April, 10th - STATION 3
The activities in this station deal with Roald Dahl's short story "Mrs. Bixby and the Colonel's Coat".
We, thinking as teachers, were supposed to classify the activities proposed into three different groups depending on the moment we would use the activity and this is our classification taking into account that "pre-teaching" is the teaching learners need before an activity to get involved into it, "actual teaching" implies the main activity and "post-teaching" is the teaching that helps students reflect on what they have learnt and what they still don't know:
PRE-TEACHING
d) Discussion:
This is a warming-up activity because we want our students to activate their previous knowledge of the topic, the author, etc.
f) Think pair-share:
Students have to predict the plot of a story taking into account headlines/titles. They also have to make comments on their reflections with the rest of the class.
ACTUAL TEACHING
c) Analysis:
It is a reading comprehension activity. Students have to find out and justify if the information in the statements is true or false.
POST-TEACHING
a) Writing:
Once they have read the short story, students have to carry on writing a different ending for the story: in the end, Mrs. Bixby's coat is still in the pawnshop and she is planning a strategy to get it back.
b) Discussion:
Students discuss the real ending of the story and what will happen next.
e) Role play:
Students work in pairs and they have to perform Mr and Mrs Bixby's conversation by the end of the story.
Do you feel like acting?
The idea of representing a scene is really attractive because it is not the traditional way of acting, but a new one I'm sure they will like more. Maybe students feel uncomfortable and shy about the idea of acting in front of the rest of the class but, nowadays, it is plenty of helpful online tools through wich students created avatars and write whatever dialogue they like.
This is ours... Hope you like it!
I guess that the representation of the scene can be done by both students and the teacher:
- Students can represent the scene as a sort of comprehension activity of the shortstory or as a writing activity. It can be useful to make students write: they can explain the scene using their own words, they can describe what they see in the video/images, etc.
- The teacher can show a scene to the students as a pre-teaching activity or post-teaching activity: students have to talk about what they think it is going to happen next or what happened before that scene, for example.
The idea of sharing the scene/comic with the rest of the class through Edmodo or Fakebook is interesting because students use this kind of applications and social netweorks everyday. Students can see each others representations and give their opinions, this will create a sort of debate and interaction between the members of the class. It is important to create a good environment in order to learn, in my opinion. Finally, I think that it would be a great idea to connect their English or Literature lessons to their day to day. If they see the connection of the classes with their daily life, maybe they feel more motivated and their interest on the subject rises.
Are wordclouds useful for students?
Wordclouds can be used in many different ways.
- As a pre-teaching activity:
- The teacher can provide some words and the students have to create a sentence which contains that particular word or the teacher can present the difficult words within the history to prepare students before reading the text, for instance.
- As a post-teaching activity:
- Some of the words that have been previously studied are provided in the wordcloud and students have to crreate a writing using all of them or, at least, some.
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This is the idea we have had in relation to the shortstory "Mrs. Bixby and the Colonel's Coat". The wordcloud can be used as a sort of assessment for students to Foster writing and stimulating them to flow their creativity. The activitiy would consist in doing a writing using the words given in the wordcloud patchwork to build up a posible denouement for the story. Here is the tool they need to use to write their own ending for the story of Mr. and Mrs. Bixby:
This station has been an interesting one because it shows how teachers can enter the world of adolescents. Thus, it is not so difficult to make literatura appealing, attractive and funny: students can participate, they can choose what they prefer doing... the important thing is that literature and new technologies can live in perfect harmony!
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