We continue with... Session 2 (part 2)

Hi there!!

This post will be dedicated to the second part of session 2 in which we carried out the activities from Station 3.

Station 3

This station was fully devoted to “Mrs. Bixby and the Colonel’s coat”. We were provided with different activity proposals which had to be divided into pre-teaching, actual teaching or post-teaching activities. In order to take our decision, we bore in mind whether the questions demanded information from the actual reading or they could be carried out without a reading, so based on that, we considered, for example, the discussion about the author, Roald Dahl, and the think pair-share to be at the beginning so as to set the story in a context and relate it to other author’s works; or the exercise to find words and expressions to be in the actual teaching since it demanded a concrete reading comprehension.

After that, there was a more practical activity in which we had to represent a scene of our choice using some digital tools in which comics can be created. It was quite exciting for us at the beginning but as we looked into the provided webpages we let down. They were Goanimate and Bitstrips, both with very limited use unless you pay for it, so we found this fact so harmful for our students, since we don’t want them to spend money or have them in front of something that incites to do it. 

In addition, we considered that both pages were not so flexible because they would imply to create a new account out of our personal account, and that means again an inconvenient for our students’ use of digital tools, going against their personal privacy. However, I tried to do a comic scene with the limited uses that Goanimate offers without charge, just for you to see an example; for this, I chose the part of the story at the end when Mr. Bixby and his wife are in the dentist and he wants to uncover her from her lie about the pawnbroker ticket she supposedly found by chance: “Mrs. Bixby and the Colonel’scoat” comic scene.

Regarding to this comic scene, we were also asked to consider the possibility to post it in an educational webpage called Kidblog; my teamwork didn’t consider this option because as we decided not to create the comic, we skipped question 3, but I’ve done it by my own and I find this webpage very interesting. With Kidblog students can publish posts and participate in academic discussions within a secure classroom blogging community, and that is because teachers maintain complete control over student blogs and user accounts. I also like it because it is not necessary to create a new account, you can access it as a google user, so this is very functional. I have created a teacher’s blog were students can follow me and participate on discussions, and I have posted on it “Mrs. Bixby and the Colonel’s coat” comic scene. You can see my Kidblog’s page here.

Finally, we had to create a word cloud image using Woodle and consider if we would use it in class. Everyone in my team considered this tool very beneficial and witty to use it either in pre-teaching or in post-teaching. It can be used to provide the context of an activity, as a brainstorm to learn new vocabulary or to highlight the most important words found in a text and summarize it as well. So, here you have our word-cloud, thought to sum up “Mrs. Bixby and the Colonel’s coat” short story using key words that can provide meaningful information about the story. 

Cooperative teamwork final conclusion

As a final thought about the work we performed as a cooperative team, I would say that it is necessary a great implication from all the members of the team so as to achieve the intended goal, in our case, the fulfillment of the 3 station activities. We started quite motivated, each member assuming his/her role as an important element of the group, but as the time went by some members had to assume the role of others because they were not so much integrated. Anyway, it has been a great experience for me, I have learnt another way to work in contrast to the traditional way, with the use of active learning, cooperative and collaborative learning and digital tools. They make students to help each other, socialize and get responsibilities so, in my opinion, active learning provides very important sources of motivation, social-affective relationships and personal knowledge. For all these reasons, I will keep on studying about these methods and strategies for sure. 

This has been all for now, see you soon with more active tasks to perform!!!! 

Session 2 (part 1)

Hi people!

Today, I’m going to explain you what we did in session 2. Our group got together and we split the class into 2 parts: first part for the activities in the Station 2, and second part for Station 3. In this post, I'll explain Station 2, and Station 3 will be explained in the next one.

Station 2

This station was centered again on both short stories we saw in class, “Lamb to theslaughter” and “Mrs. Bixby and the Colonel’s coat”. In this station we were asked to get into a simulation, a learning strategy that consists of a given-task which requires participants to resolve a problem of some kind using their own life experience and character, that is, they do not have to “act” a role, because the role a person has to play is not specified.

In this way, a disaster was presented: a major environmental disaster was going to happen in the earth and it would bring an end to all humankind. Only 7 people could survive in a deserted island in the Pacific because it would be not affected by the disaster. We, as a group, had to decide which 7 people would be saved and which must stay behind, so, in order to perform this task, we had to work with the collaborative strategy, that is, all the members as a group had to decide and agree on a solution.

As you can see on the worksheet, we had 12 characters from the short stories studied, so we must come to an agreement on why save one or another. We had a deep discussion on the matter, it was quite interesting because we first consider as an important fact their profession but when we had more or less all the survivors, we realised that we didn’t have chosen almost any women. We changed our mind and included some more women since without them the humankind was not possible to procreate so it would die out. Finally, we came to an agreement and designed a glogster to present it: Salvation Island– The Chosen.

After doing the previous work, we didn’t have much time to finish the other activity we were required to do. We were asked to create a smart card in which present the island, and this could be an example I made by my own:

The fact that we had to choose the 7 survivors was also related to more significant aspects, as prejudices and human rights. It was certain that at the beginning we had some prejudices towards the homosexual, the priest or the top model, but finally we decided to include them into the list because these features were not really important, the significant aspects were that the homosexual was a SAS officer, familiar with surviving under extreme conditions, the priest has experience in agriculture and the top model was a young girl ready to procreate, so they could contribute to the group situation very positive qualities.

Moreover, the task included a webpage were we can give a little help to poor people (freerice.com), so in this way, we could help the characters of the short stories to survive from the environmental disaster but at the same time we could also help real people. Here was used the service-learning strategy, a strategy which uses what students learn in the classroom to solve real-life problems. In this case it was in an insignificant way, but service learning can be related in a considerable way into the classroom, bringing learning to life (for further information you can visit: National Service-Learning Clearinghouse).

Finally, the task also included some questions for us to think about the possibilities of use of the digital tools: Glogster to create the glog, and Kerproof to create the smart card. It was interesting for me again, since I could grasp some ideas from my classmates about the uses of the digital tools in the different parts of the teaching process.

So, here you have the station 2 explanation, see you soon!!!