Geniallly: Modal Verbs presentations

Regarding this mini-project with Genially, it was related to the use of modal verbs. My students had been working with modal verbs before, but they continued struggling with them, soy I proposed that they prepare a presentation to explain modals to their partners and check if they really understood it. To do it, I followed the following steps:

Session 1: present the main issue of the presentations and divide the class into groups of three people each. Each group was going to explain some parts of the different modal and modal perfects. As the teams had been elected by them, the topic of each group was provided randomly thanks to a website. After that, I showed them the checklist that they were going to use to make group-assessment and for them to know how to obtain the maximum mark. I asked them for any aspect that they found important and it was not in the checklist and, after listening to their considerations, I modified some. Additionally, I provided a PowerPoint presentation to help them so they can extract basic information from it and add more if they thought they should. 

Session 2: I show students how to use Genially, as it was the first time that they were going to use it. All together (I with my laptop and they with theirs) continue looking into Genially and the different modalities that it offers. I let them the opportunity to choose whatever modality they preferred to do the work. I also showed them that they can work remotely if the invite other members, so they found it really useful to do the finishing touches at home. 

Session 3: Continue with the Genially presentations. I went around to check how it was going and to check if everybody understood their parts. Students decided if they wanted to do it more simple but effective or to include different animations. It was up to them and they final results were really good. Students also created engaging activities at the end (Kahoot, the vast majority). They divided the different parts of their presentations as they wanted, but taken into account the key points that had to be included.

Session 4: Students showed their works to other groups so they can provide feedback on the format, explanations, etc. They found this step really useful to improve on how to do it. 

Session 5: After changing all the elements that they thought that could be improved, they started to work on their oral presentation in their groups. I helped them with non-verbal interaction and checking their tone and posture when talking, which they found really helpful also to other subjects.

Session 6: Students did their oral presentations and provide a dynamic activity at the end to engage their listeners and also they could also participate. At the end of each presentation, they  received feedback from the checklist and also some partners make questions to check the information and understanding. 

With regard to this tool, my students really like to learn how to use it, because they found it really complete and allowed them to play with different formats and it is a different way to do projects and interact. Additionally, as it is a tool which allows cooperative and collaborative learning, it was really useful for them to participate more within their teams. Moreover, it was really useful because the small groups division and the division of the contents help other students to understand the modal and modal perfects better, since students explain it as they understand, which many times is easier for their partners to understand than when a teacher explains. I would also like to highlight that their speaking skills have improved with regard to previous oral presentations and they felt more confident to talk. 

Finally, for future projects, I would try to provide them more engaging topics, as we did in previous terms or let them choose the topic on which they want to work on so this could be engaging for them. Nevertheless, they worked really well and the results were good. 

Here you can have the link to Google Drive where you could find some audios of the presentations and materials used. Also, I give you three links to three different presentations which correspond to the groups below. 

Google Drive: Audios and Materials

Modal Verbs: Group 1

Modal Verbs: Group 3

Modal Verbs: Group 5

Group 1

Group 3

Group 5

New Horizons: Exploring the Paralympics

I really liked the explanation of the Edpuzzle activity that Irene prepared for her students. I found it interesting for them in order to know other realities regarding sports, as sports is part of my students lives and they feel really motivated when we work about sports. Moreover, this video is not created for L2 students, but for everybody, so it is a real material that will help them to improve their communications skills. 

This way, I edited the video that Irene provided in her post and added notes, multiple-choice questions, filling the gap questions and open questions so they can check their knowledge of the text. Edpuzzle is a tool which allows my low-level students to watch the video as many times as they need, so it is really useful to practice listening skills. Additionally, it helps higher-level students to practice their skills as they can challenge themselves to watch the video just once or twice. 

Finally, this activity was developed as a flipped classroom activity. Nevertheless, the pre-listening and post-listening activities were developed in class. 

Pre-listening activity: brainstorming regarding the topic "sports" "paralimpics" and "disabilities". In order to help them, we used Quizziz to create vocabulary cards that helped them to relate the new vocabulary and their corresponding images. Finally, We saw the title of the listening and guess what it was going to be about and the topics that the video would discuss.

