Storytime!

Hello everyone!

We are Laura Carrillo and Elena Joaquin. We both like storytelling and as a teachers, we often do it with ours students creating a great performance to motivate and encourage them as much as possible. In this case, Elena has carried out in her class a storytelling about Goldilocks and the three bears and she designed a wonderful material, which without any doubt we have decided to reclycle her material to make a book through story jumper. This fairy tale is perfect to work on the structures, vocabulary and sequences.

The session would be developed in 2nd Grade with 12 students in class.
The class has three parts: 
1. Story time 
2. What's missing game and matching game
3. Write their own different endings

In order to see the story, you just have to click in the following picture to be directly linked to the story creation.

Read this free book made on StoryJumper

As you can see, storyjumper allows you to create, design, layout and/or print book. A part from using it you as a teacher, it can be used by students as well. For instance, the teacher can ask them for a different ending of the story since the Goldilocks has it already. In that way, it can be a very motivating tool to encourage them as much as possible. In addition of this point, it is free so that everyone can use it, which is very important!

In relation to this storytelling lesson, as an introduction of the story time, you could invent a short chant for example “one, two, three, story please! In that way, you make students feel that something special is going to happen. After the chant, ask students for absolute silence while you tell the story unless you want students to participate. It is annoying for them and for you to hear someone talking over the story or to have a kid bothering the others who are trying to understand the story.

It is also a good idea to encourage students to interact with the story. Ask them questions while you read, or ask them to mime parts of the story. We can also avoid simply reading the story. You might try telling the story using different voices. When you finish the story, you can ask the students about their favourite part, their favourite character, etc., and playing some game to check if they have understood the vocabulary and also to reviewing the vocabulary.

In our case, we've created a matching game. If you clic HERE you'll be able to see it.
Match The Memory website makes a matching game with photos you upload yourself, easily combined with a word card or a picture pair. It is free, useful and fun!

The aims for this lesson are the following:

Aims: 

-To develop students' listening and speaking skills.
-To enjoy activities based around a traditional fairy tail.
-To respect everyone’s turn to speak.
-To learn vocabulary related to the story such as adjectives and furniture.

Classroom management:

Story time shouldn’t be done in the same place as table time. So, we would invite students to sit on the floor in a semicircle and you can sit on a chair in front of them so they can all see you. We would make sure that they all are sitting down properly. It is very important to create a relaxed atmosphere in the classroom.
After telling the story, we would remind them to take turns and cooperate with each other properly.

Language skills:

The four skills are present in this lesson plan:

Listening: When telling the story, students would be listening carefully and afterwards, they would be listening to each other to discuss and agree with the different ending that they have to create.

Speaking: When telling the story, students would be participating every time that the teacher asks a question. After that, they would be discussing what type of different ending they want to create.

Writing: When students would be creating their endings.

Reading: When students would be reading their own book to the others.

Competences:

Competence in processing information and use of ICT: When students would be using the laptops to create their own different ending.

Linguistic and audio-visual: The students would be applying the four skills.

Learning to learn: They would be the ones that have to organize the timing while solving problems.

Autonomy, initiative and decision taking: Since they have to create different endings, they have to take decisions themselves.

Social and civic: When working in groups.

Cultural and artistic: Using their imagination and creating on their own.

Knowledge and interaction with the world: students would be learning vocabulary related to the book such as the members of the family (as a review), adjectives and furniture of the house. 

Assessment:

In terms of assessing them, there would be two types of assessment:

- Observation grid

- Self-evaluation through rubrics.

Hope you like this lesson plan! You're more than welcome to use it with your students!

WEBQUEST

Hi there, classmates!

I’m Elena Joaquin and I am going to present a wonderful project called “Let’s plan a trip to London!” for 6th Graders.To be honest, it was a bit difficult for me to think with something that goes further than just creating a game, but finally I came up with a project that I hope you like it and enjoy it as same as me and, of course, a project that you can carry out in your classroom.

In order to do this project, I’ve created a WEBQUEST, which must be used with laptops. What do you know about it? I will give you a brief description just for you to have an idea about it.

With WebQuests, students create meaningful projects that they share with others via oral presentations, posting to the web, etc. WebQuest tasks go beyond simply answering questions; they require higher order thinking skills such as creativity, analysis, synthesis, judgment and problem solving.

Another key component of WebQuests is that the students’ have to be focus on using information rather than looking for it. The teacher gives this information previously. Many teachers avoid using Internet resources with their students because of how long it can take students to actually find useful information when searching the Web. They also worry about students accessing inappropriate sites. WebQuests avoid these roadblocks because the Internet resources are identified and evaluated by the WebQuest designer (teacher) ahead of time. This eliminates the need for wasteful searching by the students.

In terms of creating one, requires a lot of hours but it worth it, trust me! A part of creating one for the ICT’s subject, I created one 4 years ago and put it into practice with my students. It was just amazing because it was something new for them and it increased incredibly their motivation about what we were working on.

Believe me, when students are motivated, they are likely to put in more effort, and their minds are more alert and ready to make connections. 

The webquest that I’ve designed is to address problems that students have to solve it using real, timely resources instead of dated textbooks and materials that are only presented from one point of view. It allows them to use:

- Higher level thinking

- Critical thinking

- Cooperative learning

- Up to day information and resources

- Integrate technology into the classroom in an effective way

When using WebQuest, the limitations might be:

- Limited Internet access.

- Devices do not allow access to the websites needed, in case they are working outside of the class.

