Chinese Whisper with Whatsapp

The more I use Whatsapp in class, the more I realize how rich this tool is.

Last week, I tried a very simple activity with my Basic Students who had just learned how to express themselves in the Past.

Have you ever played Chinese Whisper with your students? It is an activity where Student A whispers a message to Student B who then tries to whisper the same message to Student C, so on and so forth. Or another one where the first student says "Last weekend, I went to the shopping centre", then the next student repeats the first sentence and adds one more sentence? We adapted these activities using the recording feature of Whatsapp.

These are the steps we followed:

1. I recorded the first sentence saying "Last weekend, I went to the cinema."
2. Then, I asked students to make their recordings for homework. Before they made their recordings, they would have to listen to the last recording, repeat all the sentences and add one more.

It was amazing how fast they started making their recordings as they knew the later they did it, the longer their sentence would be.

listen to ‘Chinese Whisper with Whatsapp’ on audioBoom

3. In the following class, I asked all the students to get their cell phones ( the ones who didn't have a device, sat with someone who had one) and listen to the last recording, which was the longest one, in order to write it down. It was great to see how involved they were listening to the sentences, repeating them, until they were able to write everything down. Similarly to Chinese Whisper, the last student to record the sentences ended up getting a few words wrong as he misunderstood what the previous student had said. As a result, students had to go back and listen to previous recordings to see where the mistake started. We heard quite a few laughs.

4. After most students had written all the sentences down, I asked them to dictate the sentences to me as I wrote them on the board. I used the opportunity to correct mistakes and practice the right pronunciation of words and verbs in the past.

ANALYZING THE ACTIVITY:

In the initial phase of the activity, students had to create their own sentences with verbs in the past. As more sentences were used, they had to think of different verbs and their collocations to make new sentences. They needed to take special care pronouncing the sentences clearly so that their classmates would understand their sentence and continue the game. The longer the sentence became, it was necessary for them to write the words down in order to make the recording. Step 3 was a great way to practice listening and writing again. In a way, it was a dictation created by students themselves. During the feedback moment, I tried to focus on the right forms of the verbs they had chosen and their collocations.

Helping students develop speaking with Whatsapp

I normally teach teenagers and this semester I wanted to have students record  the mini dialogues they normally create in class. These recordings apart from being an opportunity for students to practise speaking and listening could help me observe their progress.

I've been focussing on CAN DO objectives, so close to the end of each class I ask pairs of students to create a mini dialogue using the topic of the lesson. In pairs, they write down a mini dialogue of about 6 turns. I have a quick look at the dialogues checking for mistakes related to the topic of the lesson and then students rehearse it. When they feel they are ready, they can make the recording using their own cell phones.

As we're using EDMODO to post homework, to do quizzes and share extra material, I imagined they could use their own cell phones to record their dialogues and then send it to our Edmodo group. When I suggested the recording for the first time, students were a bit surprised because they had never recorded themselves using English. One student then asked if they could share the recording via WHATSAPP, considering the fact that all of them have the app on their cell phones and it's possible to record within the app. I accepted the idea and one of the students volunteered to create a group for sharing the recordings.

After students upload the recordings, I usually ask them to listen to other dialogues created by their classmates. At home, I listen to all the recorded dialogues and take notes of mistakes related to the target language which  I share with the whole group in a following class without identifying anyone. I've been truly happy with the opportunity to see my students using their creativity to practise the language and to have "palpable" evidence of what my students seem to have learned or not.

This screenshot shows a conversation between a student and myself. I was happy to see they are enjoying listening to themselves and their classmates.













And this is a sample of a dialogue created by two of my students. Can you identify the target structure they were trying to use?

listen to ‘Mini Dialogue created by students’ on Audioboo

What about this one?

listen to ‘Dialogue 2’ on Audioboo

Storytelling with Adobe Voice

I've just learned from the amazing blog http://www.freetech4teachers.com/ about an interesting IOS app called ADOBE VOICE which allows us to create video stories.

I just love storytelling and I was thinking of what story I would tell to try this out. The other day I was talking with a group of students of mine, some teenagers, about this love and hate chemistry. I was saying that sometimes feelings change and I mentioned that I knew that from experience.

