Great memories

Thanks!!!

"I'm hating it"

I won't deny I used the ungrammatical "I'm hating it" phrase on purpose. I wanted to draw a comparision between McDonald's commercial and my experience as regards HotPotatoes. 

The first aspect I found annoying was that it lacks practicality. First of all, you need to download the application. Then you can start producing, for instance, a quiz. Its format is not clear and you won't get to see the final product until you publish it. In addition, I was hard to find the button where you change the colour of the quiz. It does not allow you to personalise it much. As you have to pay "fairly cheap" according to the producers, if you want to publish your work, you need to create a demo account. 

When you see what you have done, you cannot but feel depressed. 

Either I was bad at using it or the tool's aim is to make users' lives miserable. I hope it is the first alternative.

This is link to the quiz I created using Hot Potatoes. It serves the purpose of giving a context to the isolated sentences the book provides in the listening task. 

CorelDRAW for Leaflets and more...

In this post, I was eager to share something about a new tool I'm learning to use. To be honest, I was relunctant to learn how to use Corel at first, since my brother and sister helped me by editing the content and images I provided them with, and it really saved time. That happened until my sister told me she would not help any more. She thought I ought to learn to do it myself. My brother, who still was willing to help, had a term exam at university. And the fun was over. 

Luckily, I am now proud to say that I was able to do it on my own! This is my first production: Cards for a Memory game. Students were supposed to find the two parts of the sentences. We are dealing with occupations and the first conditional. 

My last task is still in the process of being improved. I designed a new leaflet advertising a course on VideoGames and an article about The Sims, which is the only computer game I enjoy. I'm using them tomorrow for my fourth week at school. Here it is: Game Designer and The Sims

For my lesson on Wednesday I had thought about using these materials. I believe I may be using them next week, but it would be nice to get some feedback from you: Music Teacher and "Count on me" Song.

Even though, I'm glad I am using new tools, I still think there is long way to go until I produce something more appealing to the eye. 

Time for Popplet in the fifth course

Last week lessons were very nice. I really enjoyed them and, apparently, the wordle served its purpose! So this week, I'm giving Popplet a try.

As I mentioned in the previous post, occupations is the topic we are working. This Wednesday, students will be watching the video : Being a nurse and analysing it. At the end of the lesson they will be able to complete a leaflet advertising the job. Before watching the video, the popplet will help them predict some issues that are present in it. Here it is: Popplet

Other materials I need to design these days are leaflets, but I still don't feel my production is good enough. My brother helped me out with the leaflet for the acting profession. I'd like to share mine so that you have a great time laughing at it, and, luckily, you may give me some advices in how to improve it. Become an actor!

Wordle at Secondary School

Tomorrow I'm starting my teaching practices at Secondary School. The unit of work we will be dealing with is about occupations. Their final task is to produce a leaflet to order to advertise a particular course or profession. This task is related to the concerns students in the fifth course have, as most of them are undergoing the process of choosing what they want to do next year.

As part of the requierements, the teacher asked me to use the set of notes they already have. So I decided to work with an article: The price of fame

While working and analysing the article, I prepared some Tasks in which they have to brainstorm occupations they know and they reasons why somebody may choose to study or work as a particular profession. In addition, they will do a pre-reading task with the wordle, predicting which paragraphs and photo is connected with the word cloud they have below. Later on, they will read the article and check their predictions.

In my next post, I will be able to say whether this kind of task was appropriate and motivating for these students. Fingers crossed!