Friday, 10th July 2015

NOTES FOR ICT FOR LITERATURE SESSION

We explore some websites where we can find activities to be done with students.

*Akinator: There is a genie to whom you can answer questions. After these questions, the genie is supposed to guess who the character is.

* Wordle:  It is an application used to create “word clouds”. It is a good application for mapping, guessing or revision exercises. Or we can use it simply for “nice” things, for example, with the names of our students.

Some teachers mention some other similar programs, such as WordItOut or Tagxedo.

* Poster Maker: We can create a personalized poster. We include a photograph. Then we can choose the type and colour of the font. We can add a tittle, taglines, credits,…

* Fakebook: We can create a “fake” page for Facebook.

*Teachertube: We can share instructional videos.

* Into the book: It is a page mainly for primary, but it can be used with the youngest ones in Secondary. It is a pedagogical site with great ideas we can use in class.

After exploring all the pages, we write in the blog some ideas we think of to use in our classes.

LEARNING MATERIAL

1. In groups, we discuss about what makes learning good and effective to work with.

- The layout: attractive, visuals, design,…

- Topics connected to the interests and needs of our student. They should be up to date. We agree that the appearance of “celebrities” in books is not very convenient, as there may be changes in their lives at the moment of using the books..

- It should cater for differentiation: we should try to pay attention to the paces of our students.

- The use of multi media resources is important, too.

- It must the adapted to the ages of the students.

- It should have a clear font, sometimes it is too small and difficult to read.

- There must be a variety of activities.

- They must include activities permitting students to be creative and collaborative, i. e. projects.

2. Individual quiz : statements about reading activities. Sharing of ideas. Everybody agrees in including prediction activities, allow students space to react to the text, don’t get students too hung up to understanding all the details, and try to relate the text to learners’ lives.  We totally disagree about some points, for example, start the lesson getting students to look for difficult words.

Introduction to Poetry, by Billy Collins

Activities on the poem:

1.  Read the poem

2. Read the poem a second time, and mark J if you like, L if you dislike or ? if you do not understand something.

3. In groups, share your ideas and see if any of your partners can explain the meaning of what you did not understand.

HOW TO EXPLOIT A TEXT

We are given two different texts. In groups, we design some activities to exploit it. Sharing of ideas.

DIFFERENT TOOLS FOR “CHARACTERISATION”

Teachers have to teach “contents”, but to evaluate comprehension of any content, we can use different tools. A skillful teacher has to have a lot of tools so that he/she can match the best tool to the best subject, that is, the “optimal match”.

We have a look at three different tools and refer to three different texts we have seen in the course to discuss which would be the optimal match to each of the texts. These tools are:

-          Character map, concentrating in the features of one character (appearance, behaviour, personality;…)

-          Table with literal, inferential and evaluative comprehension questions on several characters.

-          “Changes” table, focused on the changes of one character along the story.

GRAPHIC NOVELS

Activities on graphic novels were suggested:

-          Prediction activities.

-          Description of the characters, scenes, …

-          Representation of a scene.

Finally, we were invited to make comments to any of the activities in the blog.