Socialising - GESO 1

CLASSPROJECT

Bob's Disco Dance #36: The Robot,

by Rooners toy photography (CC

BY-NC-ND 2.0)

SOCIALISINGEnglish project designed by Berta Villaescusa (bvillaes@xtec.cat), Alex Bonany

(abonany@xtec.cat) and Pilar Casado (pcasado3@xtec.cat)

1st semester 2015

SEQUENCE GUIDELINE

v.

1. Preface

2. The sequence

2.1. The context

2.2. Objectives, contents and assessment criteria

2.3. Activities

2.4. Evaluation

2.5. Class management and methodology

3. Final thought

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Socialising - GESO 1

1. Preface

The goal of this sequence is to create a series of activities to be implemented in GESO 1, CAM or level 1

English classes in adult centres.They focus on basic vocabulary and grammar, used in real meaningful contexts

and they are carefully designed to work for multiple intelligences.

2. The sequence

2.1. The context

It is prepared for GESO 1 / CAM and / or Nivell 1. Some of the students are quite young, still teenagers, but

there are also people in their fifties. Most of them have a very low level of English and there are some with no

level at all. Apart from that, education backgrounds, social circumstances and skills concerning languages vary a

great deal among them all.

As far as timing is concerned, this sequence of activities is proposed for 4 sessions, at the end of the term.

2.2. Objectives, competences, contents and assessment criteria

a. Objectives according with Decret 161/209, 27th October, Generalitat de Catalunya:

- To get the competence in a foreign language as a learning tool for a variety of contents, as a

pleasure and personal growth source, and as an opened door to other people and cultures.

- To use, autonomously and with their own criteria, social media and information and communication

technologies to obtain, interpret, do and present with different formats information, opinions and

feelings and to participate in social life.

- To communicate orally, writing or by audiovisual methods, being coherent and adequate to

academic, working, social and cultural contexts, adopting a respectful and cooperative attitude.

- To listen and comprehend to general and specific information, to express themselves and interact in

a foreign language in usual communicative situations, adopting a respectful, open-minded,

participative and adequate attitude and with a certain autonomy skill.

- To improve the students’ language competences: speaking, listening, reading and writing.

- To develop the students’ cultural awareness.

- To analyse their own learning styles and develop new strategies of learning.

- To work cooperatively and be aware of the advantages of working this way.

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Socialising - GESO 1

- To use ICT and be aware of technological advantages that help in communication and learning

process.

- To evaluate other ways of organising experience in a critical way.

b. Competences tackled in the sequence:

● Linguistic competence:

○ Read, understand and get the most important information from texts about everyday topics

which are close to the learners.

○ Develop the ability to express themselves, orally and in writing, using language

appropriate to each situation.

● Social and civic competence:

○ When they identify the language as part of the common culture of a community.

● Information processing and digital competence:

○ Understand information transmitted in oral texts.

○ Use podcasts to practise oral texts.

● Autonomy and personal initiative:

○ Develop initiatives and decisions in planning, organizing and managing work.

○ Be aware of oneself’s learning styles.

c. Contents of the curriculum:

Competència pragmàtica Competència Competència lingüística

discursiva

Funcions i aspectes

sociolingüístics

Organització del

discurs i tipus de

text

Lèxic i

aspectes

semàntics

Morfosintaxi Ortografia i

aspectes

gràfics

Fonètica i

fonologia

1. To ask questions to get to know classmates.

2. To be able to talk about oneself, your family, likes and dislikes...

3. To give advice on how to better a speech or a language bit.

4. To be able to organise group work according to everyone’s abilities and preferences

1. To start a conversation with someone you haven’t met before.

2. To give information about oneself with correction on order and vocabulary.

3. To prepare and give a formal oral presentation with the class as an audience.

1. Personal adjectives: character and appearance.

2. Free time activities.

3. Family members.

4. Food and drinks.

1. Simple present revision

2. To be revision, affirmative sentences, negative sentences and questions.

3. Future “will” and “going to” practice

4. Likes and dislikes

5. Opposition and contrast

1. Punctuation.

2. Word

spelling.

