Making Soundtracks to Teach Past Continuous

Do you need to teach past continuous and is looking for something simple that requires no preparation and engages students? Maybe you could try this digital task out.

Aim - Sentence level practice of past continuous and simple past

Devices - Any device students have that records voice

Procedures:

Model the activity by playing a soundtrack and asking students to write a sentence to describe it. e.g. The boy was listening to music when the sound system broke. Separate the class in small groups and give them 10 minutes to think of a situation, write a sentence and record their soundtracks. Share students work and elicit what the sentences are.

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Students`s work

The guy was listening to music when he crashed his car. 

A couple was making out when the girl slapped the guy.

Two friends were talking when a cow mooed

Using Educreations to Suggest Movies

Suggesting Movies

Advanced

Speaking
Contextualizing or personalizing language

Ipad  

App - Educreations (free)

Instructions:

Do you sometimes talk about movies in class?
I asked my students to find posters of movies they like on google image. I used educreations to record their talking about the movies. Then I asked them to share their suggestions and agree on the best one to watch right after class. 

Maximizing Mlearning

Mobile Learning - Learning is everywhere 

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 Show and Tell

 Here is a nice idea  to get show and tell projects go mobile. We use mlearning making sure we hold truthful to the main principles behind a well designed communicative tasks: Students should have choice of language, there should be real information gap and feedback should be provided by teachers and peers on language and content.

Level; Any
Language Skill; Speaking
Device needed; Ipad, camera
Learning outcome; Contextualizing or personalizing language

Aim - Have students listen to their  oral production and raise awareness of what areas need improvement

App; educreations (free)

Internet Status; offline  

Number of devices required ; 1 or more, if available

Instructions:

After being exposed to the language in the unit, students are asked to personalize it by talking about an image that carries meaning to them. Students send the pictures to the teacher by email. Teacher dowloads pictures to the Ipad and brings them to class. Each student writes a text about his/her image. Students record their voices usind educreations. Teacher shows the recordings and invites students to give feedback on language and/or content to force information gap.

Advanced students - Talk about  photos that strike their attention using the language in the material. There are similar photos displayed and the other students are asked to choose the very one being talked about.

Beginners - Students make a snack and talk about it. I'm making a snack with...There are similar photos displayed and the other students are asked to choose the ver one being talked about to force information gap.


Intermediate - Students make a poster about any giver topic or make a dialogue as languageproduction and record their lines on educreations. Teacher posts the materials on the school's site and asks people to vote for a winner.