CLIL lesson plan with PowToon

Hello everybody!

I would like to share with you the prototype video clip about a CLIL lesson plan that I have done with PowToon.

PowToon is a free website with which you can create presentations and video clips in a very attractive way. It is very easy to work with it, you do not need have high digital skills to create engaging , creative and original presentations.

With PowToon users can modify the effects, the background and can choose between many cartoons and features. Users may also add music and movements.

It is the first time that I tried this web tool and definetely I will use it again.

I have used this tool to create a video clip about a CLIL lesson plan on the five senses for first graders (children between 6 and 7 years old). This CLIL lesson plan includes three activities or challenges for students to do and as an example I have created one for each:

An online poster: it has to be clear and visual, children must create a poster of the senses and its corresponding organs.

An avatar: students must create an online avatar putting voice to with a question or a riddle of the five senses or its organs.

An online story: in pairs students should create a story about the senses.

Please have a look at my CLIL lesson plan about the five senses I hope you like it!! I look forward to hearing from you!

Please feel free to give some feedback.

Online tool to create original presentations: Genial.ly

Hello everybody!

First of all, I would like to share with you how amazed  I am with my learning progress and the digital skills I am acquiring. I think I am in the right track :) I hope you are learning from me too.
However, I still have a lot to do.

Today I would like to talk a little bit about an online tool that I have tried to create a presentation.

I have done my eproject evaluation with Genial.ly, which is an online and free tool in which you can create presentations.

It is the first time I work with genial.ly and I believe it is a great web to create work presentations. In my view it is easier to work with it than with other tools such as Powerpoint or Prezi. However, I have struggled a little bit but I am not sure if it was my connexion's fault, I couldn't delete some features when I wanted.

Genial.ly allows you to link many other sources such as YouTube or Soundcould as well as including your own images. There are many templates you can use which are attractive and useful depending on the topic you are going to work with.

I decided to evaluate ACROSS THE MUSIC's blog because it catched my attention since the first look. I am interested on music and in my opinion, its importance is sometimes forgotten. I also decided to evaluate it because I haven't seen any negative points on it and I wanted to highlight the positive features of it.

Have a look at the evaluation I have made!

I recommend you to use Genial.ly for future presentations, give it a try!

Becoming a content curator

Looking for educational resources on the internet is fantastic but, do you gather this information?

I have never gathered the information I found interesting on the internet (blogs, articles, etc...) but now I am learning how to save these webs you want to keep close to check them in any moment. Do you want to now how?

I have created an account on Pinterest! This was another task we had to do in ICT's subject.

On Pinterest you can organize the different webs that catch your attention. It is just like a corckboard in which you can pin the online resources that are from your interest.

It is very useful as I, personally, have always lost the different things I found on the internet....

You may create different boards depending on the topic and gather the information related to that topic on that specific board.

As an example you can visit my board on interesting webs for CLIL

You may also feel interested on visiting my pinterest profile where you will find other boards of my interest.

I encourage you to join Pinterest and start to organize and save your favourite webs.

Pinterest can also be a very useful tool for students when making some projects, as they will have in just one place all the information they have found. They will be able to add a description and organize it as they want.

As teachers it is also very interesting as you can check different boards and share pins with other collegues. Pinterest allows users to create collaborative boards too, which definetely will make tasks easier.

Come on, give it a try! I am completely sure that you will make your life easier :)

Bank of common knowledge

Is there something better than sharing with your peers what you find interesting on the internet?

We have created an open collaborative board on Pinterest so as to pin whatever we think it might be useful for our classes. In my view, it should be compulsory at schools to create a bank of common knowledge  in order to share between the teachers the different tools, webs or info that may be interesting for everyone.

The task of this week was to pin on the collaborative board interesting resources and useful for CLIL.

I would like to share with you the link to the Pinterest board in which we are sharing attractive and useful resources for children or tips for teachers:

Bank of common knowledge with Pinterest

I have added on the collaborative board the following webs which I believe that may be useful for CLIL:

- Do you like broccoli ice cream?

This song from Super Simple Songs on Youtube is not only useful to acquire food vocabulary but also to learn how to make questions and answers.



 - Interesting and attractive activities


On this web you can find online games, activities and lessons for children. You can also find some game templates or you may if you wish create your own game! There are lots of communicative and interactive activities.
I recommend you to take a look at it!

- Helpful website to practice and acquire English

Website with which students can learn while they enjoy. They will acquire vocabulary, grammar structures at the same time they develop their listening and reading skills through an interactive way.

