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! ;)

Goldilocks and the three bears

In this blog entry I am presenting one of the activities I created in this subject related to one of my favourite stories: Goldilocks and the three bears. 

As you all know, the subject has been divided into two different parts with two different teachers. Yolanda Scott-Tennent was the teacher the first part of the term and Maribel Benito has been the teacher the last part of the term.

One of the activities I created with Yolanda in the first part of the term was related to HOTS (creating) and LOTS (understanding and identifying) and it was adapted to Primary 1.

The activities I created are focused on a story and the development of different skills from the story, specially writing and speaking through descriptions of the characters, ordering the parts of the story and revision of the main vocabulary.

The story chosen was Goldilocks and the three bears because children really enjoy that story and because it is easy to work on the structures, vocabulary and sequences. 

All the activities in the planning are in a powerpoint and the unit is introduced by telling the story in two different formats (story with pictures and a video).

Story with pictures (http://www.education.com/games/goldilock-three-bears/) 

Video (http://wn.com/goldilocks_the_three_bears).

Later on, other type of activities are introduced. If you clic on the following image, you will be directly linked to TES IBOARD, a website where you can find several resources related to any topic. In that case, the activity is related to the story we were working on (Goldilocks and the three bears) and it gives you the opportunity to create different scenes from the story and talk about them using the same structures and vocabulary that are used in the original story. So the main objective is the learning of the structures and vocabulary through repetition with visual support and through ICT resources.

In this slide, you will also find a variety of activities (flashcards, matching activities, revision of vocabulary...).

Once all the activities are done, it is time to create a story. The main idea is to create the story Goldilocks and the three bears but remembering the sequence, the vocabulary and the structres. Although it is a repetition of the story, children are allowed to make it personal by choosing the background, adding pictures and audio files.  

When I discovered this website, my first thought was related to Primary 6 because of the competences and authonomy, but checking the reality in our classrooms nowadays I am definitely sure that our Primary 1 students will be able to use this website. Maybe they will need more help and time but the final result will be great.

Finally, in the last slide of the ppt, there are different activities related to drama. You can find one song, one script of the story and some examples of masks of the different characters. I found them in the British Council website and I would like to highlight that this website is full of useful resources and they are adapted to the interests of the children.

  

Hope you find the activity interesting and that it is adapted to the needs of your groups. 

IWB experience

I’ve never used an IWB before until last week in our ICT session. I don’t have an IWB at home and I haven’t started working as a teacher yet so I didn’t had the opportunity to work with this technology.

After the first contact with an IWB I can say that I really liked the experience because it was not difficult to use it and because I think that it is a very useful tool that offers some advantages when teaching and affects learning in several ways.

First of all, digital boards can promote and increase students’ motivation and enthusiasm for learning and, consequently, raise the level of students’ engagement in classroom and prevent passive learning. Sessions become dynamic and participative and children have an active role, so I imagine that they enjoy it.  

Secondly, IWBs provides visual support that complements teachers’ explanations and help children to understand better the content of the lesson.

IWBs also provide a wide variety of dynamic activities to be done in the classroom. As teachers, we can create many types of activities for our kids and children can draw; write, put images, copy and paste things as many times they want, be creative, add audio files and audio recordings do the exercises the teacher prepares and create their own ones.

Finally, apart from teaching specific content related to a subject or topic, we also educate children to become ICT knowledgeable students.

In the last session I was being working on two different Smart Board activities related to Bloom’s Taxonomy.

The first activity is based on remembering so it is for working on Lower Order Thinking Skills. It is an activity for first grade of primary. It consists on matching the words with the correct images so, after having previously introduced clothes vocabulary, children have to relate words and pictures to practice and remember the vocabulary presented.

