Usoa Sol: Mini-projects, maxi-learning

EIM-AFC III Multingual Teachers' Day

 

Usoa Sol: Mini-projects, maxi-learning

photo credit: @FerreresMaria

Usoa Sol is an EFL teacher to secondary school students. As well as a prolífic presenter, trainer and materials developer, she is also vice president of APAC – Associació de Professors i Professores d'Anglès de Catalunya.

In this highly practical workshop, Usoa walked us through four mini-projects she’d carried out with her students in Escola Sant Gregori in Barcelona.

 

She introduced the session by pointing out that there are three key elements to bear in mind when designing a project:

AIMS – Why are you doing this project? What is the purpose? What will students learn? What will the end product be?

STAGES – planning and realisation: What are the different phases? What will students do in each one? How long will each phase take?

ASSESSMENT – How will it be assessed? What criteria will be used? While we shouldn’t over-emphasise this element, it is necessary to be transparent about how their work will be evaluated.

Usoa then showed us examples of her projects. At all stages, she provided clear instructions and directions, including links when necessary.


Project 1: The Happy Couple

In this project, students wrote versions of a story about ‘The Happy Couple’ in a comic strip format using the app toondoo. The aims of this activity are:

- To design a comic strip. Classmates will vote for the best one (peer pressure as incentive!)
- Use real-life, functional language to talk about preferences
- Use English in a create way via a creative medium
- Develop digital competence
- Work cooperatively (this activity is ideal for pairwork, as only two students can work on it at any one time)

As an introduction, learners predicted and wrote their version of the beginning of a story based on the words in a word cloud, created using Wordle. They then compared this with the actual story and wrote the next section. See the task instructions here:

 

 

Usoa gives step-by-step instructions to her learners about how to work through the task, e.g. in this case.

1. Go to www.toondoo.com
2. Log in (top right-hand corner) – give user name and password you have assigned.
3. Go to the Tools tab and click on Toondoo maker.
4. Select your layout (minimum two scenes).
5. Choose a background.
6. Choose at least two characters.
7. Select the type of speech bubble and type in your text.
8. When you’ve finished, go to ‘Start Here’ on the main menu and choose ‘Save’.
9. Give your comic strip a title and choose the option ‘Share it with friends’. Then type in (teacher’s) email address and click on ‘Publish’.

Usoa’s tip – create an account with a username like iloveenglish (all lower case for easier access) – as students are using this quite often, the message will eventually stick!

Summary of the stages of this mini-project:

She made sure her learners were familiar with the criteria for evaluation before they started the project:

Project 2: Alien Invasion
In this project, Usoa asked her learners to write a film script and create an online digital movie using dvolver.

To introduce this project, Usoa showed the group an example of one of the digital movies created using the app. They watched the clip, did a memory quiz and then watched again.

Then Usoa asked them if they could do better, and created a sense of challenge. In the slide below, you can see the task description for this project (with apologies for obscuring some of the points with my deficient photography skills). Notice that Usoa also specifies a language aim, e.g. focus on future forms.

Usoa showed her students the tool and how to use it in class, but then the learners go home and put in (a lot of hours of) work on their own. The assessment criteria given to students in this case were the following:

- Script (accuracy and content)
- Film (creativity)
- Attitude and participation during the project

The films were uploaded onto the class wiki so they could see and comment on each other’s work.

Usoa’s tip: use the ‘three stars and a wish’ format for peer feedback (inspired by José Picardo’s feedback technique): 3 positive comments and something to work on.

Advantages of working with Dvolver

The film voted best by the group was projected in class.


Project 3: Iconic buildings

The aims of this mini-project included

- CLIL: combining English with History, Geography, Art etc.
- Promoting online research skills.
- Language focus: past tenses and connectors.
- Working on digital competence – using Prezi and Google Drive

Using www.animoto.com , an app which turns photos into professional-looking vídeos, Usoa shows a set of ten pictures of famous buildings (Sagrada Família, Brandenburg Gate, the Parthenon, etc.). With pens up we (as the students) watched without making notes and after tried to write down as many as we could remember.

Usoa’s tip: If you haven’t got a set of mini whiteboards, use ordinary plastic folders with a sheet of white paper inside. Write with a board pen and wipe off with a tissue.

As their project, the students researched the building of their choice, filled in a fact file and designed a presentation (using Prezi). The oral presentation was given peer feedback and evaluation.


Project 4: Your 15 minutes of fame

The objective of this project is for the students to write and present a text about their hobbies. To introduce the task, Usoa shared her hobby with us – Lindy Hop. Here are the stages of the task:

Usoa used the following questions to elicit key vocabulary and language and guide the learners  towards a structure for the text.

Usoa stipulated that the text needs to include illustrations to demonstrate what the learners are describing. One of the most positive benefits of this project, in her experience, is that it contains an element of role reversal. Your learners are actually teaching you something, which they find very motivating. As a teacher, it’s also a chance to experience things from the other side.

Project summary

Here is a link to Usoa’s wiki, where you’ll find the whole presentation, as well as links to the tools presented, real students’ examples and tutorials:

https://bit.ly/2ANPW6r

Many thanks to Usoa for her help in putting together this blog post.