WORLD BOOK DAY - A COLLABORATIVE READING IN CONFINEMENT
Even while living in confinement, we have to find the way to work with our students the different skills they'll need in the future. This is one of the reasons I've prepared some material to work reading for pleasure in a collaborative way. These are the steps of our task for this week in our Google Classroom:
I've chosen two different adapted novels according to my group levels.
I've divided the pages into the students in each group. So they know which pages have to read aloud.
Some tools and apps for revising their pronunciation and entonation have been provided.
The task consists in recording a video of themselves while reading aloud the excerpts that have been assigned to them.
After that, they'll send me the videos and we'll have a collaborative reading of the same book.
When I've posted the task on Classroom this morning, I've also included an evaluation guide, so they know how I'm going to grade their readings. I've only considered three criteria to grade this task, with three levels each one:
The task deadline is on Friday, so they have five days to prepare properly, the part of the book they have to read and record.
Finally, I've given to them some recomendations on films about these novels, and I've invited them to participate in a Kahoot Challenge, about Literature in English:
Taken from http://www.yalsa.ala.org/thehub/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/scary-stories-for-halloween.jpg
HALLOWEEN: LET´S CREATE SOME COLLECTIVE STORIES
Are you bored of working with the same activities in the classroom every Halloween?. One of the ideas that works for me is to create collective stories. I give students some prompts so they can choose one of them and start making up different stories. What they like the most is working in groups, so the story is written between all of them.
Some of the prompts you can use are:
You
have had a strange feeling for a few days now. Today you’ve been
feeling very energetic and tired at the same time. Your arm has been itching. It’s
killing you now. You look at your forearm and see it for the first
time. Something
is moving under your skin.
You
open your eyes to complete darkness. The
last thing you remember is the dog running out into the road, the
brightness of the day light, and your car headed off the road. Then you realize that you are hanging upside down.
Your
driving on a country road. It is late at night. You are far from
home. You realize, as you check your mirrors, there is a man you do
not know, hiding on the floor of your back seat.
It’s
3 am. Your room is dark, but you can see that there is someone,
standing at the foot of your bed. He or
she is wearing a clown costume, and it has a knife.
At
3 am you wake up out of a very sound sleep. You hear the ice cream
truck outside of your house. And you realize, the sound that woke you
up, was the sound of your 4 year old daughter.
You
are running late. After quickly getting ready, you rush out of the
house and to your car door. A sound gets your attention, there is a
fully grown male lion, just a few feet from you. Your
car door is still locked.
The
worst cramps you have ever had set in on your biceps. It came on so suddenly. You
drop to your knees, looking through your bedroom window, you see the
full moon. You hear a little voice behind you, “Mommy?”
You
are frozen with fear. You open your eyes, the tent is dark. But you
can feel the heavy weight of a large tarantula covering one eye.
Through the other eye you can see the shadows, from the moonlight, of
other spiders covering the tent.
The
man leans into you. There is a dark red almost black color to the
whites of his eyes. He is so close his nose is almost touching your
nose. You can feel his breath when he says, “We all have it in
here. We
are all infected."
Pic taken from https://static.anuevayork.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/19195739/Co%CC%81mo-celebrar-el-Halloween-en-Nueva-York.jpg
In my last post, CLICK HERE to read it, I dealt with an activity in which our students have to create stories from images or different prompts.
Today, I'd like to set some important aspects about this kind of activity, and analyse why storytelling is an ideal resource to develop and improve EFL students' skills.
Why is STORYTELLING such a amazing activity?
Taken from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cr7-v2FdQw0
Telling stories in our digital era has turned into a powerful tool for our EFL classroom. There are many benefits which justify the use of this unlimited resource:
It provides students with motivation, fun, curiosity, and favourable skills for the learning process.
It helps us establish connections between contents, and also organise information.
It promotes a great amount of values to be worked on in the classroom.
It encourages the critical thought from story reflections.
It develops social skills such as the active listening and empathy.
It allows students to pay more attention and to get a higher concentration level.
It generates a link between the teacher and students, by facilitating a more fluent communication and bidirectional interaction.
It contributes to a relaxed and participative work environment.
It stimulates students' creativity and imagination.
It causes an emotional involment which allows messages to be interpreted faster and in a deeper way.
There are many websites that can help us prepare a storytelling activity. However, I've listed what I do to make sure the activity to be a succesful one:
From https://medium.com/
BUT HOW?
Draw a grid on the board and then write one word in each box. The more complicated you want the activity, the bigger the grid will be. You can use vocabulary to be reviewed together with new words. Try to include a mixture of words of any category to help students enrich the text.
Let students know that the activity goal is to create a story using all the words on the board. They can use whatever they want, but make sure they include all the written words.
The first time you do this kind of activity you ca use a model to be followed.
If students are high level, they will be able to generate their own vocabulary grid from textbook or classnotes.
This is an ideal activity for pairing.
WHAT ELSE?
Students can vote on the best stories at the end of the lesson, labelling different categories, such as
the most creative story;
the most interesting story;
the funniest one;
the best-told story, etc.
They can also rewrite other groups' stories as a radio drama.
These can be recorded to be published as postcats.
Or be performed as a short play.
Image taken from https://www.burkert.com/en/Contact/Contact/Feedback
EVALUATION AND FEEDBACK
After listening all their stories, I like to give students feedback on every aspect of the activity. I always write down anything they have to improve or correct, regarding, not only formal part of language, but also any aspect of performing.
They get some notes from me after the first exposition of the story, so they can correct any aspect before the final recording or performing to an audience outside the class.
I hope you and your students enjoy the experience as much as I do!!!!
Image from https://bactheatre.org/classes/oaklandwinterPP
Reading is a perfect activity to learn vocabulary, but why not to play to be writers o strorytellers?
Recently, I've been brooding on how to make you, my students, create your own stories, and finally, I've come across a website which I've loved from the first time I saw it.
So, definitely, it was love at first sight!!!!
Image from http://www.stickpng.com/es/img/iconos-logotipos-emojis/emoticonos/emoticon-enamorada
This activitiy can be done to practise both, written or spoken language.