The second one focusses on creation so promotes higher order thinking skills. This activity is for second or third grade of primary (depending on their level of English) and the topic is “wild animals”. We’ll do it after dealing with wild animals. It is called I spy with my little eye something… and under the title they have a square and a speaking bubble. Inside the square they have to “draw” a wild animal, the one they want (they have to look for an image of this animal and past it inside the square). Then, they have to write a short description of this animal inside the speaking bubble (see in the example) and finally, they also have read out loud and record the description and add it inside the bubble. Once they have created the activity, they will group in peers or in threes and they will play the game. So one child will start reading and listening the description of his classmate and he will try to guess which animal it is. When he thinks that he knows the animal, he will click inside the square and the image will appear so he will be able to check if he was right or not. If he doesn’t know the animal, he can ask his classmate for some more clues. Then, the other child will do the same. The image is an example of the final product. Children have to design all the activity (write the title, draw the square and the speaking bubble, search the image of the animal, past it inside the square and add animation, write the description inside the bubble and record the description.)

here is the link to get to the file

IWB nowadays

Working with IWB

Nowadays, digital boards cover different aspects in Primary School. Digital boards integrate technology in the classroom, sessions become dynamic and cognitive development increases.

I have been using digital boards for several years almost every day and I can say that children really enjoy it. It is a very useful tool in the class because it provides visual support, music, a timer, Internet, examples… an endless number of resources integrated in one.  However, what I like the most about digital boards is that students have hands on experience so it is not only a tool for the teacher but for the students too.

I have been working on two different Smart Board activities related to Bloom’s taxonomy. One of the activities is based on remembering and understanding skills and the other one focusses on creation, analysis and self-evaluation.

Both of them are adapted to a Primary 1 class. The first one consists in choosing the correct option for the different images that keep appearing on the screen. Having previously introduced vocabulary, students will choose which one is the correct one. This activity includes visual support and self-assessment.

The second one consists in a short and guided presentation of students’ favourite pet. They have the chance to add a photo with their favourite pet and talk about them with a recording. There is a template for all of them and, depending on individual abilities, they will be able to insert  a photo by themselves and to record a short description based on their previous knowledge. 

  

This is me, Mariona

Good morning girls!

Now that someone has broken the ice, as Andrea has said, it is time to write something.

My name is Mariona Carreras Buscató. Officially it is Maria because my identity card says that, but Maria and Mariona are the same name and since I was born everybody called me Mariona so Mariona is my name. I am 22 years old and I’m from Figueres, a small city with 45.262 habitants, well known for the Dalí’s Museum, a famous painter. This city is the capital of “la Comarca de l’Alt Empordà” and its main characteristic is “la tramuntana” that always blow regardless of the season. It is also well situated; it is close to the sea, close to the mountains and close to France. With only half an hour you are in another country.  

When I was born my parents were living in roses, a big, coastal and touristic village, but two and a half years later, when my brother was born, we moved to Figueres where I’ve been living all my life and where I studied until I started my degree in Girona.

I finished my degree in Primary Education last June and now I am doing this master on Learning and Teaching English in Infant and Primary education while I am working in Les Teresianes de Ganduxer School as a lunch time monitor.

Apart from that, I am a volunteer monitor in a Cau at weekends. I started going there when I was seven and when I was 18 I decided that I wanted to be a monitor and this is my fifth year. I also work with children during the summer in summer camps and now I am thinking of going to United States for one year to do an Oper after finishing the master. So as you can see I love children and my life turns around them.

To finish my presentation, I have to say that I love singing. I sang in three different choirs and I really wanted to sing in Blanquerna’s choir too but I can’t go because of the schedule. Music is the best and most beautiful thing of this world.

Regarding to ICT I have to admit that I don’t really like them. I always have had problems with computers. When I was younger, every time that I used a computer, it stopped working. My parents say that I have negative vibrations. Maybe for this reason I don’t like them and I avoid using ICT. For me it’s difficult and I get stress when I have to use new programs or tools so I don’t have much experience on this field. I just use the basic sites (google, youtube, facebook, gmail…). I only discover new things when I do a course or a subject like this one where the teacher asks us to create an account and start using a social bookmarking or whatever, for this reason I am doing this optative. I know that I have to change this situation and I am trying to do it because ICT are very important and useful and we have to work with them and teach children how to use them but, but it is not easy for me.

Finally, the only experience of using social bookmarking or social networks for professional use is Symbaloo. I have created and account and started using it two weeks ago and I have to admit that it is a really easy and useful tool. You can save the links of webpages or articles that you usually use or that you are interested on it in a very visual and organized way and you can also look for different Webmixs on topics you like. I recommend it. As Andrea, I use Pinterest too and I really love it, I recommend it too.

I hope to keep learning more things related to ICT specially tools for using or creating activities for children.

Well, so that’s all! See you in the next session!