Ferran's Game

For our ICT last session I prepared a very simple game using Kahoot; a well known app that allows us to develop team (or single) games using the classroom screen, digital board, computers or tablet-type devices. So it is a very versatile app to work with. 

This Kahoot game is about some easy riddles to have fun in class and play a little bit with the language. The game can be listed in the Applying step on Bloom's Taxonomy; because will have all the students thinking and relating all their knowledge in order to answer all the questions correctly. 

The activity's target age is 10-11 years old. The riddles aren't difficult, but it is true that the students playing must have high reading skills. 

The objective of this activity is to practice fast reading and improving the reading comprehension.

Here you have some screenshots of the Kahoot created:

Then, I have selected a website that offers a wide variety of games for our students. It is called FunBrain and it is full of little games to have fun and learn (indirectly) specific vocabulary. 

This kind of websites are often left out by teachers for not being "serious" or academically relevant. But they are very powerful tools actually; allows the student to try lots of games and stay with those that makes him/her feel save and motivated.

I discovered this website in last years' practicum; the students showed to me... and I was amazed for the large archive of games it has. 

I was doubting about this website (or this kind of resources)... but if children love it, that means it is good. 

this is how the website looks

Ferran Rodríguez i Díaz

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

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

Saint Patricks Day

Hello girls!

In this entry I’m going to show some resources that I used with my pupils to work Saint Patrick's day.

I created a power point slide collected some of the resources that can be used to work Saint Patrick's in Primary 5.

First of all, this celebration can be introduced by a video about a Leprechaun, helping the teacher to create good atmosphere to start talking about Saint Patrick. Then I thought it could be good to show another video explaining briefly the legend.

It’s always important to work vocabulary and there’re some webpages that have flashcards and images that would be good to use to work Saint Patrick's day.

Also if we want to create our flashcards I highly recommend to use Bitsboard and play games in groups with the iPads.

Furthermore, to learn vocabulary in a more attractive way they can be playing games, such as memory, and every time they turn over a card they have to say the name of the image. (This would be a LOTS Bloom’s taxonomy activity). 

Also, learn more about the legend they can search on the Internet some webpages explaining it.

Moreover, a good and HOTS activity (linking with Blooms Taxonomy) we can tell the students to choose 6 clue words about the legend, so they will have to analyse the previous text that they have searched, and decide which words they want to use to create a crossword puzzle, introducing the word and making the definitions.

Although, it can be very creative to look for some Saint Patricks crafts, and a very useful and recommended application is Pinterest. 

Additionally, I founded lots of very interest presentations about the legend of Saint Patrick's that can be used in class without any problem, and we can edit and adapt to our needs.

Last but not least, I want to comment that before doing this subject I was interested in new technologies but after doing I have opened a lot my mind and now I have more skills and more resources to use in class, and also I’m more oriented on how to use it in a correct way and try to squeeze it to take advantage of all the digital resources.

Thank you so much!

3, 2, 1... PACMAN!

Good morning ICT girls!

Here it’s me (Ari) presenting an activity which might ring a bell ;). The first task I prepared for this subject was related to Animals in the Wood; I looked for different tools to use in our classrooms such as a word search creator from Discovery Education; a flashcard creator, this app is available for both Android and iOS; and an interesting webpage where you can find an incredible amount of tools to use with your students. (You already have the links to access these resources but you’ll find them attached in this post too ;))

However, the one I’m going to present here is PACMAN! Once I found this resource I thought it was going to be a really interesting tool to use in a classroom, no matter the level we are as we can create activities for both the old and the youngest pupils.

First of all, I will explain you some characteristics of this resource. I suppose all of you know Pacman; this tool has been based on this videogame, the students can play it but at the same time they are answering multiple-choice questions. All these questions are first written together with the answers (both the right and the incorrect ones). It’s really easy and intuitive but here you have the steps you need to follow ;)

Now that you’ve check the steps to follow, I want to explain the use we can give to this resource in the classroom. As I mentioned before, it can be applied in different levels, it all depends on the topics we work on and the questions we create (or the ones we ask our students to create which is also an option for the old ones).

This game it’s only and engaging way to work on specific content; the questions we write can make our students work on both LOTS and HOTS. Everything we create will imply understanding and depending on the questions just remembering. But we can also ask them to look for information on the Internet, for instance to find out the places around the world we can find an specific animal, compare different places and the species living in them in terms of the characteristics of an animal, the atmospheric conditions, amongst others. Furthermore, this research can not only be done just to answer the questions but to write them. As I previously said, our students can also create these questions, which will require collecting information and at the same time work cooperatively with their partners while structuring the test.

I personally found this tool a really interesting way to work on different aspects and make our students feel engaged and motivated in a high-cognitive demanding task. Of course as teachers, we have to adapt these activities to the level, group students, their needs and characteristics; but I found it incredibly easy-adaptable and the most important ENGAGING!

Hope you find it interesting! Enjoy it! 

Here you have some interesting links ;)

All my best, 

Ari xxx

The use of iPads as an educational tool. María and Laura posting and learning

The use of iPads and tablets as an educational tool is nowadays one of the emerging trends in society. Therefore, in the last Master’s Degree ICT class we were introduced to the use of this very sophisticated technology in schools. Maribel Benito, one of our ICT teachers, was the one leading this task.

First, she lectured us about the proper use of this resource and showed us how they use iPads in Jesuïtes Bellvitge, the school where she works. From what she showed, it looks like her school has a very carefully developed approach towards the use of technologies in the class. For instance, to deal with iPads and technologies, the school has created within its ICT program the role of technology leaders. These leaders are chosen and trained to help their classmates and teachers. They are several in each class and they are chosen among the students that are good with technologies. In regard to iPads, she told us that the real potential of this tool lies in the fact that children can easily create and share their own personalize learning materials and projects.

After this short lecture, we had the chance to explore the iPads and use them as if we were children. To do so, we used two apps, Book Creator and Bitsboard. 

With BookCreator we created a short story with photos, video, and audio. We must say that when we run out of time it was hard to stop working. It was then when we realized how powerful, engaging and motivating this tool and apps are. If you wish you can check out our creation.

With Bitsboard, we first created a series of flashcards and then some games. We found this app amazingly useful because the teacher and the students can easily create personalized flashcards with image, audio and written word. Then, ones you have the flashcards the app creates a wide range of games to work on this language.

Charter of Games

Unscramble

Wordsearch

Odd one out

Related to the application of these tool in the school, we thought that Book Creator could be used to create all sorts of stories. For instance, students could create stories for different moments of the year, like Christmas, Halloween, and Easter. Or could they do short narrations around different topics like, for example, "the story of their lives", "their holidays", "an innovative cooking recipe", or the "step by step documentation of a class project". We also thought that this tool could be used to work on the stories presented in the class. For instances, taken the story of The very hungry Caterpillar students could create their own version or make their own summary with pictures, screenshots, videos and audios of themselves while performing or even drawing the story. In this way, the story will be worked in depth and the students will have a repertory of personalize materials related to the story.

Moreover, Bitsboard could be used in the classroom, as mentioned above, to create personalized flashcards and work on language in a more meaningful way. We would do this by encouraging the class to take pictures and create their own flashcards. We also thought that we could use the games generated by this app to work in different Study Areas or to deal with fast finishers (those children that always finish earlier than the others).

Therefore, Book Creator easily prompts HOTS (High Order Thinking Skills) activities in which students can create, evaluate and analyze. And Bitsboard is an amazing tool for working on LOTS (Low Order Thinking Skills) like remembering, understanding and applying.