I caught their attention straight away. They all wanted to know about my love/hate story. I've been postponing this storytelling, but they don't seem to forget that, LOL. This week, we've been focussing on narrative tenses, trying to improve our storytelling by using different verb tense combinations. This is a video grammar class about the topic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPQjKcnn2No

Well, back to my ADOBE VOICE trial. I thought to myself, why not use the opportunity to tell my story and see if they can notice the verb combinations we worked with last class?

Last class, apart from doing grammar exercises with Simple Past, Past Continuous, Past Perfect and Past Perfect Continuous, I asked students to choose a story to tell: a funny story, an accident, a surprising story or meeting a famous person. They had 4 minutes to choose one of the topics and write notes which would help them tell their true story to a classmate. After pairs of students told their stories, I asked them to send me their stories via Edmodo.

Next class, I'm going to start with notes I've written down about "Our love ? story" 

Can you guess my story? After students try to predict the story, I'll play the following video which I've created using ADOBE VOICE.

http://voice.adobe.com/v/Nfo2ryMskoi

 

A friend of mine, Lívia Fernandes and her very creative boyfriend, Matheus Pinheiro, created and Adobe video with their adaptation of the story "The secret of the king". I had to share it with you, it's really worth listening.

How can we use ADOBE VOICE?

This is a tutorial showing step by step how to create your own stories. The app is FREE and very intuitive.

Humanizing the Oral Assessment moment

Do you have to assess your students' oral performance in English? Do some of your students feel anxious and end up speaking less than they normally do in a normal class? Do you, teacher, feel exhausted after a whole class assessing pairs of students? If you can relate to some of these questions, this post might interest you.

The objective of this post is to share my experience in trying to make the oral assessment moment a less threatening one, where my students can speak to each other while I observe how they have been using the English language.

In 2012, I had the great pleasure to study about Evaluation at UFU (Universidade Federal de Uberlândia, in Brazil). I learned a lot and one of our first topics was about the difference between ASSESSMENT and EVALUATION. I had always understood an assessment as an ongoing process which involves observing not only the 10 minutes a pair communicates in front of a teacher for marking purposes, but specially the overall performance observed during the classes. 

So, what is the difference?

Table from online document http://duke.edu/arc/documents/The%20difference%20between%20assessment%20and%20evaluation.pdf

While reading several books and participating in discussions, an important point I had failed to observe was the objective of an Oral Assessment. If an Oral Assessment in the middle of the semester is supposed to be formative, its goal should be to diagnose areas for improvement. I asked myself: Have the Oral Assessment interviews I've been conducting with my students for years and years been diagnostic or judgmental? 

Due to my dissatisfaction with the way I had been assessing, or better, evaluating my students, as a final project for the Evaluation Class I had been taking at University, I decided to try something different.

Considering that we can continuously assess our students orally during our classes, the oral assessment moment would be one more opportunity for focussing on the speaking skill, therefore, there would be no need to check every little word each student spoke.

My proposal:

1. ONE CLASS BEFORE
Tell students about the oral assessment moment which will take place the following class and explain that they will be doing the same kind of activities they normally do in class. Show the rubrics to students:

By explaining the rubrics to students, they could understand that my focus was not to write down every little mistake they make, but how well they can communicate with others. I also asked them why the item INTERACTION had a different mark (1-2-3-4) from the other items. They promptly answered "Because it's more important". 

I told them their marks (yes, for the school record there has to be a mark) would be a combination of 3 observations: my impressions, their own impressions and their peers' impressions.

2. THE DAY OF THE ORAL ASSESSMENT

The idea is to use 40 minutes of a normal class ( we have two  80 minute classes a week) for the oral activities during which pairs or groups of students will be engaged in communicating while the teacher can move around the room observing and taking notes of their oral performance individually on the following marking sheet. 

