Toontastic: tablet activity (Anna A., Esther M., Mireia N.)

Hello, we are Anna Alcázar, Esther Muñoz and Mireia Núñez. In the following lines we aim to present you our tablet activity and the evaluation of the app we used.

POLLlNATION PROCESS WITH TABLET

Hi everyone!

We are Edurne Lafuente, Joan Domènech and Marta Jaumot. You might know us from the other projects that we have done in the past such as the one about Roman Civilization. Now we are going to present you another activity which involves using the tablet in class with your students.

As we have said before, tablets are a great tool to engage students in the learning process. Of course, the activity discussed here can also be used with a different topic.

The activity that we have designed is suitable for all ages in primary, as long as you adapt the topic and aims to the age group that you are working with.

Pacman: classic but catchy game!

Hi! We are Amaranta and Marta and in this post we'll share with you one game that we have created in the last session of ICT: Pacman! This game is well known but in this version it becomes also a quiz. In this case, the questions are about JOBS! Will you be able to guess the answer? How much score will you get? Watch out because little ghosts are following you. Before presenting our activity, here it is a Google Drive presentation about the game and things that you should take into account when introducing games in class.

Target audience: 4th grade

Placement in curriculum: English + ICT

School course: Second semester

Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy: This activity offers an opportunity to enhance both lower- and higher-order thinking skills.

Lower order thinking skills.

• Level I-II: Remembering and identifying: This activity provides an opportunity to review the vocabulary and definitions related to jobs.

Higher order thinking skills.

• Level VI: Creating (create new products). The activity gives the students the opportunity to add some definitions of jobs.

Aims:

• To be able to use Pacman.
• To be able to identify jobs by their definitions.
• To be able to add questions about jobs by defining them.

Competences involved:

• Linguistic and audio-visual.
• Information handling and digital competence.
• Autonomy, initiative and decision taking.
• Knowledge and interaction with the world.

Grouping: This activity will be carried out individually or in pairs (let them choose).

Procedure of the activity:

1) Let students decide if they want to play individually or in pairs.

2) Send them the link to play. Explain them that they will play Pacman but only if they guess the correct answer! In addition, that they cannot play during a long time unless they answer a specific amount of questions in a row.

3) They will also have to write their names to appear on the leaderscore.
4) Finally, students will have to create three questions about by defining them, following the example.

Materials required: Computer.

Class management

• The teacher will walk around the classroom, checking that students are doing the task proposed and observing their needs in order to help them whenever it is necessary.
• We believe that it is important for the teacher to have used the app before and have tried to create a game to foresee the problems that can arise.

Added value through ICT

• Visual support, engaging tool.
• It involves a challenge (reviewing definition, construct questions,…).
• This game is ideal for reviewing content and assessing children in a more motivational way.
• Develop digital competence.

Trouble-shooting

• Limit the time that they can play to Pacman in order to focus their attention in the content.

Assessment:

The teacher will assess if the aims of the activity are fulfilled taking into account the following assessment criteria:

• Is he/she able to identify jobs by their definitions?
• Is he/she able to create three questions of jobs?

Classtools web: http://www.classtools.net/

Guess the job game: http://www.classtools.net/pac/201604_WhHGDN  

Do you want more games?: Visit ESL GAMES + and enjoy with your students

KAHOOT: simple, attractive and incredibly worth it!

Hello digital teachers, I’m Amaranta and in this post I will like to talk about one of my favourites educational programs to use it at classroom with children or adults of any age. Do you know Kahoot? Kahoot is an App that allows you to learn by playing individually or collaboratively. Basically it consist on creating a quiz on any subject and in any language, which can then be shared with individuals or groups or even made public. If you project your Kahoot in class, your students can do it in real time, answering each from their device, whether a laptop, a tablet or a smartphone. Also, you can see who is winning in terms of successes and speed of response at all times, giving them additional motivation.Imagine the possibilities offered by this application when assessing learning!

The functioning of the app is quite easy. For busy teachers is a great tool because it does not involve too much time and also allows children to become familiar with it easily. I’ve thought that would be really useful for you to have a clearer idea about how it works so here is a presentation that I found with all the information explained in detail.

Kahoot how to from Marsha Osburn

Main features:

• Free
• Easy to use
• You can do it whether a quiz, discussion or survey
• Different electronic devices: Computer, smartphone, ipad...
• Team and individual mode
• Challenging and motivational
• Any topic, any age
• Personalized
• Save it as a pdf as well

My experience with Kahoot (from my Internship report). Hope you like it!