1. Intonation and stress in questions and answers.

2. Fluency on short oral speeches.

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connectors.

d. Assessment criteria:

Comunicació oral Comprensió lectora Expressió escrita

1. To understand and use vocabulary and basic expressions talking about oneself and people you know.2. To ask and answer personal information questions with basic expressions with the help of another, when needed.3. To use space, time and quantity indicators in oral speech.4. To identify essential information on topic and situation in an oral speech related to close contexts.5. To participate in communicative simulated situations as giving advice, giving opinion or comparing with others with the help of the listeners and non-linguistic elements. 6. To understand and produce grammatically basic sentences and to link them with connectors when talking about everyday life experiences. 7. To do a basic and short exposition about common and well-known topics. To prepare this exposition before hand and to use expressive resources (rhythm, intonation, pauses…) to let others understand the oral text. 8. To make and answer simple questions and opinions with the classmates and the teacher about common topics.9. To interact with others in improvised conversations about well-known topics, using verbal and nonverbal resources.

1. To understand short written messages to solve basic needs.

2. To recognize and understand simple and basic words and sentences about likes and dislikes, agreement and disagreement, spare time activities...

3. To identify basic information on messages dedicated to solve classroom duties needs.

1. To use common and basic words and expressions related to everyday life situations.2. To plan the production of a text with the help of general guidelines.3. To produce short and basic texts, orally, on paper or through technology, coherent to media and the communicative situation.4. To write about everyday life situations and about themselves using connected simple sentences in the present and past tense.5. To structure a text linking ideas and bearing in mind the logical sequence of an explanation and the communicative intention of the text.6. To give cohesion to texts through connectors and punctuation marks.7. To use proper spelling and orthographic correction of the texts produced.8. To give basic instructions and advice to others.9. To be able to revise their own or others’ work in order to better the punctuation, spelling or grammar involved in the text production.

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2.3. Activities:

ACTIVITY 1: Talking about our family

TIMING: 30’

RESOURCES: Vocabulary video link and test link.

PROCEDURE: Students learn vocabulary about

the family members and utter words together with the first video link. They have previously studied possessive

pronouns and they will put it all into practice by doing the test in the second video link.

DYNAMICS: Students work individually all at a time when they pronounce the family

vocabulary. They revise their possessive adjectives chart on their own before doing the test, and they finally

practise in the test altogether again.

ACTIVITY 2: Introducing ourselves

TIMING: Home preparation.

Listening to the all students’ introductions in class.

RESOURCES: Vocaroo and mail to record and

send students’ podcasts to the teacher. School’s website to publish

podcasts.

PROCEDURE: Students watch a video example prepared by the teacher: teacher’s video.

Then, they prepare a short introduction of themselves intended to be recorded as a podcast or video production

and uploaded at the school’s website so that other friends may know about him/her.

DYNAMICS: Students watch the teacher’s example and use it as a model to write their

written introductions. They record their podcasts or videos at home or at the school’s IT classroom, send their

oral productions to the teacher (via link or attached file) and all students listen to everyone’s introductions in

class.

ACTIVITY 3: WhatsApp this week? Keeping in touch through a

well known source.

TIMING : We could do this as a weekly short

homework during a couple of months (depending on the number of

pupils)

RESOURCES: Ideally all our pupils would have a smartphone to work with. We need them

all with WhatsApp and also a central mobile (the teacher’s might be the best since he or she will be the

administrator of the group) to create and manage the WhatsApp group.

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PROCEDURE: The pupils will do this once a week. One of them will be the sender of a

picture to the WhatsApp group, found on the internet or (preferably) taken by him or her. The picture can be on a

topic or on something that happened to the pupil. There are all sorts of restrictions or freedom on the topic.

Another one will give an oral description of the picture sent recorded with the phone. And a third one will try to

better the previous description. All the other pupils in the classroom can participate but only the two speaking will

be the ones assessed. Then, for next week, we pass to three more pupils till everybody’s done the task.

