An English teacher diary

Browsing the blogs of other participants in this course I stumbled upon the idea of Cool Teaching Now. She used Storyjumper to create an "All about me" book, which inspired me to do so with my students. However, as I was exploring the template, I thought on giving a little twist to the proposal.

I ran an interview with my 2nd Grade students where they would talk about their favourite things. We used the digital board and the classroom computer so everyone could see the creating process and each student could participate in their page's design. By now, this is the result (the work is still in progress): Our favourites.

My students really enjoyed and are willing to continue next session. I think it's a great way to know each other and keep it as memorabilia for the future.

Genially is a tool with a wide range of options to create presentations (among other types of content) in an engaging and interactive way. Although it may seem too much to handle at first, you can start from a basic design until you feel confident enough to move on. 

I suggested my 5th and 6th grade students to explore this tool, as they hadn't created anything with it yet. We followed this sequence:

1. We had a debate and agreed on the general topic ("wild animals" for 5th grade and "daily technology" for 6th grade) and the guidelines to carry out each assignment.

2. We drew the groups using Random Group Generator. 

3. Each group chose a theme inside the general topic (a wild animal to research about or five apps that they generally use).

4. I created a task in Google Classroom that reflected all the decisions that we made as a reference point.

5. They registered and logged into Genially, chose a presentation design and shared it with the members of their group to work collaboratively. 

6. They organised the contents and created the presentations throughout two sessions. During that time they explored the tool and I helped them solve the problems we didn't anticipate. Here's a sample of the works:

Presentation 1: Lion

Presentation 2: 5 apps

I expected to have a final session for my groups to present their final work to the rest of the class (which was the point of this activity) but we ran out of time, so they could just only present a few slides. We would have used Padlet to write feedback comments as a co-assessment. Moreover, each student would have writen a short self-assessment reflection.

I have been using Genially during this school year to enrich my lessons and it still surprises me with new features. I think this mini-project has been a great first contact experience and I hope it won't be the last. Given the good acceptance that my students have had with the tool, I wish I had introduce them to it sooner to build their knowledge little by little. 

On top of that, it has been really motivating for them to interact and share the features they have discovered (these groups are really into design and details). I hope we can make time to do more oral  presentations in the future, because we haven't worked on that skill that much (in English) and I find it really useful for daily life.

Inventing stories is a great way of improving our students' creative writing, specially if they can collaborate. Storyjumper offers a wide range of characters and backgrounds, as well as a nice format that resembles a real book. 

It was a shame that my students weren't able (once again) to log in using their official Google Classroom account. I had to lend my account to a small group of more advanced learners, so my initial idea didn't work. I would have liked to involve the whole class making pairs or groups of three.

The sequence of tasks was:

1) Revise the vocabulary related to wild animals and adjectives, as well as comparative and superlative structures.

2) Choose some of those animals and create a draft of the story that included at least two comparative and two superlative sentences.

3) Explore Storyjumper and select the elements that suited best to their story.

5) Once all the stories were finished, make an assembly and project them on the digital board while each group read its book aloud.

6) Vote for their favourites using Padlet.

The learning objectives were:

- Put into use the vocabulary related to wild animals, comparative and superlative structures.

- Collaborate in the creation and organisation of a story.

- Learn how to use Storyjumper to illustrate and sequence the content of their book.

- Share their creations and show respect for the creations of others, giving feedback on the things they liked the most and the things to improve.

The tool helped the students achieve these objectives as it was quite intuitive and almost didn't need any help. They could explore and modify some elements to make them fit into their story. I use lots of picture books with my primary students as the illustrations help them understand the message, so I really liked that my students paid attention to the detail and matched the paragraphs with their elements selection. The rest of the group enjoyed the story and, although we couldn't create more using this tool or vote for the best in Padlet, I hope that in the future we can use this tool if the administration lets us.

As of creativity, my students almost had free range. The only conditions were the theme (wild animals) and the use of comparative and superlatives at any point of the story. They could use words out of the selection of vocabulary. I was really surprised by their book, I think they did a great job (although we have to revise the dialogue format in books). 

