A Class with Storybird

It's been quite a while since I held a class where my students presented their stories created using Storybird. Finally, I got round to sharing this remarkable experience. First off, I'd like to outline some advantages that using Storybird brings in your classroom:

• storytelling becomes shared experience (students are genuinely interested in the stories created by their peers and gladly respond and give feedback)
• Storybird tools help unleash creativity (looking at how diverse the students' stories may get, what pictures they choose to illustrate their stories delivers a powerful message that once given what to do and means to do it without restraining them on how they should do it students demonstrate outstanding results)
• presenting a story can be a special experience (I held my Storybird class in a different room where we had a projector to have everyone better see the stories and illustrations of one another. Having to read the story to their peers gave many students a chance to be proud of their creations and choose the best way to present them)

One of my students presenting her story The Cat That Believed

In order to track the progress of your students, it is a good idea to create a class and ask students to join it. This is what I did too. In Storybird, you can comment on others' stories, which is a great way to give feedback. Initially, I was planning to ask students to leave comments in Storybird while their peers were presenting. Unfortunately, the Internet connection wasn't so good to allow this. Therefore, I asked them to write their comments on separate sheets of paper. Later, I took pictures of those and uploaded them in a social network they all use.

If I had to give advice on how to hold a Storybird class like mine, I'd offer the following tips:

• create a Storybird classroom to keep track of your students' progress and easily find them on the list during a class
• make sure there's a good Internet connection (it sounds too trivial but once it's not there the whole idea might fail)
• encourage students to ask questions and provide feedback for their peers

One of the papers with feedback

 It's likely that initially students won't feel enthusiastic about having to use a new tool like Storybird to create their stories. This was my case. Some students would ask, 'Why can't we do this on paper?' and similar questions. However, after they had created and presented their stories, their attitude changed dramatically and they kept asking me to do this again. Therefore, do not get discouraged by lack of enthusiasm in your students. Once they see what they are capable of, they will develop a different perspective on this kind of tasks. Why rob them of such an opportunity?

Role Play: Travel, Holidays and Tourism

I find that having my students do the role play is one of the best ways to recycle vocabulary and have fun along the way.  So, I offered them to play out the following situations for the class based on the topic "Travel, Holidays and Tourism".

Situation 1. At the Travel Agent’s

Student A. You’re a travel agent. Offer a couple who came to your office a holiday option that would satisfy both spouses as they seem to disagree on everything.

Student B. You’re a wife. You want a fairytale holiday, preferably on an island. Your husband offers to choose something less expensive. You insist that he should agree with your choice.

Student C. You’re a husband. Your wife wants to have a holiday that you find too extravagant. Try to convince her that another, less expensive, option could be as much enjoyable for her as her initial choice.

Situation 2. Good Times, Bad Times

Student A. You got together with your peers to share some stories about your travel experiences. Show some pictures from your most memorable journey and explain why it was so unforgettable.

Student B. You got together with your peers to share some stories about your travel experiences. Show some pictures from your most disastrous journey and say what went wrong.

Student C.  You got together with your peers to share some stories about your travel experiences. Show some pictures from a trip that was somehow life changing for you. Explain how it influenced your life.

Situation 3. Great Expectations

Student A. You’re a tourist who bought a package holiday. You were attracted by a beautiful brochure and expected to see the same once you arrived at the resort. However, the situation there is far from that described in the brochure. You talk to the hotel manager about problems you face (e.g. no air-conditioning, no swimming pool, bad view etc.) and then try to contact your travel agent to ask for a partial refund of the holiday cost. 

Student B. You’re a hotel manager. One of the tourists seems to be upset because of lack of facilities at your hotel. Try to encourage him and offer other opportunities available in the area to help him/her enjoy his/her holiday.

Student C.  You’re a travel agent. One of the tourists calls you to complain about a package holiday he/she bought at your agency. You know that some information in the brochure was somewhat embellished. Now he/she wants a partial refund of the holiday cost.

Situation 4. Losing Your Heart (taken from here)

Student A. You’re ecstatically happy. You’ve fallen in love with a boy/girl from the country you are visiting and you’ve decided you want to buy a house on the beach and live there forever. Tell your friends about your big decision.

Student B. Your friend has something important to tell you. Listen carefully and then respond: You think your friend’s gone mad and he/she is going to make a terrible decision. Think of all the reasons why his/her plan is crazy and convince him/her to come back home with you.

