María in Spain has just sent in this amazing ICT / English project she’s done with Monsters & Robots
The best thing is you get to see what the kids have actually done, check out the links at the end!
An ICT project for Monsters / Robots and body parts (and maybe shapes!)Task # 1. Draw it. Ask your pupils for a picture about a monster. They can draw and paint with their crayons… or use a drawing software package (we use MSPaint and also Drawing for Children; the last one is free).
Task # 2. Upload it. If they use sheets and crayons, you can scan them. Then, upload the pictures to your class webpage or wiki (e.g. http://www.wikispaces.com/ ) I create a page for each pupil, so they can’t disturb each other with edits.
Task # 3. Ask your student for a description about their monster. They can work alone or in twos/threes… Depending on their ages, they try a complete sentence (“It’s got five arms and hands”) or a partial sentence (“five arms, five hands”).
Task # 4. If they are old enough, I let them to record their voices reading their texts. If they can’t yet, I use a text-to-speech online machine (like vozme.com or Yaki-to-me) to get the mp3. And we upload it, close to the picture and the description.
Task # 5. Everybody introduce every monster/robot to their classmates. They can explain or read their texts, and their mates can help them if they need. Then, we can check the explanations, testing the mp3 recorders.
My final task. When they finish the work, I put together every pupils’ pages to show them in a unique and common page (using [include] or depending on the system of the wiki). So, they can see everything at home.
And here your are the result: https://letsticenglish.wikispaces.com/0708-TIC-Body
This is the way I do my bit and thank you all your helpful work for me and my students.
I hope this could be useful for you!!! (And forgive my mistakes).
María
Thanks María, I think it’s a brilliant use of technology (something where regular schools are failing kids so badly!) and English.
What do you think?
Maria,
thanks so much for this brilliant idea, and for all those links.
I didn’t know about all those links, and am sure they will help me a lot.
I have a dozen of sheets I’m still looking for time to get the kids speaking on them, but this will solve the problem.
And the robots are all so cute.
Ohoh, I thought I’d have a day of housekeeping??!
I’d like to have a song that begins with Sunday as the first day of the week. I know Mexico begins their first day of the week on Monday and maybe other countries do as well, but I teach English in the U.S. and we always begin our week with Sunday.
Maybe for your third Days of the Week song you could do that?????
I loved the monster and robots made by Maria’s students!
What a great idea! I just reviewed the body parts on Halloween with skeleton soup (by the way the kids love it!) and this is a great project to do speaking activities using “have got” ,”feelings (happy sad angy)” “I like” (apples,animals etc).
About the days of the its not bad…but I I agree with what Margit says in the forum. I use the same song she does and I do sillly gestures to go with each day..the kids to see me act silly and the follow the lead even the shiest one. Then I play the bomb game with it (it explodes when a child names the wrong day. I also use this method with months of the year)
Have a great day everyone!