Teaching Session with Teacher's Advice
The group, consisting of Ewelina Kendzia, Theresa Wolff and myself, thought about not only to create a single lesson but a complete block of lessons revolving around a single topic: Bullying in school. These lessons are refined with the means of creating an Interview with new media. The tools involved are: Wordle, PiratePad and Xtranormal. In addition the class needs a big screen or a projector for the presentations. The lesson block is intended for a ninth grade with about 30 students (5 students in 6 groups) and it is set into the context of the topic "bullying in school" as stated in the curriculum given out by the "Hessische Kultusministerium".
The class will start off by brainstorming. The students will think about facts and impressions they have about a regular interview. This phase will be about ten minutes long. Directly after this, the results are collected on two PiratePad-Documents. These documents are being saved after 15-20 Minutes and converted into a Wordle-picture. These Wordle-pictures are being evaluated by the whole class, the core statements are collected, discussed and saved for the rest of the first 90-minute-lesson.
The second 90-minute-lesson starts where the first one left off: The results from the last session are used to create an authentic interview. For this procedure the students have a complete 90-minute-lesson in which they can ask the teacher questions about their interview, about the tools and so on. They are also provided with dictionaries to settle their questions about vocabulary. At the end of the lesson the interview should be finished and the students should be able to transfer their dialogue into an Xtranormal presentation in the next lesson. If they were not able to finish their work the students need to complete their work out of class as homework. The following 90-minute-lesson deals with the creation of the interview in a digital form via Xtranormal. Again the whole 90-minute-lesson is to be used for this. The teacher can be asked if there are any difficulties regarding the tools or language. At the end of this lesson the students should be ready to present their 3-5 minute Xtranormal-interview. In the following lesson the students will present their interviews and talk about it for 5 minutes, after the interview itself has been presented. 50-60 minutes should be enough to complete this last stage of the interview. In the last 30 minutes the students will have a last reflection of the whole interview phase and memorize what they have learned and what they liked/disliked.
Feedback by a teacher: This lesson plan was received by Ms. Jean Rossa, English and German teacher in her mid-thirties at the Albert-Schweitzer-Schule in Alsfeld. She is the administrator of the media library for the "Sekundarstufe I" and therefore has experience in terms of media usage. The feedback she gave our group was positive in general. Only minor corrections and spelling errors were made, as following:
Note: The two tasks "Teaching Session" and "Feedback from a Teacher" are joined in this article. Just for your information in case you are wondering why one task is missing.
The class will start off by brainstorming. The students will think about facts and impressions they have about a regular interview. This phase will be about ten minutes long. Directly after this, the results are collected on two PiratePad-Documents. These documents are being saved after 15-20 Minutes and converted into a Wordle-picture. These Wordle-pictures are being evaluated by the whole class, the core statements are collected, discussed and saved for the rest of the first 90-minute-lesson.
The second 90-minute-lesson starts where the first one left off: The results from the last session are used to create an authentic interview. For this procedure the students have a complete 90-minute-lesson in which they can ask the teacher questions about their interview, about the tools and so on. They are also provided with dictionaries to settle their questions about vocabulary. At the end of the lesson the interview should be finished and the students should be able to transfer their dialogue into an Xtranormal presentation in the next lesson. If they were not able to finish their work the students need to complete their work out of class as homework. The following 90-minute-lesson deals with the creation of the interview in a digital form via Xtranormal. Again the whole 90-minute-lesson is to be used for this. The teacher can be asked if there are any difficulties regarding the tools or language. At the end of this lesson the students should be ready to present their 3-5 minute Xtranormal-interview. In the following lesson the students will present their interviews and talk about it for 5 minutes, after the interview itself has been presented. 50-60 minutes should be enough to complete this last stage of the interview. In the last 30 minutes the students will have a last reflection of the whole interview phase and memorize what they have learned and what they liked/disliked.
Feedback by a teacher: This lesson plan was received by Ms. Jean Rossa, English and German teacher in her mid-thirties at the Albert-Schweitzer-Schule in Alsfeld. She is the administrator of the media library for the "Sekundarstufe I" and therefore has experience in terms of media usage. The feedback she gave our group was positive in general. Only minor corrections and spelling errors were made, as following:
- In her opinion the topic "Bullying in school" is too general. The different groups should develop tasks that reach in the matter like "can school uniforms be used to reduce bullying at school".
- The time management in the presentation-phase was too broad in her opinion. The discussion phase should be shortened because the students could get bored by discussing minor details in the Xtranormal-videos and there could be danger of disinterest.
- Ms. Rossa gave us the tip to integrate dictionaries in the 2nd lesson block (forming an interview). The students may have deficiencies in terms of vocabulary and could really use the extra help that is offered by a dictionary.
Note: The two tasks "Teaching Session" and "Feedback from a Teacher" are joined in this article. Just for your information in case you are wondering why one task is missing.
