COUNTRIES AND STATES WITH GENIALLY

 

In the first year of CSE, unit 8 was related to countries and languages so I dicided to take advange of this tool in order they create an infographic of an English-speaking country. As I have two groups form the 1^st year, the other group worked on USA and their different states as they preferred to discover new things about that country.

After deciding the country or state to look for information (surface, capital, inhabitants, economic resources, among others), each pair had at their disposal a laptop to look for that information on webpages provided by the teacher as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-speaking_world.

In the next session, a tutorial about genially was shown in the interactive whiteboard and they started to use the program to make their infographics.

Students’ pairs were decided according to their English level in order to provide reinforcement to those students with a lower level and promote collaborative work. The project was organized in three sessions with the laptops and a final one when they presented their infographics to the rest of the class so as all of them learn about the the different countries. While one pair was presenting, they had to take notes because that pair could make them questions about the issues discussed when the presentations finished. In this sense, the teacher is sure that all students are paying attention.

The next session a checklist, in order to self assess their work and the one of their peers, was given. I also use a rubric to assess their final products like in the example below

	1-4	5-6	7-8	9-10
Task	Doesn’t talk about the topic clearly	Tries to accomplish the task but includes no related topics	Tries to accomplish the task and focus on the topic	Focuses on the topic

 

Intearctio/ Expressio

Waits to be asked Short answers Speaks with many stops Doesn’t let partner interact

Interacts only using short answers Speaks with several stops/ hesitation Doesn’t encourage

Speaks with stops/ hesitation Uses short questions/ answers Encourages interaction

Speaks fluently Engages in natural conversation Repeats to encourage interaction

 

Organization	Has poor organization Doesn’t include elements	Uses restricted connectors in phrases Misses one element	Includes the elements Uses connector adequately	Includes elements and shows creativity Connectors
Production	Inadequate word choice Mother tongue interference Frequent grammatical errors	Adequate word choice Occasional grammatical errors Fairly pronunciation	Adequate word choice Few grammatical errors Good pronunciation	Adequate word choice without grammatical errors Excellent pronunciation

I think Genially is a fantastic tool as they feel motivated when using ICTs andtheir presentations resulted to be awesome

Final task inspiration

 

Reading Miss Benitez’ experience with Pixton and her task has been really inspiring for me.

I am going to take her idea and use it with my 4th year of CSE group as they are reading a reader adapted from Anna Frank’s diary.

For the last month, we have been reading a chapter during class time each Friday and discussing it.

I am going to assign them a final task in which in groups of 3 they make a short comic per chapter, choosing the one they prefer and summarising it in other to present the main events simplifying the story.

In this sense, visual material will provide an extra help to know what happened in each chapter and this could be an excellent assessing evidence to know if they have understood correctly the chapters

Comics with Pixton

Practising writing with your students of the 1st year of CSE is more motivating with Pixton, as they create their own stories at the same time they improve their digital competence

In this class I have organised groups of 3 according to their English level, fostering coopeartive work.

In the first session, I explained the final task and grouped the students. In groups, they decided the characters in their story, the setting, main conflict and solution

The teacher also provided them with story dices so as to they can be inspired and play at the same time. In the next two sessions, computer trolleys available at highschool were provided in order to carry out the final product.

The objectives were to develop their digital competence, and their group work. In this sense, I guided them to organise the different members' job and assign each one a task. Youtube videos about Pixton were also shown so as they were able to manage it correctly.

The results were awesome as you can see in the examples. The majority of the group loved the activity as they feel capable of creating a comic. On the other hand, the problem with Pixton is that you only have a 7 days free trial, so groups with a lower level need more time to finish their tasks.

The final day, a presentation on the digital board was done by each group. In this way, they could practice speaking from writing.

The other groups were provided with the rubric the teacher uses for assessment. In this sense, they could obtain a mark and provide feedback to their classmates. Moreover, a self and peer evaluation checklist was provided to each member of the group in order to reflect about their work.