Student C. Your friend has something important to tell you. Listen carefully and then respond: You think your friend’s gone mad and he/she is going to make a terrible decision. Think of all the reasons why his/her plan is crazy and convince him/her to come back home with you. 

Download as a WORD file

Vocabulary Course: Resources On Word Formation

Can anyone imagine a vocabulary course without a stopover in the word formation? It's hardly possible. Besides, this issue obviously deserves more time than just a flying visit. Fortunately, I can take advantage of students' independent work and have a bit of a flirt with "flipping" my classroom. That's what it took me this time.

Step 1. Load them before the class. 

As I only have one class to discuss word formation, I decided to load my students beforehand to reap the fruit of their effort during the class. This is what was on their menu:

1. Check out this site with the ENORMOUS table full of roots, suffixes and prefixes:

http://www.prefixsuffix.com/rootchart.php

2. Watch these videos and note down roots and affixes mentioned in them

3. Get some practice with the following quizzes on Quizlet:

Flashcards with prefixes and their meanings: 

• http://quizlet.com/37339051/prefixes-flash-cards/
• http://quizlet.com/40661610/prefixes-flash-cards/
• http://quizlet.com/32188431/prefixes-flash-cards/

Flashcards with suffixes and their meanings:

• http://quizlet.com/48242845/suffixes-flash-cards/
• http://quizlet.com/28757788/english-suffixes-flash-cards/
• http://quizlet.com/26089633/noun-suffixes-flash-cards/

Flashcards with Greek and Latin roots and their meanings:

• http://quizlet.com/2783586/ela-latin-roots-flash-cards/
• http://quizlet.com/2784272/ela-greek-roots-flash-cards/ 

Step 2. Lots of practice during the class.

In the class, we mainly focused on the exercises in the book and finally did a matching activity.

The worksheet can be downloaded HERE.

Step 3. A creative follow-up.

1. Choose a quote you like that contains a word with a Greek or Latin root.
2. Use one of these sites to create a postcard with the quote of your choice:
http://www.pinwords.com/
http://www.piclits.com/compose_dragdrop.aspx
http://quozio.com/
3. Paste the picture you created in your blog.
4. Write your reflection (180-200 words) on the quote using  words that contain affixes or roots we have discussed in the class. 

Here's an example:

Some samples of my students' creativity:

Hanna

Nadia

Student Blogging: Vocabulary Sci-Fi

When I was to design a vocabulary course I decided I would take advantage of web-technologies and the opportunities they provide for language learning. In some of my posts (here and here), I was trying to put together a list of approaches and tools that appealed to me. Now, that I've covered half of the way, I feel like sharing some practices I've applied, especially that they proved to be working for my students. Therefore, I'm going to present the tasks they had to accomplish in their blogs. 

Blog Assignment:

In your post “Vocabulary Sci-Fi”, you will be addressing your peers from the past (20-30 years ago) explaining to them what opportunities you have today to learn English. 

Apart from that you will have to incorporate these elements in your story:

- choose a word (from Unit 1 in Upstream) to make a word map (graphwords.com) and insert the picture in your blogpost.

- Use another word to look up the collocations in “just the word”, create a word cloud (wordle.net) and insert the picture in your blogpost.

- Choose one expression to find example sentences in fraze.it, limit your search to the topic of “Education”. Choose one sentence to see the source article and copy one paragraph. In this paragraph, highlight several collocations that you found interesting. 

- Choose 10 words/expressions from the text “The theatre for the deaf” (p. 14-15.) to create a flashcard set in Quizlet (quizlet.com). Paste the link in your post.


Here are some posts by my students with the task described above:

Alla    
Ruslana
Maria

All four corners of the classroom

Even though most of my students are not reluctant speakers and eagerly contribute to discussions in classroom, I know that changing format of the speaking assignment can be beneficial so as to unleash their hidden potential. This is especially true when they have to deal with the task format they are not familiar with. Recently, I've had a chance to once again confirm these assuptions of mine. As long as we started the unit on modern lifestyle and trends in society I decided to offer them a "Four Corners game" to let them express their views on various current trends and fads.

The activity is very easy to set as it only requires attaching four A4 sheets of paper in four corners of the classroom. The statements I've chosen for this activity are based on the ideas we brainstormed in the class the day before.

Here they are:

The class turned out to be even more exciting than I expected. What's more, I was quite surprised by many students' choices and opinions. Very often it looked like they discovered each other in a new interesting way! What makes this activity even more successful is the fact that students can move and not just sit and answer the questions. 

All in all, if you haven't tried this wonderful activity yet, it's high time you did!