LEARNING MISSION 1
Hello
everybody and welcome to a new entry of my learning diary.
Today I
want to show you another step of my open educational project (OEP) that is turning
flat activities into super learning missions.
First of
all, I will try to explain what a learning mission is. These activities take
part of an active methodology that I have already explained in my last posts
when I talked about educational and collaborative projects. The task now is to think about two simple
activities from my OEP and change them into collaborative, active-learning and
relevant for my students.
The first
activity I decided to change is the one related to the description of one period
of the prehistory that students are learning in the project. The aim of a learning mission is make
students think and do by themselves different ways to accomplish a challenge.
Therefore, I try that pupils have a good time learning different characteristics
of each period (Metal Age, Paleolithic and Neolithic).
To make the
post more understandable I am going to explain my first activity step by step.
Why
I chose this activity?
I decided
to turn a simple task into a super learning mission because I think it is
important to make our students independent and autonomous people. Thus, this
activity is going to be part of an active methodology in which they will work
by themselves in the classroom.
A
description of a landscape and a time period as it can be the Neolithic period
for instance, is a simple and usual activity that we are used to do in English
classroom. Why we can´t do the same but using new and enjoyable tools? Therefore, the purpose of this post is to
show how we can change boring activities into meaningful and funny ones.
Furthermore,
I have chosen this activity because I think that is easy to do for kids and represents
a good example of a common task in the English classroom.
Activity description
The usual
activity will be to write a description of one scene related to the period of
time you have chosen. So then, you will have to describe the landscape, the
people, some tools used in daily life, the wildlife…
This
activity will be good to promote writing skills but not for creative thinking
or collaborative skills.
In order to
change this activity into a meaningful one I decided to swap the writing task
into a new one. The new steps of the
activity will be explained through this flyer that I have created with Canva.
Goals of the learning mission
The main
goals of this challenge will be the ones of my open educational project.
-
To
know and to use different vocabulary related to the topic.
-
To
be able to talk about the past using past verbs and time expressions.
-
To
know how to collaborate in group and develop social skills.
-
To promote critical thinking and English
skills (reading, writing, listening and speaking).
-
To
know how to work with ICT in an adequate way and how to manage with different
interactive tools.
Timing
Students
are able to do this task in two classes of 50 minutes each. They have to work
in pairs and think about one scene to describe in the comic. Moreover, they
have to think about a story to tell, the characters, the settings... They can
use Google Docs for writing the ideas at the same time in a collaborative way
in class.
In that classroom,
they can start writing and sharing ideas.
When they
have their stories, they can start making the comic using Pixton that is a very
easy tool for them. The teacher should help and give support to the students in
this step.
Skills
In order to
fulfill this challenge students have to work on the four skills:
1. Reading: They have to read what they
write to make changes and, also their partner´s comics.
2. Writing: They have to create a story
using the new vocabulary and tenses acquired in the classroom.
3. Listening: They have to listen to
their partner´s ideas to make the story.
4. Speaking: They have to speak each
other to share ideas and create the artifact.
Final digital artifact
The final
product will be a comic in which students demonstrate that they know the period
of time very well. They have to dress their character appropriately, choose the
best settings for each time (metal tools for Metal Age, stones in the Neolithic
period…), and make a good and suitable story…
At the end of this post you can find an example of the artifact they
have to make with PIXTON. You can find it also here.
Only tools
Kids will use
some digital tools to accomplish this challenge:
1. Google Docs: They have to share
their ideas with their partner to put them in common and create a draft of the
story they want to share.
2. Pixton: They have to create a comic
using this useful tool.
3. Blogger: They have to paste their
comics in their learning diaries explaining the whole process to the rest of
the classroom. Moreover, they have to make a self-reflection of the activity.
How can
relate this activity with the ESL TIMES Project?
I believe
that my task is deeply in accordance with The ESL project because their main
goal is to work on the four skills. For that reason, I have chose one activity
in which students develop listening, reading, writing and speaking skills as I
have already explained in that post.
Besides, our
students are going to use ICT for learning because they will do a comic to show
their work to their classmates.
Finally, as
kids will work in pairs, we are promoting another ESL TIMES project´s goal that
is collaborative work between students.
When I was
looking at their web, one of their ideal posts is the use of comics, so I think
this could be a good alternative to flat activities.
Finally, here is a sample of the final artifact students have to make for fulfill this challenge. I hope your coments and suggestions!!
