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

Show Me, this is what you are looking for!

Hi everybody!

I’m Marta. In this post I would like to share with you a useful educational tool, called ShowMe, that allow users to record their voice as well as write text, draw or add some pictures or videos in order to explain some content. This app is available in Ipad and can be used by anybody who want to, no matter the age. ShowMe Interactive Whiteboard is an easy and effective tool for step-by-step audiovisual presenting and sharing. The visual/auditory combination of a ShowMe is engaging to watch as well as create. This app is also useful to help children organize the information in a sensible order as well as develop good presentation skills in a collaborative context. In addition, children can share their projects with the educational community and take advantage of other user’s explanations.

How to use ShowMe? Here you have a presentation that explains it in detail.

What is ShowMe? from ShowMe App

Features (taken from the Apple website)

• Voice-record
• Multiple brush colors
• Enter text
• Pause and erase
• Import pictures from your photo library, built-in camera, or web image search
• Import documents as pictures from dropbox, or google drive
• Create video from any document
• Unlimited lesson length
• Free to upload and share your recordings with friends
• Easy embedding for sharing anywhere
• Manage students with groups

ACTIVITY

Target audience: 5th grade

Placement in curriculum: Science (CLIL)

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 III: Applying (using the knowledge in a variety of ways): This activity provides an opportunity to apply, use and practice the content vocabulary in meaningful context:  a short speech (presentation)

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 oral presentation about how the respiratory system works.

Aims:

• To be able to use ShowMe app.
• To be able to identify and summarize the main contents related to the respiratory system.
• To be able to work in cooperative groups.

Competences involved:

• Linguistic and audio-visual: because pupils have to create a presentation while drawing and explaining different concepts. In this case, drawings are useful to improve the comprehension.
• 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 that enables their classmates to watch a video-presentation done by themselves. If they are able to do it properly, it means children have understood the concept and are able to explain something in their own words.
• Social and civic: because children have to work in pairs and listen to their partner’s suggestion. This is not about one child doing everything but it involves reaching an agreement about what they want to show.
• Knowledge and interaction with the world: this activity will be about the respiratory system and how it works so the majority of the concepts go around scientific

Grouping: This activity will be carried out in pairs (explained in the procedure).

Procedure of the activity:

First of all, I will explain to students how ShowMe app works and the elements they can find in the toolbar.  

In pairs, students will summarize and present, by using ShowMe, the main contents related to the respiratory system through a recording of about one minute. Each pair will be in charge of a different topic (parts of the circulatory system, how it works, common diseases, healthy habits to take care of it, curiosities, etc.).

First, both students of the pair will identify and write in a draft the information that they want to share through the presentation. When they finish, the teacher will check their rough draft and will give them a feedback (weaknesses and improvements).

Then, they will record the presentation, including the advices from the teacher. Each member of the pair will be responsible for recording one part of the presentation.

Finally, each pair will present their presentation to their other groups of the class, so they will review the circulatory system contents.

An example of recording could be the following:

Materials required

• Ipads (one per pair).
• Paper and pen if they want to do a draft before recording the presentation.

Class management

Following the tips that I have learnt in the ICT lessons, I would ask students to set Ipad aside when they didn’t need them to avoid classroom management problems. When I am giving them the instructions of the activity, I would say “Ipads facing at me”, so I could make sure that they pay attention to what I am saying and don’t get distracted. Moreover, I would assign some students to be Experts TIC, responsibles for giving support to me or to their classmates if in case we need some help.

When they are doing the recording in pairs, 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 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.

In case that students would need a quiet atmosphere to record their presentation, they will have the opportunity to go to another classroom just to record it and then come back to the main classroom.

Added value through ICT

• Visual support, engaging tool.
• It involves a challenge (summarizing contents, identifying the key ideas, cooperating,…)
• ShowMe it’s ideal for reviewing content, assessing children and make them connect all the topics learnt through the unit in a more motivational way (not only making them memorise it and write it down.)
• Develop digital competence as well as linguistic and audiovisual.
• The recordings can be shared with each other and they can open it in any device.
• The recordings remain always kept and available to review, use or edit them.

Trouble-shooting

• One possible problem could be that, perhaps, student’s speech in the video is not clear or understandable enough. For that, I will let it clear beforehand that they have to speak loud and pronunciation.
• Another problem foreseen could be that students spend too much time recording their presentation, doing and redoing it again and again. To avoid that, I will limit the time that they can spend making the presentation (30 minutes maxim).