- Science online games and activities

A nice website in which you can find loads of online free science games and songs for primary students! Perfect for CLIL as they are required to use their cognitive skills and will practice and acquire grammar an vocabulary!

- Transportation song

Nice song to introduce different means of transport.



- Brush your teeth song

Lovely song about brushing your teeth, perfect for 1st graders! Great visual aids with which they will learn vocabulary.


As I mentioned before, Pinterest is very useful to share between colleagues different interesting topics. For example, last week I had to look for ideas to decorate my classroom at school and I searched on Pinterest and found loads of ideas that other teachers shared.

The license I have chosen for my blog

Hi!

Did you know about the importance of the licenses in a web?

Honestly I was not concious about it and I thought it was not important at all, however, internet is just like real life...

I have chosen a license for my blog in which I allow readers to copy, share and redistribute my posts, images and ideas for any purpose (even commercially). Readers may also adapt my work as long as they recognize the original author.

I believe that we must share with other collegues what we create so we all can benefit from other's ideas. However, if someone does not allows it, everybody should respect it and do not share it or use it with out permission.

When teaching students how to surf on the internet and write their own academic writings, it should also be taught the importance of being respectful with others projects, studies and ideas from the very beginning so as to avoid plagiarism and attribute someone’s work.

Some situations can be stablished to make students understand that copying without naming the original author and the source of information means stealing an idea that belongs to someone else and it is considered a crime.

In order to motivate them, apart from evaluating the content or language structure of the student’s writings, it should also be assessed the way in which they make reference to sources and authors.

Students have to be aware of the importance of respecting others work and when they can or cannot make use of it.

Do you have any other ideas to make students conciuous about linceses? Come on, leave me some comments!

Learning by twittering

Good afternoon again!

In this week we have been asked to create a Twitter account to share will the entire world different challenges, tasks and interesting information about the field of education, specially bilingual education.

Twitter is a free network in which you can share with other users information in just 140 characters of text. Users may follow people of their interest and keep in touch with the entire world! I will do so with some CLIL information or interesting topics related to education.

If you want to keep up with my updates, I invite you to follow me on my twitter account: @celialancharro

Moreover, my classmates, my teacher and I will be using the hashtag #ictclil_urjc so do not think it twice and search it!

So as to inagurate my Twitter account I have published a tweet about CLIL:

With CLIL students learn content through a foreign language and acquire the language through content. Reciprocal&effective #ictclil_urjc

— Celia Lancharro (@CeliaLancharro) February 19, 2016

Come on, follow me and do not miss any tweet :)

@celialancharro 

Creating mind maps!

Hi everybody :)

Here I am to share with you the second challenge we have done in ICT's. Honestly, I feel very happy to be learning tools that are new for me! I am sure that at the end of the course I will have a long list of online resources with which I will be able to work with at class. Isn't it practical?

Well, the second challenge consisted on visualizing our PLE and PLN and organising it in an online diagram.
For it, I have used Easel.ly.

Easel.ly is a free website, its purpose is simple yet extremely useful, it allows us create and share an eye catching mind map or a graphic. 

Before creating my final map, I tried different tools such as Popplet or Coggle but I decided to create my mapping e-project with Easel.ly because I found it easier to work with it.

So as to create your own project with Easel.ly, you can choose between different backgrounds, styles, charts, shapes, banners or you may use your own images. It gives you the opportunity to begin with one of their models or if you want to be more creative you can try to do your own, starting with a blank background.

I have done mine using different shapes and using some images which I had to upload. I used this Easel.ly to organize my PLE and PLE for CLIL.

It wasn’t until I started to study the master course on bilingual education when I started to learn about CLIL. The vast majority of things I have learnt and I am still learning are a consequence of the master course I’m taking, social networks, online platforms, and Google.

Through this mapping e-project I wanted to organise my learning on CLIL and reflect on where did I learnt about it.

I divided my map it into two types of learning: PLE (Personal Learning Environment) and PLN (Personal Learning Network):

PLE:

To organise and share information: Dropbox and Google Drive.

To search some information: Scholar Google, Google, Moodle (Aula Virtual urjc), Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

To obtain information: Master course and Moodle

To create: Voki.

                                                                     

PLN: Twitter and Moodle.

How can we use this tool in the classroom? It would be wise to introduce this tool to young learners in order to plan their own writings, to record results of an experiment or to present a project.

This is my final result:

I am sure that these mapping will be much bigger at the end of the course.

I recommend you to give it a try!