As the students that got to create the book are native English speakers they really enjoyed facing a new challenge and creating something for their partners. They are really creative and like exploring new tools, so I let them go at their own pace. What we liked the least was that they were the only ones that could do it because of the limitation that the administration has on the resource. I tried using Pixton with other group, but there was the same problem. 

I don't know if this problem will persist in the future, but that is the thing that I would change by now. Although the idea was creating and sharing multiple stories, we could not do it in the end. However, we still projected the story on the digital board and the students read it to the rest of the class. 

I would have liked using Padlet to share and co-evaluate the projects, as well as using the assembly to discuss the learning experience.

Edpuzzle is a tool that allows us turn any video into a task and assign it to a group. To put it into practice I chose This is not a drill with Greta Thunberg, as we were learning about the environment. I like it specially because the message is short, direct and it already has subtitles.

My learning objectives were:

- Understand the general message of the video.

- Identify the problems that affect the planet and possible solutions.

- Reflect into our daily actions and the impact they have on the environment.

With that in mind, I set these activities:

- Pre-task: Revise the vocabulary related to the environment, as well as how to give advice using should and shouldn't.

- During: Answer open ended questions about the content of the video and their own reflections related to the theme.

- Post-task: Debate about the video and the answers they gave. Create posters with the messages they vote for to put around school.

I didn't flip my class as some students don't have internet connection at home, but I gave them time to work on their own laptops to develop their autonomy. My students like working at their own pace, so I would highlight how easy it has been for them to do so as I could collect and mark their answers individually.

On the other hand, the Google Classroom account wouldn't let them log in, so they had to access using the code (which I will provide right away next time). Although it is an easy alternative, we realised the problem in the middle of the lesson and we had to stop everything until everyone could access the resource. 

My students were kind of lost at first but in the end they got the hang of it. I think Edpuzzle is a good resource that allows autonomy for our pupils while it helps us as teachers to process a wide range of individual answers that we would probably couldn't hear in normal circumstances.

I suggested my students (5th grade) to do some research in pairs and share the biography of a woman whose achievements were ignored by history books. Although I have used Padlet  and Genially in the past with a similar purpose, this time I have chosen TimeToast.

The learning objectives of the activity were:

- Identify common biography elements such as dates, life events and milestones. 

- Understand, organise and summarise written information, developing critical thinking as doing so. 

- Make good use of the ITC tools as a means of transmission of what they've learnt. 

- Reinforce teamwork and develop decision making skills when selecting the information and creating the timeline.

As of the advantages of using TimeToast for this activity, I can say that it is a very intuitive tool to use that organises the information easily and offers an attractive result. It has been an excellent way to check the understanding of the biographies and bring a purpose to reading. The learning processes that have gone through this activity have been much complex than just answering questions.

I followed these steps:

- We watched a video about the first woman to participate on a marathon, which sparked the curiosity of most students. They started to ask about other milestones broken by women and the difficulties they encountered, so we started the research and I suggested creating timelines.

- I grouped my students in pairs and forwarded them to this page. I encouraged them to choose the biographies of those women they didn't knew about.

- Once they chose one, I printed the pdfs so they could underline, organise the information and note down their doubts.

- I assigned them the task via Google Classroom after a short general TimeToast tutorial on the digital board. Each pair created a timeline (eight in total) to share.

About the problems that we've encountered, I would say that the main one has been processing the text and selecting the information that would go in the timeline, although it has been a great opportunity to learn more about past tense verbs. Furthermore, there were some important achievements without an specific date, so they had to do further research. I had been monitoring and redirecting in those cases

My students are really excited every time we explore new ICT tools, so they were engaged from the beginning. Most of the group got the hang of it without further explanation. As I said before, it is a very intuitive and visual tool that is simple and effective, from creating to sharing.

Next time, I would like to improve the reading material, because even though it has served its purpose, it wasn't as complete as I would have liked. Some students spent too much time looking for missing information. Moreover, I'd like to make time for students to give an oral presentation of their work.

Using TimeToast helped me achieve these learning objectives:

- Give a sense and purpose to reading a text in a foreign language. They had to process the information and think of the way of presenting it as a timeline.

- Develop collaboration and communication skills. They had to decide what to include in the biographies and how to do it.

- Discover and use an ICT tool to help them design and present their work neatly.