Listening activity: Each student listened the video at home and answered the different questions that appeared to ensure active engagement. The open questions are really useful to check their understanding. Additionally, photos have been included so students can related the questions with the images and facilitate it to lower-level students. Additionally, feedback has been added in open questions to help them understand the question and their answers. 

Post-listening activity: Using the previous video as a basis, students will create an infographic in groups of three looking information about important Paralympic athletes. These athletes were provided by me, but they could choose another one and looked for the information of that person if they wanted. I tried to provide characters of as many sports as possible to show the diversity in sports. After looking for the information with our laptops, they created a physical infographic that was exposed in a Gallery Walk to the rest of the class. Their partners had specific checklists to assess the work of their partners and also they provided feedback highlighting two aspects that they like and, at least, one that could be improved. 

Edpuzzle: Paralympic Swimmer Jessica Long

Collaborative writing: Storyjumper

Regarding this project, my class have been working a topic which was related to ghost and supernatural events. That is why I asked them to create a collaborative story which was related to supernatural events that they imagined. As in my class of 2nd year of CSE there are 30 students, I decided to divide them into pairs and trying to join students who match each other and could help each other. 

The objectives of this activity were the following ones:

• Develop their creativity and imagination through the creation of a ghost story.
• Include vocabulary seen in class related to supernatural events.
• Include the use of Past Simple that they have practiced in class. 
• Read real stories created by their partners and assess them. 
• Promote cooperative learning through peering.

Regarding the tool use to create the story, in my case Storyjumper was the selected one, I can claim that it really helped my students achieve the goals set previously. When we talk about imagination an creativity, students were really motivated because this format is really appealing to them, as they could create their own characters, include their own settings and include any element that they needed so their story looked even more realistic. Moreover, I proposed them to do a "ghost story night", that is: we lower the blinds, turn off all the lights and we all sat down on the floor and read the stories with on flashlights, so they can feel the mood. It was a complete success, because they were really motivated to create different ghost stories and they really enjoyed the experience of sharing their stories in this uncommon way. Additionally, as we had read different crime stories and work on ghost stories too, they found it really interesting, as they could take ideas from their previous knowledge and also see that this knowledge could be applied meaningfully to create an activity in which their partners were going to be real readers of their stories. If I focus on the Use of English, this activity was perfect to include the points mentioned, and to practice irregular verb forms too and check how they are improving using this tense. With regard to cooperative learning, as it is a tool which allows more than one person writing, it helps to promote cooperative learning and students were able to write at the same time because they had laptops to work on the story. Finally, as said before, students read the stories and were assessed by their partners with the use of a checklist. As you can see, thanks to this activity, we could practice reading, writing, listening and speaking. 

In order to develop the activity, it was divided into different sessions that were the following ones:

1. Session 1: As students have previously learned about grammar and vocabulary, and we have read several ghost and crime stories, we did a brainstorming all together. The topic was "ghosts stories" and they have to think about vocabulary that could be useful to use, which could also include expressions. After that, I talked about the project of writing a cooperative writing, which they had already done but in paper format. Therefore, I showed them an example of a ghost story created with Storyjumper (Example of Storyjumper). After that, they were divided into the pairs that I have previously prepared. To end with the session, they started their draft in paper. 
2. Session 2: the pairs sat together and continued working on their draft. They did it alone, asking me for some specific vocabulary if they needed. When they finished their first draft, they exchange it with another group and read it. This way, they can write notes to their partners and show them what they could improve and what aspects they really liked. Once they received their draft back, they checked the notes and rewrite their draft. To do the notes, I show them a checklist which they use to see the key points that they could focus on. 
3. Session 3: At this point, they had almost finished their draft, but I wanted that they received extra feedback, so they exchanged again the draft with another a group different from the previous one. They checked again their notes and write the "final" product. I checked group by group the new changes in order to start working the next session with the laptops.
4. Session 4: In this session, I focused on showing them how to use Storyjumper: how to include texts, images, change colours, fonts, add or eliminate pages, create new characters, etc. They were super engaged as they could create a more realistic version of their paper story so they really wanted to start. I left them the last 15 minutes to "play" with the tool so they could start the following day.
5. Sessions 5 and 6: In these two sessions, they developed their stories and ask me for some help. However, they did it all on their own and worked really well. At the end, they attached the link to a Google Classroom activity so I could read them at home before the "ghost story night".
6. Session 7: In this final session, we did the "ghost story night" that I explained before and their partners completed a Google Form which was used as an assessment instrument in the form of checklist. This way, first they sat around and hear the stories of their partners and later, as the links to the stories were in Google Classroom, they could read them as many times as they needed to check if they understood everything and that way provided the best assessment to their partners. finally, I gave each group my feedback and their partners feedback.

