About this project:
Throughout the course on this project, we started with initial lesson plan topic ideas and created a draft of a Unit of lessons (10). We revised these lessons several times, based on feedback from in-class and online peers.
Main themes considered when building this unit of lessons:
Main themes considered when building this unit of lessons:
- well-sequenced (the activities build on each other so that students are using prior knowledge to continue their learning)
- integrate different types of interaction (cooperative work, individual work, pair work)
- activities should all be clearly tied together so that the students understand the ‘big picture’ of where they are going with the project.
- integrate multiple-competence aims (linguistic, intercultural, digital, social, etc.)
- include some use of technology.
- clear support for the students to be able to achieve the expected outcomes of the project.
- include assessment activities throughout the project implementation
The present project is especially addressed to English learners who have a command of English equivalent to the B1 level defined by the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). Thus, all the tasks and materials presented along these lines are thoroughly designed to be implemented with beginners who can understand sentences and frequently used expressions related to areas of most immediate relevance (e.g. very basic personal and family information, shopping, local geography, employment), who know how to communicate in simple and routine tasks requiring a simple and direct exchange of information on familiar and routine matters and, who are able to describe in simple terms aspects of their background, immediate environment and matters in areas of instant basic need.
It is well worth noting that this proposal adopts a dual-focused educational approach in which a foreign language will be used for learning both the language itself and a specific content. We think that this is a propitious way to make students learn a foreign language because it offers similar conditions to those that underlying during the process of acquisition of the children’s mother tongue, where there is a greater focus on understanding the message than its formal characteristics. Regarding language, our purpose is that learners move from being basic users of English to become more and more independent users. With respect to content, we aim to raise socio-political awareness among students with a problem solution focus. This is because we hold the view that the purpose of education should be to prepare people to participate in society, providing them with tools and resources to develop their own critical social thought, to resolve day to day problems and exercise their role consciously, constructively and responsibly. Topics for the problem-solving will be chosen by students themselves. They have to be controversial, actual, and presenting a wide range of opinions/solutions. Some possible ideas on topics are: oceans pollution, climate change, death penalty, refugees or the negative impact of tourism. To guide the students on the process of selecting this socially relevant problem, we will provide them with the grid presented below. In this way, once they have chosen a topic, they will be able to judge by themselves if all the items of the chart are accomplished and, thus, if the topic chosen is appropriate or if, on the contrary, they have to think of another one more suitable for this project.
The use of technology in our project deserves also a special consideration. As language teachers our main goal is to teach students to communicate and this fact includes providing learners with as many semiotic resources as possible to both understand and make themselves understood in a foreign language. At this point, we cannot neglect the role that technology plays in our current society, which is why we must adapt our teaching practice to the digital age. This is why we have built a Technology-Enhanced Project-Based Language Learning (TEPBLL) that integrates technology in several ways to promote both language and content learning. On one hand, the project includes asynchronous telecollaboration through which students will communicate and work together with other learners from different locations through digital communication tools to produce a final output, which will be a poster. On the other hand, students will have to deal with technology devices to find information along the project and to create a video presentation of a poster. Our idea is that technology becomes a mediator for learning to write (when developing tasks), speak (through telecollaboration exchanges), read (when searching information) and listen (when exchanging videos with their telecollaboration partners) in a second language.
It is well worth noting that this proposal adopts a dual-focused educational approach in which a foreign language will be used for learning both the language itself and a specific content. We think that this is a propitious way to make students learn a foreign language because it offers similar conditions to those that underlying during the process of acquisition of the children’s mother tongue, where there is a greater focus on understanding the message than its formal characteristics. Regarding language, our purpose is that learners move from being basic users of English to become more and more independent users. With respect to content, we aim to raise socio-political awareness among students with a problem solution focus. This is because we hold the view that the purpose of education should be to prepare people to participate in society, providing them with tools and resources to develop their own critical social thought, to resolve day to day problems and exercise their role consciously, constructively and responsibly. Topics for the problem-solving will be chosen by students themselves. They have to be controversial, actual, and presenting a wide range of opinions/solutions. Some possible ideas on topics are: oceans pollution, climate change, death penalty, refugees or the negative impact of tourism. To guide the students on the process of selecting this socially relevant problem, we will provide them with the grid presented below. In this way, once they have chosen a topic, they will be able to judge by themselves if all the items of the chart are accomplished and, thus, if the topic chosen is appropriate or if, on the contrary, they have to think of another one more suitable for this project.
The use of technology in our project deserves also a special consideration. As language teachers our main goal is to teach students to communicate and this fact includes providing learners with as many semiotic resources as possible to both understand and make themselves understood in a foreign language. At this point, we cannot neglect the role that technology plays in our current society, which is why we must adapt our teaching practice to the digital age. This is why we have built a Technology-Enhanced Project-Based Language Learning (TEPBLL) that integrates technology in several ways to promote both language and content learning. On one hand, the project includes asynchronous telecollaboration through which students will communicate and work together with other learners from different locations through digital communication tools to produce a final output, which will be a poster. On the other hand, students will have to deal with technology devices to find information along the project and to create a video presentation of a poster. Our idea is that technology becomes a mediator for learning to write (when developing tasks), speak (through telecollaboration exchanges), read (when searching information) and listen (when exchanging videos with their telecollaboration partners) in a second language.
Group Artifact
Created through the initial collaboration of Sagrada Chambana, this group artifact introduces the members of our telecollaborative group.