Activity: Make a Story

http://fog.ccsf.edu/~lfried/activity/makeastory.html

6TH of Primary                         Age: 11-12                              Organization: individually, pairs, groups

Aims: In this task pupils will develop the knowledge and skills that help them to say I am able to:

- Produce a tale using specific vocabulary in a correct way

- Have a polite debate with my classmates

- Discuss my own point of view

- Reach an agreement in group

- Use ICT for academic purposes.

Essential Materials: laptops

Our lesson implementation proposal:

Since we understand this web activity as something incomplete because it should be just a part of a bigger one, we have decided to start by proposing how we would implement it into the classroom in order to make a better and more complete analysis of it.

Firstly, the teacher explains her/his pupils what they have to do with their laptops to get the web page which they are working with. Individually, pupils have to fill in the boxes of the web application in order to create their own story. After finishing it and clicking "my story" hyperlink and once every pupil has his/her own story, the students will share them with a companion (chosen/ elected freely), and create a new story in pairs. Pair work is important because it increases the amount of student language practicing the 5 skills and their use and improvement of their superior cognitive abilities through reading their stories and sharing them outloud, understanding and listening the partner's, analyzing them and speaking about what to take off and what they should include to create the new one and, finally, writing it. Of course, these previous things can only happen thanks to the use of social and interactive skills, cooperating, reaching agreements, and handling the rules of the discourse either when talking or writing. It will be a close pair work. After working in pairs, we will work in groups and create another new story. Group work increases the amount of student talking time and the opportunities for students to really use the language. Besides having the same benefits previously mentioned for pair- work, it is also more relaxing than that and it provides more chances to solve problems.

Comments and suggestions

This task is a fun and interactive way for children to learn. It keeps children focused on practicing and consolidating what they learn. The production is the fun part. It gives students the chance to use their new learned material freely and openly. The production activity will be done individually, in pairs and in groups. The main goals of these groupings are that they try to promote oral production, since all of them are oriented towards communicative competence. Successful speaking activities are those in which learners talk a lot, participation is even interactive, motivation is high and language is an acceptable level as students are encouraged to use English/ FL.

This task should provide pupils reason for speaking. And it will be even more successful when we combine different arrangements such as practice individually, practice in pairs, small groups and bigger groups. Accordingly, the distribution of the space will change in several occasions. At first we will use the traditional classroom arrangement, which can be suitable for working individually with the laptop. Later, pupils will start working in pairs and after that they will have to change into groups, where we should use the modular classroom arrangement, which tends to increase communication between students but we have to be very careful because it also makes interaction with the teacher more difficult. Hence, the teacher will walk around the class making sure that everyone has what they need to work and providing language support when pupils demand it or resolving doubts.

During the activities the teacher will play several roles:

- He/ She will be an organizer, when arranging the way students will group and the activities they will have to develop.

- She/ He will be an informer, when providing the information needed (e.g. the webside where the activity is uploaded).

- He/ She will be a controller, when supervising and controlling everything is fine in the classroom.

- She/ He will be a motivator, when encouraging students, using motivating materials, providing positive feedback, etc…

- He/ She will be a guide, when guiding the pupils to perform the task correctly.

- She/ He will be a corrector, when helping them to make corrections and improvements of the mistakes that are considered serious.

- He/ She will be an assessor/evaluator, when observing pupils from different points of view in order to evaluate them once the task is over.

- And finally, she/ he will be a conductor, when introducing the parts of the lesson and the materials that are going to be used. The teacher should make sure students understand the purpose of the activity.

Nevertheless, once the activity begins, English should be used as much as possible without interfering to correct mistakes. Errors should be treated casually by simple repeating it correctly without necessarily  highlighting them. Finally, praise should always be offered for effort regardless of accuracy achieved.

With this activity pupils develop the different kills:

- Oral skills: Listening (e.g. at the beginning, when the teacher begins his/her tale as an example so that the pupils can understand what they have to do or when listening a classmate's story) and Speaking (when they have to discuss in pair or in groups the story, add elements from the different composition and arrive to a common end) and Oral interaction.

- Written skills (when they make the story, they read it, continue it and invent a new end, whether it would be alone, in pairs or in groups).

The activity will be pretty motivating and focused on the students. This task is a good example of a learned-centered approach, which requires students to be active and responsible participants in their own learning. The relationship between learners is more equal, helping each other and promoting collaborative attitudes through interaction. Therefore, it promotes the development of the communicative competences.

As in a learner-centered approach, education is focused on developing the students’intrinsic motivation to learn and helping them discover their own learning styles, understand their own motivation and acquire effective study skills that will provide them an all life-long learning. Learning is thus a form of personal development that will enhance the existential, skills and know-how, and ability to learn competences pointed at by the CEFR. In addition, this activity will promote a holistic pupils development through promoting other competences established by the LEA for the curriculum of Primary Education in Andalusia such as digital competence and information processing, social and citizen, cultural and artistic, autonomy and personal initiative competences, as well as attitudes to learn all life-long in an autonomous way. 

Interactive whiteboards and laptops in the classroom can add a new dimension to teaching and routine lessons. The use of ICTs gives us the possibility to connect with our pupils’ likes and needs. They are a good option, because our pupils are part of a new generation born surround of an environment where technology is everywhere. ICT activities provide lots of possibilities and can be adapted to the different educational levels or needs; they are pretty motivating for pupils (they will learn a FL in a funny way). The ICT material could be another way to cater for different learning styles of our students.

More ideas: As teachers we could try to cater for diversity: if we give each child a piece of paper to draw on. They will write one or two sentences about it under each one. Later they can stick the pictures on the walls of the classroom. Visual learners’ memory is connected to visual images, using them will improve their knowledge; kinesthetic learner`s will also be taken into account because the movement that implies drawing could help them to focus on the learning activity. During the activity, the teacher could put on classical music in order to create a relaxed atmosphere, like in the Suggestopedia. Using music we will work especially on one of the eight intelligences of Gardner, the musical one.

Regarding to assessment, we propose pupils to fill out the following self-assessment sheet.

Assessment for individual monitoring of the process: reflection and evaluation.
Pupils fill this information at the end of the task. Make a story.
1. What have we done in this task?			2. What do I like most?			3. What could I change?     How?
4. Did I do it well?			5. What have I learned and what can I do as a result?
6. What remains to be done, worked or studied?
Self-assessment   TALE TASK  I am able to..................
1. a. Give information about b. Answer information about c. Understand information about		my tale		1 Yes, very good.	2 Yes, I am able, but I need to improve		3 No, I am not able. I need to work harder.
2. a. Give information about b. Answer information about c. Understand information about		my agreement		1 Yes, very good.	2 Yes, I am able, but I need to improve		3 No, I am not able. I need to work harder.
3. a. Give information about b. Answer information about c. Understand information about		my disagreement		1 Yes, very good.	2 Yes, I am able, but I need to improve.		3 No, I am not able. I need to work harder.
4. Tell/Make		a short story		1 Yes, very good.	2 Yes, I am able, but I need to improve.		3 No, I am not able. I need to work harder.
5. Understand		a storytelling		1 Yes, very good.	2 Yes, I am able, but I need to improve.		3 No, I am not able. I need to work harder.