Talking about the most engaging aspects of this activity, my students really like working in pairs and the tool itself, which allow them to develop their imagination in a realistic way and not only with words. Something that they didn't like about the process was the two feedback activities in the middle, because some groups thought that their stories were good and after the feedback they had to change some points. However, at the end of the process when they saw the final product and the feedback provided by me and their partners, they found it useful and admitted that they had learnt a lot from their peers' feedback.

Finally and as I always say, everything can be improved, and this time I think that I will try to give them a story written by me, so they can see more models. Additionally, I will dedicate at least one session to talk about how they felt during the process and what things they would change in the future, so this way I include them in the process of assessment and I checked their feelings regarding the feedbacks provided by their partners. I did it after all groups received their feedback, but not deeply and I think now that it is important to see how I can improve my teaching techniques and methods. 

Storyjumper: Process approach

What did they say about climate change?

As I am working with my group of 4th year of CSE about Climate Change and its impact on Earth, I decided to use Edpuzzle to create a flipped classroom activity so they could review the contents related to this topic. I found this video on YouTube, which explains very clearly and undertsandable the contentas I was looking for taking into account the level of my students. Moreover, it is a real material which has been created and published by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of the US, so it is not a material focus on the learning process of L2 students.

Additionally, I use Google Classroom with my students, so this video has been one of the activities that I posted on Classroom so that they could do it at home. The main objective of the video was to review the contents seen in class to assimilate them through a simple and visual video which includes some notes, multiple-choice and open questions that they had to answer. 

Once the students had done the activity at home, we talked about the video in class to check if they had understood it correctly. Regarding the positive points of using this tool, it has to be said that students really liked it because they could do it at home, which they found more comfortable and relaxing than doing it in class. They also highlighted that they did not feel the pressure of doing it in class, as well as they could listen and see the video as many times as they needed, so they found this really useful to understand completely the activity and to do it well. Apart from this, I found this tool really useful as I can check contents with them in a different way so we can focus on production activities in class regarding the video. Thus, one of the main points of this activity is that, as they were "experts" after watching the video, we could discuss in class about climate change and propose several actions to develop in order to face the current changes.

Nevertheless, we can always improve the activity and I think that the video was perfect for the activity, but next time I will include a video of myself explaining important facts that could be difficult to understand. This time, I chose a note on the video to do a summary of the Greenhouse Effect that had already been explained in the video, but maybe it could be useful for my students to see me explaining it with other pictures. 

To conclude, the activity has been a complete success and I will use it in a near future again. 

Climate Change: Edpuzzle Activity

"It's elementary, my dear Watson"

Regarding the activity done in class which was related to famous crime writers of the UK and the US, we can reflect on the following key points. 

Firstly, the main objective of the activity is learning more about different writers from these two countries, as in class they have read two crime stories, one written by Arthur Conan Doyle and another by Agatha Christie, and they are going to read one adaptation of Raymond Chandler. This way, they can relate the stories they have read to the lives of these writers and learn a little bit more about them. Moreover, it is a way to show them different stories which could increase their extensive reading. Finally, another important goal of this work is for them to know how to extract the main ideas of a short text and how to organize them into a time line, so this way they learn to summarize important aspects of a text. 

Regarding the advantages of using TimeToast, it can be said that it is useful not only to see the development of the writer, but also their most important events. Additionally, it is a way to show the rest of the groups these important aspects, as each group developed the time line of a different writer. Moreover, it is a very visual tool which helps students to understand the information better, especially those students which are visual learning students. 