4 skills involved

Reading: Children will be able to read some keywords that will appear in the presentation.	Listening: Children need to listen actively the presentations made by their classmates.
Writing: Children will write and draw the main contents to support their speech.	Speaking: Children need to explain the key concepts fluently and taking into account the pronunciation.

Assessment:

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

0) needs improvement; 1) fair; 2) good; 3) excellent

To be able to use ShowMe app
	0	1	2	3
Is he/she able to record his/her voice explaining the content?
Is he/she able to draw?
Is he/she able to erase his/her drawings?
Is he/she able to change the colour of the digital pencil?
Is he /she able to paste images in the presentation?
Is he/she able to enlarge and reduce the images?
Is he/she able to delete an image?
Is he/she able to share with the rest of the class his/her ShowMe record?
Is he/she able to save his/her ShowMe record?
To be able to summarize and present the key contents of the lesson
Is he/she able to identify the keywords of his/her topic?
Is he/she able to summarize the information?
Is he/she able to summarize the contents using appropriate grammar structures?
Is he/she able to express his/her ideas in a clear way?
Is he/she able to listen actively to the other group’s presentations?
To be able to work in cooperative groups
Is he/she able to listen actively to his/her partner’s ideas?
Is he/she able to respect his/her turn to record his/her part of the presentation? (each member of the pair records on part of the presentation).

Session 8.

Hi everyone! I’m Marta and in this entry I will summarize what we have done today in the ICT session with Yolanda.

First of all, we have presented, in pairs, two games, one of them that already exists and another that we have created and we find interesting for some reasons. For instance, some games that have been shared with each other are the Pacman, Kahoot, TinyTap, PuzzleMaker, etc. All of we have agreed that games provide real contexts for engaging practice (contents and language). They are also useful strategies to learn and make students develop important skills (such as, critical thinking, creativity, teamwork, etc.). In addition, games attract students’ attention and actively engage them.

Teachers also have to bear in mind a great deal of things before creating or developing a game in their class: the language involved, including the spontaneous one; respecting turns and establishing roles to avoid classroom management problems; the kind of feedback that is provided in the game if it is good it prevents teachers from being all the time giving approvals and guidance to their learners. Moreover, it is important to choose games that are not too much time consuming both when you create them and when we use them. Finally, it is better if teachers try the apps or the games before using them in class in order to get familiar with them and foresee possible problems.

After that, Yolanda has provided us with different interesting educational resources and apps that we can use in class.   

• Pub Quiz idea: it is an app to create multiple choice quizzes related to any topic you want. There are Pub Quizzes already done and shared in the network that are available for free.
• Promoting Oral Production: using film trailers, documentaries, advertisement or series, among others, like, for example, a Mister Bean video is a good way to set context for real communication and to learn and review vocabulary about different topics.
• Using attachments as Class Materials: photo collections are useful for description, talk about emotions, to begin or invent stories, like imagining or invent situations; speculate; use them as backgrounds. Teachers can use photos of any topic: well-known artists, double vision (you see one thing initially but then you see others), street art (talk about their own experience, what they have seen, what countries the pictures are in,...), etc.

• Some useful ICT tools and resources:
• Snippy (or Skitch on Mac): it is a very simple application that allows you to easily take a screenshot of any user defined area of the screen.
• Voki: this is a free service that allows you to create personalized speaking avatars that pass written text to speech.
• Glogster: is a social network that allows users to create free interactive and multimedia posters -adding text, photos, videos, graphics, sounds, drawings, data attachments and more.
• Lyrics training: this is a very simple game where you have to complete the lyric of a song, writing words in the correct order, while you listen to the song and enjoy the music video. LyricsTap also has a special mode that lets you sing KARAOKE and fully enjoy the lyrics of your favorite songs.
• Movie segments to assess grammar: contains a series of movie segments and activities to assess or practice grammar points through fun, challenging exercises.

We have finished the session with a Food for Thought, talking of the power of yet, which instead of saying “I cannot” or “I have failed”, it says “not yet”. It is referring to the power of believe that you can improve. It is really important for teachers to give a hand and emotional support to the weakest students (character, personality or intellectually).

Hope you have enjoyed it!

Marta