During my last internship in an immersion school, I decided to create a Kahoot Quiz which I believe is a brilliant ICT tool to help students review the content while having fun and using something that they love: Ipads. took advantage from the fact that they had almost an Ipad per child so I did not miss this unique opportunity. I hardly had to explain the functioning because children understood it it perfectly with just watching it for seconds. I created some questions about fractions, irregular verbs, forces, timetables, past simple...etc. that I combined with colourful photographs that I took from the Internet or from the school website to make questions more closer to them. I also tried to use teacher’s or student’s names as well. For this activity, I let them chose if they wanted to go in pairs or individually. As I mentioned, they loved feeling challenged so they were absolutely engaged in the activity to the point that they constantly wanted to repeat it! I must say we made a lot of noise squealing with joy but, is not that noise the evidence that something special is happening?

ACTIVITY

Target audience: 4th grade of primary

Placement in curriculum: Science (CLIL)

Topic: materials and their properties: wax, leather, plastic, glass,stone...hard, rigid, soft, elastic...

School course: Third trimester

Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy:

• Higher order thinking skills.
• Level VI: Creating (create new products or points of view). The activity gives the students the opportunity to create a piece of text to talk about their holidays.

This game will be placed at the end of the third term. My purpose is to make students create their own quiz to review the content and language learnt before about an specific topic: the materials and their properties. By doing this activity, children will be able to formulate questions as well as get to know the difference and similarities between the multiple choice options when it comes to select the correct one.

Aims:

1. To be able to use Kahoot.it app
2. To make questions about what things are made of? taking into account question grammar structures.
3. To be able to work in cooperative groups

Grouping and roles

• Slip up the whole group in groups of four
• Give them roles but all of them have to participate and be involved when creating the questions.
• Time controller: will be in charge of controlling the time. They will have 30 minutes
• Image searcher: will be in charge of looking for images related to each question.
• Options thinker: will be in charge of thinking of four different options for each question.
• Typer: will be in charge of typing the questions in the ipad once they have been corrected and checked by the teacher and the whole group.
• English policeman: in charge of making sure that all the members use English.
• Roles will be changeable each turn.

Competences involved

• Linguistic and audio-visual: because pupils have to create questions and add images to do a Kahoot quiz.
• Information handling and digital competence: in order to do the task, they have to interact and know the app to use it.
• Autonomy, initiative and decision taking: because they are creating a tool to assess their own classmates knowledge (quiz)
• Social and civic: because children have to work in teams and listen to others opinions and suggestions.
• Knowledge and interaction with the world: this activity will be about the materials and the properties that we can find in things that surrounded us.

Materials required

• Ipad
• Paper and pen if they need it

Development

Context: Children have been learning about the materials and their properties in s Kahoot will be useful to assess the vocabulary they have learnt.

1. Ask children to make groups of five and give them roles. Make sure they understand that roles will change while doing the task.
2. Create one account so all children can do the same kahoot.
3. Show children a kahoot quiz made by you so they will know exactly what their are supposed to do and the final result Get ready your devices and take advantage of the students that already know how to use it (Experts ICT) Give them time to get familiarized with it. Explain the instructions carefully or show them a power point with the instructions, you will see they will get it faster!
4. Later on, children will have to make questions, statement, unfinished sentences about the topic: What things are made of? Which is this material? Is this strong/soft/elastic? This is made of….Give them examples to help them with the language.
5. Give them time to type their questions and show you to check the spelling and the grammar structures. Make sure they have selected the right option to avoid problems while playing.
6. Play all together and enjoy!

Here you have a short example of the type of questions they can make

Class management                       

Following the tips that we have learnt in the ICT lessons, we would ask students to set Ipad aside when they didn’t need them to avoid classroom management problems. When we are telling them the instructions of the activity, we would say “Ipads facing at me”, so we can make sure that they pay attention and don’t get distracted. Moreover, we would ask students for assistance if we need their help or we get stuck (Experts TIC) In addition, at random points during the session, we will ask students to flip their screens of the Ipads so we could check that they are doing the task proposed. We believe that it is always important for the teacher to have used the app before and have tried to create a game to foresee the problems that can arise.

4 skills

Reading: teacher and students need to read and understand the questions and the options	Listening: Interaction with others. One can read the questions and others have to listen to it.
Speaking: Importance in the spontaneous language: Press it, the red one, the triangle, try again, we are right, etc.	Writing: Making the questions, grammar structures.

Added value through ICT

• Visual support
• Creative and attractive tool
• Involves a challenge (time, multiple options, competition and cooperation…)
• Ideal for reviewing content, assessing children and make them create questions in a more motivational context (not only making them write it down)
• Develop digital competence as well as linguistic and audiovisual.
• Involves other kind of language (expand it): winners, play, score, points, you are on the top!, lose, shapes, colours...

