LEARNING BY SHARING WITH MY CLASSMATE'S BLOGS

I have chosen Celia’s Teaching English blog and the activity with Pixton because of the information and content. It is a task that I will use in my class to encourage my students to narrate anecdotes with comics. 

Now I will plan a Pixton activity for my English class of 3 ESO with the conditionals use. After explaining all the contents of the unit about relationships and conditionals in groups of three they should create a comic. I want students consolidate vocabulary and grammar by using the comic format. It is a good tool to review their knowledge.

I should create the groups of three with three different levels of English in each group because it is important to compensate the level. They are going to narrate different situations (a party, holidays with friends, a trip, at school etc) with different people and they have to narrate anecdotes by using the different conditionals and the vocabulary of the unit.

When they have all the drawing of the situation they should start using Pixton and creating the comic. This tool will encourage their imagination and digital competence. I will evaluate all the process and not only the final result.

To summarise I think the activity could be very interesting and useful in English classroom and it has many ways to work with it, at the end, middle or beginning of the unit. As always working with new technologies is something motivating for all our students and they are learning while enjoying!! 

GENIALLY!!!!!

This project is based on the contents of unit 6 about recycling, pollution and saving the environment. It is going to be done at the end of the unit but we only have 3 sessions to do it because we have time problems. Time is my main problem because we have to do different activities that were designed before this project.

I will explain the project with a Genially presentation as I could learn how to use it and tools that my students have. The first day they will establish the groups of three people and there are two different options of project so they have to choose one. After that they will made a registration on Genially and start to learn how to use it. They can see a tutorial about all the tool that Genially offers and the modality of it.

On this link you can find the Genially presentation that I have created.

Going green

It is going to be a task that they will do the last week of the second term so I can not give any data about problems, pros or cons about it. On the other hand I think the project will be useful to review all the contents and to develop their digital , social and civic competence. The thing that I will change is to do it with more time and to organise the project with more time. Because this is going to be a "work in progress" when my innovative teaching course will finish but I promise to upload the final projects after that.

As a teacher I think that the app is very intuitive, easy to use, visual, interactive etc. it is great for using it!! As I know how to use it I hope to design more activities and projects with it.

PIXTON TOOL

Creating a comic :Pixton

This is the link of an example of a Pixton activity that my students of 2 ESO has created.

It was the first time that we have used this application and we have decided to work in groups and create one comic all the class because we don't have much time to do it. Otherwise in the future I am going to designed other individual tasks to work with the app due to the wonderful final product and my students implication. 

Students should invent a surprising situation at the school and in groups of three they should create a new comic strip following the story that their other students have invented. It was done in only 1 hour because we can't book the computers room for more sessions that's why this task was not so long. In a previous session I have explained the use of past simple and past continuous and it should be included in at least two comic strip. 

 The specific learning objectives for the activity was to use past and present verbal tenses, to use the digital resources, follow the story with coherence, to be creative. All the objectives were achieved and creativity was worked in teams.

At the end of the task students have evaluated the tool as a very good one because they can use a lot of images, characters and add the text that they want. On the other hand they think that more resources should be free because a lot of tools were only available under subscription. 

What can I change for next time? I would designe the task not only for one session but at least 3 or 4 and to work individually because they can develop their imagination and made a better use of digital competences and writing skills. 

To sum up, this app is potentially motivating for all students and to develop and improve their writing. It is necessary to control their production with feedback and comments of the teacher. Even students can share the links of their comics and create another comic from the one that their classmates have designed.

EDPUZZLE: WHAT WOULD YOU DO WITH 1 MILLION POUNDS????

EDPUZZLE:What would you do...

Here you can find an authentic listening material activity that I have selected and prepare some tasks in order to help students to understand it.

I have chosen this video because it is an informal video with a very clear topic spoken by native speakers. The video is going to be the introduction of the new unit in which we are going to study conditionals tenses.

The activity should be done after a pre-task oral activity, in pairs they should speak about hypothetical situations. The second step is at home to do this activity designed with authentic material (flipped activity) and the post task activity should be done in class, a general reflection about the situation and an introduction to conditional sentences with different songs such as If I were a boy, or If I were a rich man. The grammar explanation of the conditionals is going to be share with students in a flipped classroom. At home they should watch the different videos and make some activities. 