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0Bzu68Gr4amCudmxzZWptT3FrVG8/edit

Before the activity, organize the desks into 4 groups at different corners of the room ( I normally have a maximum of 16 students). So with bigger groups, I might have groups of 4 and in smaller groups, trios or pairs. On each corner of the room, there's a communicative activity they have to carry out for the period of 5 to 7 minutes. To set the time limit, I normally use http://www.youtubealarm.com/ , then when the time is over a song is played and students move to the next station and a different activity, like a "carrousel".

This is a video I made of a group of students during the Oral Assessment moment. 

Do they seem nervous?

After all the groups have covered the 4 stations or the 4 different activities, show the rubrics to the students again and ask them to write their impressions about their own performance and the performance of their partners (5 to 10 minutes). This is the form (in Portuguese ) that we used.

3. THE FOLLOWING CLASS

-The teacher shows the rubrics again reminding them they have been evaluated in 50 points. The total mark involves the mark given by the teacher, the students and their peers.

- Ask for suggestions for how students can improve their oral performance in each of the items observed (Grammar, Vocabulary, Pronunciation and Interaction).

- Cut out the squares from the form used by the teacher during the oral assessment and hand to individual students. Ask students to observe the aspects they did well and the points they need to improve.

- Ask the whole group about the major difficulties they faced and what kind of activities they can do to improve their English.

What comments did I get from students?

"I didn't feel nervous!"

"Wow, I've never talked so much!" 

"This is much better!"

" I don't want to do the other type of oral assessment anymore!" 

Points to consider:

-You might question "If the objective is to have an ongoing assessment, why have an oral assessment moment?" Well, for the simple reason that, teachers at our school find it hard to abolish an evaluation moment. Another reason is to have a moment to pause and reflect with students about their progress.

-I don't know if this "Carrousel" dynamics would be appropriate for all levels and all the groups. I've piloted the idea with Lower Intermediate and Upper Intermediate students and have been thrilled with the results.

REFERENCES:

https://comoavaliar.wikispaces.com/ 

http://duke.edu/arc/documents/The%20difference%20between%20assessment%20and%20evaluation.pdf

2 QRCODE activities ready for use

I've been trying out different QR CODE activities and would like to share two which I think worked really well.

Conversation Tic Tac Toe

1. Print one sheet for each pair of students.

2. Pair students up and ask them to use one notebook to draw a TIC TAC TOE grid (example below).

3. Students decide who is the cross and who is the nought. One person starts the game by choosing a number on the grid, scanning that specific code, reading the secret topic and speaking about it for 1 minute ( or 30 seconds for lower level students). The other student listening has the role of timing his partner. 

4. If the student can speak about the topic during 1 minute without stopping, he can leave his mark on the grid. Then, it's the other player's turn. 

5. To win the tic tac toe, you have to cross three numbers in a row (vertical, horizontal or diagonal).

http://www.scribd.com/doc/146095931/Conversation-QR-CODE

Conversation QR CODE by Ana Maria Menezes

HOW TO CREATE YOUR OWN ACTIVITY

- Go to http://qrcode.kaywa.com/dashboard/ , click TEXT and type the topics you want your students to talk about.

- Open a word doc, insert a table (3 x 3) and copy and paste the QRcodes one by one. 

- Then your activity is ready for use.

Listening Dictation + Conversation

1. Print one sheet per pair of students.

2. Pair students up.

3. Students scan the codes together, listen to it and write it down.

4. Pairs ask each the questions they have written down.

For this specific activity, I prepared questions using the Present Perfect and the Present Perfect Continuous.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/146096130/Qr-Code-Listening-Dictation

Qr Code Listening Dictation by Ana Maria Menezes

HOW TO CREATE YOUR OWN LISTENING DICTATION

- Go to http://qrvoice.net/?id=u8gLjf , type a question, click the BLUE BUTTON on the right to create the qr code which will take students to a voice reading your sentence.
- Copy the code and paste it on a word doc.
- Repeat the same procedure for the other questions.

PROJECT: A memorable moment

Telling other people about memorable things that happened to us in the past, in my opinion, is one of the most challenging things to do when you're learning another language. Depending on what tense you use, the person listening to your story might not understand the sequence of events you're trying to tell.

I remember very clearly the first time I tried to tell a story to some American friends of mine at a slumber party and they kept asking me so many clarifying questions that I noticed I wasn't THAT successful in telling my story.

