Recently, I came across two different blog posts that have opened up a number of possibilities for my classroom. The first post was from Martina Bex; she was discussing the endless possibilities of using the Fan N Pick activity, a Kagan strategy, in the classroom. The second post was from Alice Keeler; she was sharing how google slides can be used cooperatively in the classroom. Alice’s post got me thinking about using more technology in my classes, while Martina’s post gave me the concrete idea of how to do so.
Here is the result of the inspiration. With a few minutes of class remaining one day, we began the storyasking process and outlined all of our characters. This was as far as we got. No plot, no conflict. Just the creation of 4 characters that would be in our story. That evening, I went home and created a google slideshow (here) that included instructions and a number of slides - enough for each student. My goal was to have students search the Internet for images that could represent the characters we described in class. For example, one of our characters, Greg, was a 9,000 year old vampire and father of 2. Their task was to find one image of one family member. When students arrived to class the following day, they were instructed to visit google classroom and open the slideshow I had posted there. I reviewed the directions with them, assigned each a number corresponding to the slide they were to work on, and gave them a time limit to accomplish the task. The results were AMAZING!! They LOVED seeing everyone else’s submissions in live time. Once the work time was over, I instructed everyone to close their Chromebooks and the real work (disguised as fun) began. Since I have classes of about 20, there were 4-5 images of Greg as well as the other three family members from our story. For each family member, we looked at all the images that represented him/her while I circled each one (hair color, attitude, etc.). We then voted on which image would represent each family member in our story. As a follow through, when students came to class the next day, I had a typed version of their story, complete with the images they had selected to represent the characters. The students loved seeing the images they had chosen to represent each character of our story. They were also more enthusiastic and engaged with reading the story with the addition of their images. As I mentioned earlier, Martina’s post gave me the inspiration for this idea, but it also got me thinking about how else I could use google slides collaboratively in my classroom. Order of events List 4-5 events that could be placed in logical order. Create a “master” slide that has the events listed, but out of order. Ask students to make a copy of this slide and rearrange the events so they are in chronological order. If you are familiar with Carol Gaab, she uses a Reading Action Chain that is requires one to sequence events, but allows for a “multiple chronology.” This would be great to use collaboratively so that everyone can see all of the various chronologies that they can come up with. Follow up option: add details to each event and create an original classroom story. Describe an image Choose an image and have students describe the image. They could do so by listing 3 adjective or writing a set number of sentences about the image. Follow up option: teach students how to combine simple sentences to create more complex sentences. Translate Ask students to translate (L1 to L2 or vice versa) a few sentences. Yes, they can all translate the same sentences. When used as a warm-up or quick activity, you can see - in live time - which students are translating quickly, meaning acquisition of language, and which don’t start until others have posted, meaning acquisition has perhaps not been completely attained. Follow up option: pop up grammar explanations. Details Ask students to recall two details from a story you have been working with. Oftentimes, if they see what someone else has written, they will choose a different detail to share. (sidenote: When I ask students to do this on paper, I get very little sentence variation, but using this method, I get a lot of variety.) Follow up option: “before or after.” Ask students if “Event A” happened before or after “Event B.” Personal Question and Answer Ask students a few personal questions and have them respond. Follow up option: an extended PQA session Enjoy collaborating!
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Jessie Oelke
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