The final task should be that they should look for songs in which money or conditionals sentences are used. I am going to evaluate their implication and autonomy in their learning process.

I think that the topic about money is attractive,motivating and interesting for students this would increase its participation in the oral communication. Otherwise they use the digital competence with the different activities and the flipped lesson.

The high points of the activity was their implication because they are so creative with their answers and they used without any grammar explanation the conditional structure. When they worked at home with the flipped video the theory they realised that they have used that before. Some of them send me emails with their doubts and they want to repeat this kind of tasks.

My suggestion for improving next time is editing better other videos with Edpuzzle because it was the first time and I should do it longer or adding more tasks.

TIMETOAST A GOOD TOOL FOR YOUR ENGLISH LESSONS!!

In order to celebrate Andalusia's festivity my students have created timelines of famous Andalusian people with the application Timetoast.

The learning objectives of the activity are that the students will be able to order life events of important Andalusian people, use of different verbal tenses, investigate and know about Andalusian culture, work in groups and use of new technologies and application.

Some of the advantages that I have observed by using Timetoast is that students have organised their groups, investigated and decided their characters and the application. It is an easy and very intuitive application, the indications are in English so they have used English language, it is very visual and it motivates students because it can include images. They have developed the digital competence, social and linguistic competence.

I have organised the activity in four sessions, the first one to explain students what they have to do, the evaluation of the activity and to show them how to register and use TimeToast. In that session they chose their team works and investigated different artists, at the end of the session they communicated the person they have chosen.
In the second session students have selected at least 6 different important events of Andalusian's life and started to make the timeline. In the third sessions they have finished and share with the teacher. In the fourth session they did the oral exposition to share with all the class their knowledge and we did a self evaluation.

The main problem was to register because with the free account is limited so you can't use all the resources. But for projects like this one it is not necessary to pay, it is enough.

Students' reaction was good because they are used to make timelines but in a traditional way, posters. New technologies are so motivating for them, at the end of the sessions they evaluated the project as a good one and they will like to repeat the activity.

I would like to change the topic and maybe to do it about English or American artists, writers, musicians and maybe to work individually.

TimeToast is a good tool that helped students to achieve:
 the development of the digital competence they have used internet, computers to have a good timeline.
to organise and work in teams, the development of the social competence is important.
to develop their imagination including images, choosing diffetent tools in the app
to select and sum up the most important events in someone's life.

In conclusion it is a very useful tool that I will choose to work in my class because students have learnt and enjoyed a lot and I can evaluate different key competences.

Here you can find some of my students' timelines:


https://www.timetoast.com/timelines/2191287    Juan Ramón Jiménez

https://www.timetoast.com/timelines/2191274     Antonio Banderas

https://www.timetoast.com/timelines/2184983     Luis Cernuda

https://www.timetoast.com/timelines/2184987     Pablo Alborán

MY REFLECTION ON READING HABITS

Nowadays our reading habits have suffered a big transformation. If we take a look 10 years ago the topics and the way of reading were different. Not only with the digital books but also the kind of books.

In the different images we can observe people reading alone, adults teaching children, students in school but it seems that almost all of them enjoy reading their books (digitals or not). Some of them have chosen their books becaise it's for pleasure but others haven't because other person have done it. I suppose that some of them could be happy and enthusiastic about their readings and other just do it because they have to. Not always we enjoy in our readings but if we choose them normally it is about a topic that is relevant for us.

In the second photograph I can feel like the adult woman because as teachers we should guide our students readings, I hope to choose something interesting for them.

Normally I choose different topics if I read in Spanish, something actual dynamic and actual. On the other hand in my second language I prefer reading classic literature. I have always read in paper and not e-books, I love reading and underlining my favourites parts.

When do I read? When I am on holidays!!! I would like to read everyday but when I am working I prefer reading books about teaching.

LEARN THE PAST SIMPLE WITH A NEW TECHNIQUE!!!

Dear students,

you can study the irregular verbs with a new technique, singing a song. Enjoy while learning grammar!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZzKe1BC2XU