Preparing for the journey & Challenging Students

The 30 Goals Challenge for Educators has embarked on a journey around the world and even though I boarded on a bit later than I wanted to it was so great to work on my introduction!

At first it seemed too much of a challenge; there were so many things I could have put together, so many tools I could use and as always I wasn’t entirely sure whether anyone would be interested in it. But if the 30 goals community has taught me anything, that is the power of sharing and getting feedback.

After working around several digital tools (bless you Shelly Sanchez Terrell!), I decided to go with PowToon. I love its cartoon-like, uplifting vibes and learning my way around it has sparked an alarmingly large number of activities I could do with students.

First of all, I thought of extending the 3-2-1 Intro goal and ask my  students on Edmodo (a group preparing for ECCE, where students are from different parts of town) to create their own presentation using PowToon. I think it’ll be a nice break from the norm and will help them get to know each other in a fun and creative way (I also secretly hope we’ll finally get over the ”My name is {…}, I’m {…} years old and I live in {…}!).
Here’s my plan:

”And you are…?”
1. Send students links of my 3-2-1 Intro and the PowToon website.
2.  Set deadlines: Students will have a week to prepare their intro and share it with the group.
3. Explain the task: ”Introduce yourself to the group. Tell us some interesting things about yourself, using pictures and your favourite music and include something we don’t know about you!”.
4. Guide students through PowToon on our group’s timeline when necessary.

Another activity I have in mind is for two 1-to-1 students preparing for FCE, to help them practise Part 2 of the Speaking Task from a different angle. As they’ll have one minute to talk on their own comparing, describing and giving opinions for this part of the exam, I think creating a video with a time-limit can do wonders.
This plan is for discussing holidays:

” 1 minute to go”
1. Send each student a prompt with two pictures

Preparing for the journey – http://wp.me/p2oEh6-bI

2. Ask them to create a 1 minute PowToon describing their dream holiday.
3. Ask them to share their video with the other student, along with a short paragraph describing what is seen in their presentation.
4.Get students to comment on each other’s presentation.

I’ll update the post with the results soon!

Image Credits: All-free-download