DYNAMICS: Students work individually while doing the task but it’s a task that involves the

whole class and where the comments generated during the task can also help the pupils being “protagonists” of

the week. WhatsApp also gives you the opportunity to send the conversation to your email so the teacher can

keep the files corresponding to each week in a computer for later assessment or revision.

ACTIVITY 4: A night out in London. Presentation of their plan.

TIMING :one session for preparing and

looking for information (90 minutes), one session for different

group presentations. Depending on the number of groups (about

10 minutes per group including questions from the other students

and feedback from the teacher)

RESOURCES: (worksheet for description of the activity, web searching, images of the

places they are going to, audios when needed)

PROCEDURE: Cooperative learning. This is a PBL, based in a situation that could happen

in real life with foreign friends, or where they are travelling around and have to find out information that is mostly

written in English. The students have to plan one night out in London. They have to look for information about

restaurants, tickets, discos, going out, theatres or whatever they like. In groups of three they decide what to do,

where to go, what is the budget and who is in charge of each activity. For example: On the first session one

student books the tickets for We Will Rock You Musical, a second student looks for a good vegetarian restaurant

to to have dinner after the theatre, and the third student searches a pub near the restaurant where to have a

drink after the dinner. They keep the informations, take some pictures from the London area, the Musical show,

find any short video to prove they went to that theatre/musical, etc., plates in the restaurant and decoration of the

pub. On the next session, per groups, they have 10 minutes to present the others their “last night out in the city”,

how much did they enjoy, what did they do, people they meet, etc. They have to explain it using the past tense.

DYNAMICS: Students work individually and in group work. Firstly they discuss in the whole

group what to do and how to share out the tasks, then they work individually on the assigned task, later they

present it altogether as a group.

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2.4. Evaluation:

ACTIVITY 1 - TALKING ABOUT OUR FAMILY:

Students listen and repeat vocabulary in the video. After that, they revise

possessive adjectives and do the test taking notes of their right and wrong answers.

The teacher will register records while they autocorrect their mistakes.

ACTIVITY 2 - INTRODUCING OURSELVES:

Students must pay attention to the video shown as a model and listen to the teacher’s explanation. After

that, they will work on their written introduction individually and the teacher will be helping them and taking

notes of their drafts. Finally the oral production will be assessed following this rubric.

ACTIVITY 3 - WHATSAPP THIS WEEK?As part of a through the project activity students must focus on the vocabulary the have to use to describe

the pictures, the correction on the use of grammar and the success on the communication process, that is

how many students in the classroom fully understood the message and how many

replies each message received. The original description and the correction of

that one can be assessed with this rubric.

ACTIVITY 4 - A NIGHT OUT IN LONDON:The students have to create a plan for a night out in London (restaurants, theatres, discos…) They have to

work in a group looking for information and following the procedure already given. Later the assessment

has to be done according to this rubric.

2.5. Class management and methodology

Methodology and class management of activities in this sequence are explained in the procedure and

dynamics section above.

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3. Final thought

Before designing this sequence, we had the general idea of students interacting successfully with others.

From this idea we have created several activities which, despite being different, share the “essence” of the project.

It’s all about interaction at all times. The pupil has to interact with the listeners, with the different media

provided by the teacher or by his/her mates. The pupil has to interact through all sources, oral and written. And this

interaction takes place from all “roles”: as a speaker, as a listener, as a writer and as a reader. And, most important

of all, the interaction is like a chain, you need the previous link to get to the next step, you need the others to fulfill

the next task.

We know it’s not an extensive project but we do think it’s an “intensive” project. Pupils and teacher are like a

team working for one purpose: making interaction as easy and as fluent as possible. Pupils are learning and

assessing and comparing. And, mainly, are communicating through modern methods, methods that allow us to use

and produce video and sound recordings. But media that also ask for good writing and reading skills. We just hope

we succeeded.

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