For the organization of the activity, we followed the following procedure:

1. Explanation of the activity: reading a short text related to one famous writer provided by the teacher and create a time line so everybody can see the main events of their lives. 
2. Divide the class into groups of three people each with a website which creates random groups.
3. Divide the text of each group into three parts, so each members becomes an expert in their part.
4. Share the information of their individual text with the rest of the group with a summary.
5. Read the whole text together to check the information.
6. Use the laptops of the high school to create the time line using TimeToast: teacher explains them how to use it and show them an example created by her. 
7. Almost two were dedicated to create the time line.
8.  One session was used to expose their time lines to their partners orally in order to share the information. At this point, the rest of the groups had a checklist to assess their partners (peer-assessment)
9. Kahoot to check how many important information they had collected. 

During the process shared above we could find some problems that were solved. The most important one was related to the use of TimeToast, that is why two sessions were needed. They needed extra explanations to check carefully how the tool is used so they could do it well. At the beginning of both sessions I explained them how to use it, how to look for photographs or add key words. At the end of this second session, they were experts in using TimeToast. 

To this point and related to the previous one, we can say that my students find really challenging the use of this tool as they have never used it before, but they also find it very useful to show the importance of their texts and also to learn new information about other authors. Furthermore, they found it really attractive and told me that it could be really useful for other subjects such as Geography and History or Spanish. 

When I think into aspects that could be improved for a future activity, I think that maybe three people were too much regarding the type of text, and that just two of them would have been OK. Additionally, next time I will upload a video tutorial (simple one) to their Google Classroom so they can check on it as many times as they need. I would also say that it was a very good idea to give them two sessions instead of one as it was previously established, because they understood better the task. 

To sum up, if we take into consideration all the points mentioned above, we can conclude that TimeToast has helped me show the students how to summarize texts in which many dates and important data are being told and also how to organize them. Plus, it has help me that my students work cooperatively starting with a text and have been able to learn not only from their text, but also from others. Finally, as this TimeToast activity was focused on crime writers, it has also helped me motivate my students to read different types of stories and authors, some have even become fans of crime novel.

Crime writers: Arthur Conan Doyle

The Queen of Crime: Agatha Christie

My reading habits

Reading is important to learn about the world around us. However, does everybody read because they really want? Let's check some examples.

People here is sat comfortably while enjoying reading. So, they may be happy to have time for themselves.

Here, we can interpret both kinds of reading: imposed (specific reading to learn) or chosen (char interests between different generations). Therefore, the girl could feel happy or bored. 

In my opinion, mom here is doing what she really wants, as she is able to choose among so many different online books but she has chosen that specifically. 

Regarding the children reading at school, we could consider that they are not happy as maybe, many of them are not interested in the issues or topics of the book. 

Finally, we find the man on the chair, who seems happy to be reading the newspaper. The way he is sitting and the place, leads as to think that it is something chosen by him. 

Finally, I would like to relate the man on the chair to myself. I always read textbooks and I prefer to read alone and at night or at the beach. I like to sit on many different positions when I read and I sometimes use posits to write down information that I appreciate.

Regarding the topics, I have always been interested in crime and science fiction novels. I always choose these topics in my L1 and my L2, as I learn expressions which I find useful. However, depending on the purpose of my reading or my mood, I will choose one text or another. For instance, when I feel sad, I try to re-read a book that has filled my soul.

In conclusion, reading should be a task that you enjoy and not something that you must do. 

First, Let's have some fun!

 

Did you know that although the same language is spoken in the US and the UK (English, obviously), there are many times when they find it difficult to understand each other?

Well, it does happen! Therefore... Will you be able to identify which English variety each word from the next Kahoot game belongs to? Who will have the better punctuation? Let's see! 

Click on the following link:

Kahoot: American vs British English

How many did you get correctly? If you have a good memory, then you'll be able to do the following game, in which you have to order the vocabulary words into the correct English category:

Wordwall: checking previous vocabulary

Finally, vocabulary is not the only difference between this two countries, but also grammar. Check the following text and do the grammar text at the end to check if you know the grammar differences correctly. 

Grammar differences: American vs British English

Before you go, don't forget to comment which words or grammar differences you didn't know and which one is your favorite!