Puppet Pals!

Puppet pals

Name: Laura Carrillo

Level: 4th grade, groups of 4

Curriculum: English 

Topic: creating a fairy tale

Vocab related to fairy tales: princess, prince, dragon, gobblin, fairies, witch, wand, castle, village, cottage…

Previous knowledge: picture book app

Aims: 

• To familiarise with puppet pals.
• To be able to create an interactive story with different characters
• To develop the oral skills: listening and speaking
• To acquire vocabulary related to a fairy tale
• To be able to understand a story 
• To break down stereotypes (from the traditional stories).

Skills: speaking, listening, pronunciation

Receptive skills: Listening when the others are recording or reading the plot and reading (reading the story)

Productive skills: writing the fairy tale and speaking (recording it)

Classroom management: Groups of 4. Establish different roles.

Type of activity: Task based activity, learn by doing, ICT

Material: Ipads

I have worked with the app puppet pals. It is very interesting and useful to create a story with the kids. It is an interdisciplinary task because kids need to invent a story so they are working on language, they have to choose different characters (from the app or they can even draw their own!) so they are also working on art and when they finish the story they need to record themselves. 

It is a good oportunity to work on pronunciation, rythm, pause…etc As it is done in groups, one records the other so they become aware of their mistakes because the others can tell them what they can improve or what they have done really good.  It is a kind of group assesment during the process of it.

First kids need to structure their story: characters, placement, what happens…etc then they choose or create the characters.

Once they’ve done that, they start writing the script. The teacher revises it and corrects or suggests improvements and they can start recording. It is a very motivating activity because they are very excited with the results.

According to Bloom’s taxonomy : Higher order thinking skills. Creating their own version of the story following the characteristics of a fairy tale and then, they will have the opportunity to share the results!

Competences:

Linguistic and audio-visual, because pupils have to invent a fairy tale.

Management of information and digital interaction, in order to do the task, students have to use and interact with the app puppet pals.

Knowledge and interaction with the world, by using fairy tales we can develop the imagination of our students

Social and civic, we are going to work in groups promoting the cooperative work and stablishing roles.

Learning to learn They will have to solve problems, different opinions and become to an agreement. Thus they will have to manage their time effectively and regulate their own learning.

Assessment:

Every group will carry out their own assesment, it is a good way so that everyone becomes aware of how was their team working and also their individual contribution. Whilst the process, the teacher will move around observing each group. At the end, each group will show the rest their fairy tale and the teacher will take into account whether it follows the structure and characteristics of a fairy tale worked previously in class before using puppet pals.

The results were great and we could show to the parents how much we worked and how amazing our fairy tales were!

Hope you can use it in your classrooms! Your students will love it! ;)

Discovering IWB

Increasingly, Interactive whiteboards (IWB) are gaining ground in the classrooms. They are a powerful tool in the teaching learning process adding interactivity and collaboration. When used innovatively IWB create a wide range of learning opportunities raising the level of student engagement, motivating students and promoting enthusiasm for learning. Moreover, I believe that our nowadays students, as digital natives, feel confident using this tool, which is always a positive aspect.

As far as my experience using IWB, I've just used them in one school where I did some substitutions. And I couldn't really use them as I wanted because I had to follow some instructions as a substitute. But my mother is an Infant education teacher, and she has an IWB on her classroom. And I’ve seen her using it a lot! She works with the Panasonic elite Panaboard Software and it is really useful for her. She creates lots of activities to do which are so interesting for her 5 year-old-students. 

After our last session on ICT, I’ve been investigating and discovering how to use SMART Notebook, and eventually I’ve created two activities related with the topic of fairytales. They are thought to use in Year 4 Primary. 

The first one, according to Bloom’s digital Taxonomy it’s a “Remember-Understand” activity, so it is a LOT (Low Ordered Thinking). I’ve created it with the Lesson Activity Toolkit 2.0 and it focuses on the fairytales characters. As you can see, the activity consist on clicking the right picture according to the word that appears in the red rectangle. The fact of scoring, having limited time and adding sound effects will engage children. 

The second activity, according to Bloom’s digital Taxonomy it’s a “Creating” activity, so it is a HOT (High Ordered Thinking). Using the vocabulary that students would have learnt doing the first activity, this time they would have to create a scene of a story. First, they would have to roll different dice, one for choosing the setting and two more for choosing the characters. Then, they would have to complete the sentences besides the dice.

Finally, students would have to create a scene in comic style using the vocabulary they have been working. This last part can be adapted to the level of every specific group and also to the level of each child, as everyone can complicate the dialogue as much as he wants to. 

You can download and try these activities by clicking here. 

To conclude, I want to say that using SMART Notebook software I’ve discovered lots of advantages and countless ideas have come to my mind. However, I’ve also fins some things that I don’t like so much. First, when you insert some images in your Notebook document, it slows down and it crashes sometimes (so be careful not to insert large images!). Second, I’ve found several limitations on the use of animations of objects. It happened to me that I had ideas in my mind that I would be able to do with Power Point and then I couldn’t do it with SMART Notebook.  

Despite this, using SMART Notebook Software on IWB has been an enriching experience and it has caused me want to continue learning and creating things.