Last week, I presented the challenge for unit 1B which was  to record yourself talking about a memorable moment in your life.

First, I asked my students to tell each other about something funny that happened to them in the past.
Then, I asked them what verb tenses they had used and it was no surprise that most of them had used ONLY the Simple Past. Well, it was clear we had to learn some more possibilities.

As some students were absent that day, I shared the GRAMMAR VIDEO CLASS below (a screencast created by me) with the whole class in our EDMODO group.

 

Then, I showed them my example recording and asked them to identify the verb tenses and the situations I talked about. After doing lots of exercises and practicing in class, at the end of the third lesson it was their turn to make their recordings.

These are some of the recordings they produced:
http://audioboo.fm/boos/1259269-my-audioboo

listen to ‘My audioboo’ on Audioboo

listen to ‘A nice surprise party’ on Audioboo

After listening to their various recordings, I wrote down the most common mistakes and brought to class so that we could discuss them.

For this specific project, the SUGGESTED TOOLS were:

• AUDIOBOO  http://audioboo.fm/
• VOCAROO http://vocaroo.com/
• CROAK.IT http://croak.it/ 

Educreations: IPAD app

I had already used EDUCREATIONS on my laptop during an EVO Session but had kind of forgotten it.

Today, while searching for something else I stumbled into it again, but this time I decided to try its IPAD app which is totally free.

 This is what you can do with it:
- You can draw using your finger and record your voice at the same time.
- You can take a photo and record yourself talking about it.
- You can use a picture from your photo gallery or from dropbox, draw and record your voice. After recording and saving it, you can share it via twitter, facebook or even grab the embed code for publishing online.

MY FIRST TRIAL: http://www.educreations.com/lesson/view/my-living-room/844046/?ref=app

 


 How can wwe use it with students? 
- you can ask students to research about famous people in history, ask them to upload a picture and record themselves talking about that personality.
- you can record screencasts drawing and writing explanations.
- you can ask students to share a picture of something special to them and talk about it.
- you can ask students to upload a picture of a place they would really like to visit someday and talk about it.
- students can draw and tell a story.

Wordle + VoiceThread + Ipad

After reading Jose Picardo's post about having used only one iPad in class, I decided to give it a go. I've recently got an iPad as a gift and wanted to see what I could do with it in class.

Well, this afternoon I took my iPad to class as I wanted to record students reading their own sentences to a voice thread created by a colleague (AureaStela). Stela had the brilliant idea to create a wordcloud with verbs which take GERUND and INFINITIVE and then asked her students to record sentences using the given verbs.

This is what I proposed to my students today:

1. First, I opened her voice thread on the IWB and played the recordings for them.
2. Then, I assigned a different verb to each student and asked them to make a sentence using Gerund or Infinitive. I monitored helping them out with their sentences.
3. I gave them a hand-out with a grammar exercise on the same topic and asked students to complete the exercise in class. Meanwhile, I would use my iPad to move round the class to record each student reading their own sentences ( I used the voicethread app for recording) . To make it faster, all students used my voice thread account.
4. After I had saved all recordings, I played their recordings on the IWB for everyone to listen to.

   Impressions? I would definitely do this again. Students were involved and seemed to have enjoyed listening to all the sentences in class.

Practise SPEAKING with Sketchcast

I had alredy seen this tool via Russell Stannard @russell1955 but had never given it a go.

It's incredibly simple, you register freely, and click to create your recording. Choose the option of the audio, give it a title and start recording. You can listen to a preview before publishing. As soon as it's published you're offered an embed code for publishing. During the sketcast you can record yourself while you draw and type.

My trial was something simple to talk about my nuclear family



HOW CAN WE USE THIS SITE WITH STUDENTS?

• have students record sketchcasts and describe their families, their bedroom, their house, a town scene, their city.
• students can also talk about any given topic you propose while they scribble.
• for groups, you can create a channel where all students can add their sketches.