- The timing the WeQquest is going to take depending on what you are asking to do to your students.

If you click here, you'll be able to see the WebQuest I've created and see what kind of activities they have to do. I took a screenshot of the introduction just for you to have an idea about it.

This project takes into account the four skills because they must listen the teacher instructions, his/her advices to work on. They must read the tasks from the WebQuest in order to do their cooperative work, read through all the information that they need to find, speak and discuss each other to do their best, and agree with the answers, and create and write a final presentation. 

In terms of Bloom's Digital Taxonomy, this project offers the opportunity to put into a practice everything.

- Remembering specific vocabulary related to a journey, choosing the relevant information depending what task they are in charge, showing real prices, places and so on.

- Understanding the oral message and the written one.

- Applying and practicing the previous vocabulary depending on their findings.

- Creating their own presentation related on their findings to demonstrate what they have done. 

In relation to assessment, they would be assessed through observation during the activities individually and cooperative work. They would have the chance to assess themselves through rubrics. 

Hope you like what I've created, and let me know about the improvements, please! 

Kahoot!

Creation of a game with Kahoot

Name:Laura Carrillo and Elena Joaquin
Level: 3rd grade, 20 students working in pairs with tablets.
Curriculum: CLIL
Topic: Food and going to the restaurant
Skills: Reading and vocabulary
Classroom management: Two kids in charge of going around and helping the others to go into kahoot (experts).
Type of activity: Task based activity, learn by doing
Material: PDI and Ipads.

We have created a vocabulary game with kahoot. Kahoot is a useful tool to create games by yourself or as a resource to look for them. Once you create a game, kahoot provides you with a code which kids will have to introduce and they will have access to the game.

To create a game in kahoot is very easy. You need to register and you can start!

https://getkahoot.com

This is the result of our game. You can always edit things and add songs whilst playing! It is very engaging and motivating for the kids. As you can see, you can also manage the time you want the kids to answer the questions, the number of options to answer and you can display the answers while doing or editing the game:

The vocabulary presented in the game has been previously worked in class in order to do a roleplay of a restaurant at the end of the project. The game is accompanied with pictures so that it helps to identify and relate contents. It is related to a the restaurant context where kids need to decide which option is the correct one between four different ones.

According to Bloom’s taxonomy this activity requires remembering and applying so that afterwards they can produce the language in a real situation (roleplay). This activity is going from LOTS to HOTS because it is a simple game of vocabulary but it becomes more difficult because kids need to learn not only the vocabulary but also the structures that will be presented in the following session (scaffolding).

The activity will be held with tablets and it will be shown on the interactive whiteboard so that everybody can follow. The questions are going to the displayed on the PDI and the kids will mark their answer on the ipad. It will be done in pairs for the first time so that they get familiar to kahoot and next sessions we will carry out an individual assesment with a different game but the same content. 

The teacher, though, will know the results of the pairs because kahoot shows inmediately the marking so it is a quick way to assess your students in a motivating and fun way.

It is useful to have two kids helping when starting the activity. They will show the others the steps to go into kahoot, otherwise it becomes messy. Also make sure all the Ipads have battery and they work properly so that you can avoid any surprise or problem.

Hope it is useful and you can apply it in your classrooms! ;) 

Session 4

Hi everybody!

We are Elena Joaquin and Laura Carrillo. We are going to talk about session 4 that we did with Yolanda. The session was divided in 2 parts. The first part, we have been showing our presentations about padlet and popplet,ESL Flashcards, Quizlet, Flashcard machine, study blue and mindomo. 

The first presentation was about Padlet and popplet done by Miriam, Anna and Àngels:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/14L1G5G-y6gAHLGRVp2OUe2SmDl0O0pPcYZIqC_oIawA/edit#slide=id.p

The following was about animal's flashcards done by Tania, Laia and Pepelu:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1AFNzwDa6izVg3DMIT0lfScUXbNEn5ymLyzVNefyP5SE/edit#slide=id.p

And the last presentation was about mindomo done by Amaranta, Ferran and Marta:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Eir67fB_vE2aCEf_Yen95d6AR7-t-lTpVwMrwDCOPvI/edit#slide=id.g101dc88313_0_86

All of them are used with computers so that it is accessible to everyone. They are all very useful as well and we, as a teacher, should use them in our lessons. Language learning is better and faster than ever before. We know much more about how students are learning -with digital technology we are unleashing the creativity of teachers and students to allow them to make progress faster. (Christopher McCormick)

The second part was more theorical where we learnt a lot about dozens of programmes that we can use.

The Hot Potatoes was one of them. It is a freeware programe (http://hotpot.uvic.ca), which we can create interactive exercises for the Web that work with any

modern web explorer (Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Firefox, etc.). There are exercises with multiple-choice options,open short-answers, jumbled-sentences,crossword exercises , matching elements or parts of sentences,ordering items and gap-fill exercises. After create them, we can post exercises on web sites, Moodles, blog or work locally. How can we post them? The first thing that you need to know is that it’s not necessary to know anything about .html language, JavaScript, etc. In case that we want them post on a blog, moddle, etc., we just have to copy the “embed code”.

In this second theorical part, Yolanda gave us information where we can create games. One of her first advice was to check out already existing games on sites such as the following web page :  http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/kids-games or sites, which gave you some tips and advice in the following link.http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/04/21/the-best-websites-for-creating-online-learning-games/

We also we would like to share with you some ppt that Yolanda has done related to resources. They all are very useful and quite easy to work on. You can see it, just clicking here.

Hope it is useful!