Lesson #2

    For our second lesson we will start by checking homework from last time and using it as warm up excercise for the main activity of the day that will also work as a final product for the unit. In this class students will also need to use their knowledge of vocabulary related to the environment,  a topic that has been fully covered in previous classes. 

    💪 Warm up activity:

    To begin the new lesson students will need to have done their homework and uploaded statements and questions to a Padlet board. When the teacher starts the class the Padlet board will be displayed on the TV, students will then have to join the board through their phones and choose different quotes to transform into reported speech, meanwhile the teacher will be looking at these sentences and giving a "like" to the correct ones. 

    This short activity is an instance of active learning, students are creating the content and applying the theory they are studying on their own, the teacher is there to support and make sure the process is going smoothly, but they are the centre of the class. It also creates and opportunity for m-learning, students need to use their phones to report the sentences and at the end of the activity they have the content they worked on saved on their phones and in the web, allowing them to access it at any point (Ubiquitous learning). 

    In the previous lesson I mentioned that in the SAMR model this activity would be only augmented by technology, but in this class it has become an example of modification, due to the ability it gives students to work collaboratively in a piece of content that they create online together. This way of fostering collaboration is one of the core 21st century skills because all students must work of the board for it to be properly completed. 

    Padlet:

    📰 Main Activity:

    The main activity of the class will also be the final product for both the vocabulary taught in previous lessons and for reported speech. First, the class will watch a video of the young climate change activist, Greta Thunberg during an International Climate Change Summit. 

    Video:

    If the video isn't loading, click here.

    Then, students are given the following instructions:

"Imagine you are a reporter listening to the speech Greta has just given. Write down important quotes from it (in Active Speech). Then use the Newspaper Clipping Generator from Fodey to write a short article (around 80 words) about the speech. Mention her main points using vocabulary from this unit and take 2 quotes from the video and report them as part of the article. Include an intere" Students then need to hand in the pictures they download from Fodey through Google Classroom. 

    For this activity students will have to work in nthe last of the High Order Thinking Skills detailed by Bloom, creating. They have to design and construct content on their taking into account everything they have studied so far, for this they need to have gone through several of the previous levels of the taxoonomy in order to have the knowledge and abilities to produce something of their own. 

    As the idea of this assignment is to create, it can also be said that here the 21st century skill, creativity, is being fostered as well, to be able to create a good and interesting article students need to appeal to their creativity. In addition, this activity aims to incentivise active learning, students have to take the knowledge they have, use it correctly and be creative with how they apply it. The final product will be unique to each student, rather than an activity where there is only one correct answer that the teacher is looking for. 

    If we look at this task through the glasses of the SAMR model, it could be said that the level of tecnological integration is augmentation. The task is improved on the visual side by making a realistic looking newspaper and by the fact that it produces an image that can be easily shared online. 

    👋 Wrap up:

    As a final task for the lesson and the unit, students are asked to summarise in one sentence something they have learned regarding reported speech. This way the teacher helps students realise how much they have learned and alloows them to be the one judging how much their knowledge has grown. 

    Giving them this space to reflec on their work is another way of fostering active learning, the students are part of the evaluation process and get to express in a few word what they got from the unit. 

If this is the first lesson you read about, click here to go to the previous one. 

References:

- "Bloom's Digital Taxonomy" by Niall McNulty.

- "21st Century Skills" on The Glossary for Education Reform.

- "Introduction to the SAMR model" by Common Sense Education.