Trouble-shooting - possible problems

• So much competition. Do it in pairs depending on your teaching style of let them choose how they want to play. Some kids get really upset if they lose.
• Internet connection, be sure that sometimes it doesn’t work perfectly and you have to deal with the delay of some questions.

Assessment Grid

To be able to use Kahoot.it app	-Does he/she know how to add an image? -Does he/she how to choose the correct option? -Does he/she know to add questions? -Does he/she know how the control the time for each question? -Does he/she know how to edit it?
To make questions about what things are made of? taking into account question grammar structures.	-Is he/she able to make a question using the auxiliary verb? -Is he/she able to create questions using the main structure: Is this made of…? Which material is this made of…?
To be able to work in cooperative groups	-Is he/she able to listen actively to the members of the group? -Is he/she able to give ideas/suggestions… -Is he/she able to respect the roles?

IWB: The Solar System

Hello teachers!

In this entry Tania Grijalba, Laia López and José Luis Rodriguez are going to talk about Interactive Whiteboards in classroom, specifically about the Smart Notebook application. With Smart notebook you can easily create engaging interactive learning experiences in minutes while providing the flexibility to respond to the needs of learners on the fly. Among the large variety of applications that this resource can offer today we will focus on the Activity Toolkid. This part of the app enables to create present games and we are going to introduce one of them, the ‘multiple choice’ activity.

Target audience

The activity created is thought to be developed with second key stage (3rd - 4th grade).

Aims:

- To revise the unit we have been learning about the last sessions, the solar system.

- To create a game in a collaborative way.

- To identify the most important content and include it in the game.

Competences:

• Linguistic and audiovisual: The students have to create the material in English and meanwhile use the English to communicate their ideas.

• Management of information and digital: Because the students use the computer and the IWB.

• Knowledge and interaction with the world: Due to it is a CLIL (science) session.

• Social and civic:  In groups they have to cooperate and talk with their partners.

Classroom Management

After  having worked in previous sessions the Solar System topic, we will use a program of the IWB to review what they have learned.

The teacher will make six groups of four people and explain how to create an activity with the Smart Notebook program, in this case a multiple choice activity because we want to simulate the game Who Wants to be a Millionaire? Then children will begin to work in groups and, using notes and books about the solar system must create and think among all five questions with four answers and one of them is correct. They will have 30 minutes to create them.

Video. How to create in Smart Notebook an activity of multiple choice.

The teacher will pass from group to group reviewing that the questions are not too difficult, and especially that are not repeated with another group, very important!

When the students have finished, a person in the group will go to the computer, and with the help of the teacher will insert the five questions in the program of the IWB. When all the questions are inserted, we will make a competition by groups. 

Video. How to insert the questions on the program.       

Video. We have already prepared the questions!

                                                                  

Each group will go in front of the class to read their questions out loud while they are projected on the screen.  Before answering any question, each group will write down on paper what they think is the correct answer. They have 30 seconds to discuss, give an answer, and put the paper with the answer on the centre of their table.

Video. Now, we can play!

Each question will be answered on the IWB by different students, and all students in the class must answer a question. Finally, when we know which is  the correct answer, each group will show the paper with the answer that they believed were the correct ones. For each question that the group answered correctly, they will receive two points.  Besides, if the student who is answering responds well individually, will give one more point to his group.

Video. In this video is explained how to save activity on the computer. 

Assesment

The teacher will consider the process of creation of the activity by the groups, not only the final result of the competition. The teacher also will observe if all  participate actively in their groups, if they create the questions in English correctly, if they need much help or not and if they treated properly the computer.

Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy

This activity is a HOT activity because the students have to, first analyse which content is more relevant in order to create the questions and then create a game it self.

Four English skills

The creation of this game involves reading, writing, listening and  speaking. In order to create the questions first of all they have to read the unit again to revise it and decide which parts are the ones that are worth questioning. Secondly, the students have to write the questions and the answers in a paper and afterwards in the computer. Finally, the students will have to listen to each other and decide which questions and answers create for the rest of the class and also the read and speak the questions out loud.

Advantages and disadvantages

Advantages: The program is intuitive and it is really fast to create and edit the questions. You can save the game for another moment. It is motivational and helps the students to revise the content and use the language.

Disadvantages: Sometimes the program gets stuck and you can’t use it properly and it needs to be closed and opened again. The visuals are not very attractive. We wish there was more interaction between children and IWB.

I hope you will find interesting and you may use in the future.

Regards!