To learn more about SKETCAST, watch Russell Stannard's TUTORIAL

Myna - recording yourself

I had already heard about Myna but hadn't tried it out. I normally use audacity for my recordings but today it was time to give it a go. First, I read a post written by José Picardo some time ago, watched the demo which is below and tried it myself.

Watch the demo


I wanted to see how easy or how hard it was to mix your voice with background music and to my surprise it's not that hard. I had a look at the library tracks, chose some of them, recorded myself saying some collocations you normally find in books teaching EFL at basic levels and mixed it up.

Don't expect a masterpiece, it was just a first (lousy) trial.

After you save it, you can embed the recording as below, or grab the URL http://aviary.com/artists/anamariacult/creations/collocations_basic_1

collocations basic 1.egg on Aviary.

If the recording doesn't play, CLICK HERE.

What I like about it:

• It's free.
• There's no need to download anything.
• You can upload a pre-recorded file or record yourself straight in the site.
• There's a library of background music you can use to make your mix.
• It's not complicated.
• It offers an embed code for your mix.

How can we use MYNA w/ students?

• record tracks with vocabulary you want students to memorize.
• record your students repeating vocabulary or collocations and then mix it up w/ music and play it for them.
• make a different kind of dictation w/ background music.
• simply use the site to record your students reading a text or dialogue.
• ask your students to create a mix with a list of words they have to memorize.

Any other ideas? Use the comment area to collaborate w/ more ideas.

Chat robots - practising conversation

This is my second post about chat robots. I was reminded of them by Ozge Karaoglu during a presentation and decided to have a second look at them.

Of course chat robots can never replace f2f interaction, but using chat robots in class or showing them so that students try them out at home can be quite fun.



This is a chat robot (Maggie) created by
Cartoon EnglishTV

You type in the questions and you can read and hear Maggie answer them.





Morpheus is another good robot to try.








Athena is another chat robot which moves her lips as she speaks.



Nik Peachey has posted a lesson plan using a chat robot site called Virsona. The difference is that you can chat to the virtual characters of famous people in the past. Nik's lesson plan.


Another bot suggested by Susana Canelo
http://lauren.vhost.pandorabots.com/pandora/talk?botid=f6d4afd83e34564d

Lingt - online class assignments

José Picardo in his great blog BOX OF TRICKS, has written a post about Lingt - Webtools for teachers.

This ia a description of what teachers can do with LINGT

Lingt | Webtools for Language via kwout

This is how you do it:

• you (teacher) create an account, and create a class.
• Create an assignment where you can add text, images, audio and youtube videos. Students can respond via audio and written form. Therefore you can assign written and speaking homework.
• Assign the HW to a class.
• Give the link to your sts and they will be able to hand in the assignments individually.
• You (teacher) can assess the turned in assignments and mark them.

Watch a TUTORIAL




As a test I've created a kind of dictation (just a trial) and a Read and Practice Pronunciation assignment.

What I liked: the possibility of adding recordings to ask for sts to repeat and record, how easy it is to create the assignment, how you can assess the assignments and the fact sts don't have to create an account to do the assignment.

What I didn't like: if you create a listening dictation for assignment , there's a problem: no pause button on the recordings. With the first click you PLAY, with the second you STOP, so you can't pause to have time to write down sentences.

Jose Picardo's assignment is a very good example of what you can create with LINGT.

Creating with ACAPELA. tv

I was reminded of this site by Bob Palmer's post in his blog. He suggests giving dictations with the videos you create. It's a text-to-speech application, or better the character speaks whatever you type in.

GOOD POINTS: it's very cute, easy to use and you can type in various languages.
BAD POINT: you can't publish all your creations ( found no embed code for some) but you can grab a link. :(


This is a dictation I've created:



Another cute card As this one does not provide the embed code for publishing, I used screenr to record it.



How can you use this with students?

• as suggested by Bob Palmer, create dictations for your students.
• create vocabulary dictations with words from previous lessons.
• Create a listening comprehension activity where sts listen to a character introducing himself and answer questions.
• Have sts create their own speaking character using language they've studied.
  

Paul E. Glott can tell you how to say lots of things in many languages. Try it out! You type in the sentence, choose the language and Paul helps you out. Cute!