Roman' Civilization

Hi everyone!

We are Edurne Lafuente, Joan Domènech and Marta Jaumot. We are going to present our activities related to Romanization, using IWB. First of all, we would like to want to share with you our thoughts on using the Smart Notebook application, which we consider to be an easy and useful way to empower teachers as well as to encourage student engagement.  We really hope that you are able to learn while having fun using the following activities!

Target audience:

The activity created is intended for fifth grade students (5th). We have decided to place this session at the end of the unit, so that we will have an hour to consolidate everything that has been learnt throughout the previous lessons. Slides relating to learned vocabulary and contents have been added in the Smart Notebook. Furthermore, we have also decided to include a slide regarding the trip which the students had made to the city of Tarragona (Tarraco viva), where they got to observe and experience how life was during the Roman period.

Aims:

• To consolidate and revise previous knowledge that we have been learning in previous sessions and to prepare for the Romanization exam.
• To use and acquire the past tense.
• To promote interest in the Roman culture.
• To identify and relate important contents included in the games.

Competencies:

• Linguistic and audiovisual: improving vocabulary and use of ICT
• Digital management of information: The students are going to use the IWB to complete the different activities.
• Knowledge and interaction with the outside world: acquiring historical notions.
• Social and civic: We will divide the class in 3 groups of 4 (relatively small groups), to encourage teamwork and communication. Each student too, will be given a role within the group.

Classroom Management:

In relation to classroom management, these activities will be done by half of the Science group, 12 students. The teacher will divide them in 3 tables of 4 students. On every table, each student will have a different role that they will have to develop during the sessions:

• Speakers will be the only one who are allowed to talk with the other speakers, when in doubt, they can ask the teacher.
• Coordinators are responsible for reiterating the instructions of the activity, just in case one of their partners has failed to understand or has forgotten the objectives.
• Supervisors make sure that all the members of the team work together in an appropriate and constructive manner.
• Environment-ers are responsible for managing volume and material to develop the activity (should this be necessary).

All the members of these groups will participate in all the activities keeping in mind the aforementioned roles. For example, the first activity will be done by all the environment-ers of the different tables, the second one by the speakers, and so on. In each activity there are four different parts, so that all the roles will have a chance to assume their responsibilities. In addition, groups are allowed to help each other to answer the questions.

Vocabulary:

Related with Roman culture, for example:

• Aqueduct

• Bara’s arch
• Roman thermal bath
• Amphitheatre
• Roman Forum
• Circus
• Wall
• Theatre
• Roman Church

Activities:

The aim of our activities is to compile notes, images and other media into this virtual notebook, which can subsequently be projected and edited by the students.

• Activity 1: Question multiple choice. Multiple choice is a form of objective assessment in which respondents are asked to select the correct answer out of the choices from a list.
  

• Activity 2: Fill the gaps. This is an exercise in which words are removed from a text and replaced with spaces. The learner has to fill each space with the missing word or a word they consider suitable.

• Activity 3: Hangman. This is a paper and pencil guessing game for two or more players. One player thinks of a word, phrase or sentence and the other tries to guess it by suggesting letters or numbers, within a certain number of guesses.

• Activity 4: Comparison of aspects between Roman with other villages.

• In this activity, players have to identify which were the aspects that Romans did in their daily life.
• Activity 5: Order letters to form words (anagrams).  In this exercise, players have to put letters in the correct order to form a word.

• Activity 6: Match word with definition. In this exercise players have to match the word with the corresponding definition.
  

• Activity 7: Match photo with word.  In this exercise the players have to match the image with the corresponding word. 

• Activity 8: Memory game. Also known as Match Match, Memory, or simply Pairs, is a card game in which all of the cards are laid face down on a surface and two cards are flipped face up over each turn. The object of the game is to turn over pairs of matching cards.

Differentiation

Our decision to have the students working in smaller groups is to facilitate their interaction and cooperation amongst each other, which would  naturally help them develop their role. This is further reinforced with the use of games. With this arrangement, we are also addressing the attention to diversity, as members of the teams will have to learn to agree with and help each other. This is why a no-specific differentiation activity has been chosen, as it would help to integrate students with special needs.

Assessment

These activities are planned to be done at the last part of the unit before the test. We will evaluate these activities as extras during their revision of the main topics and contents which will appear in the final unit test, and their performance in these assessments will be added to the observation required in Continuous Assessment.

Reflection on the activity:

First of all, it is important to keep in mind that these activities are best suited for smaller groups as we have mentioned previously. Regarding the use of ICT, we consider a Smart Notebook to be much more than just a computer. It is necessary to prepare the sessions in advance in order to fully take advantage of the resources provided by the SN. In the aforementioned case, the activities are prepared by teachers, but in future sessions, the students themselves, in groups, could create new activities to go over the previously learnt contents and consolidate their knowledge.

The use of ICT in class will hopefully inspire motivation and dynamicity within the class, which can help students achieve significant learning.  

Click here to see the previous activity

Thank you!!