DIDACTIC GUIDE AND REFERENCES
1) INTRODUCTION:
This activity has been created and developed as a part of material elaborated in a provincial course “Uso Didactic de Internet. Las “WebQuest”. The aim of this one is the use of the methodological strategy named WebQuest, which is based on the potential of the web to improve the teaching quality.
2) PUPILS:
This activity develops in the 3rd Grade of Primary Education and 1st Cycle of Obligatory Secondary Education.
3) CURICULUM:
a. Aims:
- To have an interest in learning a foreign language (English).
- To known traditional English literature.
- To read and to get general and specific information from brief easy texts.
- To produce easy comprehensible and brief written texts.
- To value the foreign language as a means of communication, showing curiosity and respect towards its speakers and its culture.
- To use information technologies and communication to develop and to reinforce learning.
b. Concepts:
- To distinguish and to put into practice basic syntactic-grammatical concepts through the introduction of rules.
- To identify and to reproduce phonological elements correctly.
- Recognise socio-cultural aspects (English literature) transmitted by the L2 and related to the first language.
c. Procedures:
- Putting into practice positive procedures to understand the main topic of easy oral and written texts.
- Doing something in good time and hypothesis during the reading of contextualised written texts, adapted to pupils’ level and their experiences.
- Reading understandably, authentic texts which have a complexity adapted to students’ level and related to their general likes and interests.
- Reading easy written texts which have got a specific finality: to get general and specific information from these texts.
- Writing texts from specific easy information which has been got from oral and written texts.
d. Attitudes:
- Ssensibility towards the importance of communicating using this foreign language.
- Effort to develop improvement spirit developing the specific activities.
- Positive value towards written texts (reading and writing) as a means to establish communicative process.
- Positive value to use the foreign language developed in the classroom activities
- Respect and tolerance with the decisions adapted in the group.
4) PROCESS:
The process of the WebQuest consists of the following steps:
1) Find traditional English tales
2) Each group chooses a traditional tale which they have found, in this way they will be familiarised with them to carry them out using the foreign language.
3) Each group have to distribute the following roles, each one has got a role:
a. The author: He will read the tales chosen, and he’ll represent the author the reading day.
b. The artists: They will be in charge of pictures and sounds (presentation of the work).
c. Mister Pencil: He will be in charge of writing the tales choosing his classmates’ ideas.
4) Once each member of the group has chosen his work, they should investigate about the author or authors. They will produce a brief parchment about the author using information got, together with it, they will write the title. They have to be creative with the presentation of their work.
5) Modify the tales got.
6) Carry out the tales using different formats (slides, cards, and so on).
7) The children will rehearse the tale, including sounds, in this case. The tales should have emotion and great feelings during its reading.
8) Tell the story to other classmates (classroom and school).
The class will be divided into groups of four pupils; these groups should be heterogeneous, because pupils should be mixed, pupils who have got high capacities with pupils who have got difficulties or lower capacities in learning.
The activity will approximately last 8 sessions - 50 minute each one. This task is interdisciplinary, because it is related to other areas such as Environment and Artist Education.
The pupils should have basic computer knowledge, because they face up to a work using Internet (search and development), therefore, the Internet directions should be concrete in order to facilitate their work, so that they will be motivated.
Apart from this difficulty, children can find another great difficulty with language, the teacher should introduce the tales during previous weeks, games with the tales, tell a story or tales, and so on, so they are familiarised with the foreign language used. The teacher has to guide the task so that her pupils don’t collapse, her role should be positive and motivational.
The teacher should have great knowledge of the foreign language, and basic computer knowledge to assume some doubts during the development of the activity.
5) RESOURCES:
The necessary resources are described bellow to the development of this activity:
- Classroom with computers and access to Internet.
- Video and auditive materials (the teacher can have tales to be introduced which has been described in the process).
- Books with traditional tales and stories (the teacher can have tales to be introduced which has been described in the process).
- The teacher can consult the following web pages:
6) EVALUATION:
The aim is that the children elaborate their own tales using traditional English tales. They can embody the tales using different formats, big tales using cards, slides,… (They will add sentences to tell their tales), each group chooses the right format. Everything should be developed to get the aims proposed previously: to know English literature, to read and write brief texts, to know and learn this foreign language and its culture. Apart form valuing learning, the teacher will check his behaviour with the rest of the group, his work in the group, his ideas, and his level of work with the group.
7) CONCLUSION:
This activity is interesting because it brings them closer to know new cultures, it tries opening their thoughts. Another positive aspect is pupils’ constant work during the activity; they are the main characters of the activity.
8) REFERENCES:
The main web pages about traditional tales during this activity have been the following:
http://www.ongoing-tales.com/SERIALS/oldtime/FAIRYTALES/index.html
http://www.lonvig.dk/lucca.htm#books
http://childhoodreading.com/authors.html
http://www.fut.es/~vne/CI_14_literatura%20infantil.htm
http://www.sapiens.ya.com/consagrados/oscarwilde.html
If it is the first time that you bring closer a Web Quest, or you want information about the topic, you can use the following sites:
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