach in this stage.

See you!

Teacher Carmen María

Time Toast!!!

Hi everyone!


I’m going to share a super-motivating activity related to reading skills.

This week, in the 4^th 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

Reading Habits

At the present time, reading habits have changed in a deep way. When I was a child, the only way to keep in touch to new releases was the bookshop or the library in our town. Nowadays, technologies make easier this access and also, they have altered the way we read, places and moments.

If we analyse these photos, we realise that times have changed. Bookshops, which are not only a place to be quiet and read books, have become in a multi-purpose place, we can talk about literature, have a coffee or listen conferences and talks. People enjoy reading there, and I suppose that they choose books themselves.

Pictures 2 and 3 are related to my childhood; we have a little library at home, my mom and my granny read a lot, and this is the best influence I can have. Actually, I started reading sci-fi book, thrillers and fantasy novels in English when I bought an e-reader eight years ago, and this is the kind of literature I usually read. Moreover, I love reading comics and manga in both languages, Spanish and English, so every night a take a book and enjoy getting into “new worlds”.

At school, we have to take into account topics related to our students’ interests and not forcing them to read books, but motivating them using resources and ICT tools.

As English teachers, we have to promote reading habits, using reading skill in a motivating mode, and it will help us not only to improve our English level and but also love Reading.