CALL Lessons 2005-2007

A blog for the CALL lessons with my three 5th and 6th grade classes (2005-2007)

Report on CALL lesson 2

I thought that it would be fun for my students to have a Geography lesson in English that would give them a very good idea of where in the world are those friends of mine and theirs who have left comments in our blog. At the same time it would be a nice way to say "thank you" to those twenty-five teachers from the five continents of the world.

I know from past experience that working with an interactive map is part of the magic of a lesson such as this one. So the three classes had to click the world atlas to find the necessary info to complete the table that I created. They were very enthusiastic about it. They enjoyed guessing the continents - in several cases they have no clue as to the whereabouts of the countries! - and then clicking on the world map to get to the country. The next step was finding the capital, a city with a big star inside a white circle. Finally they had to scroll down and look for the language spoken in that country and the colors of the flag.

Once again we used the wireless connection in Sala TIC (ICT Room) together with my laptop and a video projector, which projected onto a whiteboard. Three to four students in each class took turns at the computer while the others looked at the projection on the whiteboard lent a helping hand. Each student at the computer keyboarded the info directly in the table. The biggest challenge was looking for Elisabeth Fernandes' location in Japan. We couldn't find either Nishinomya or Hyogo! What is the closest city, Elisabeth? I've been doing some searching today and believe that Nishinomya is in the Prefecture of Hyogo, close to Osaka and Kobe. Is this correct?

Some students got impatient at times, because they said their colleagues didn't keyboard fast enough. I told them that "patience" is not only part of the work in a classroom, but also part of a teacher's job and of being a good colleague. All in all they did very well and filled in as much info as was possible in the allotted time. I filled in the rest. Each group has their info in a different color. At the end of each 45-minute lesson they really enjoyed seeing their work published online at the click of the mouse!

During one of the lessons I decided that there will be a follow-up: a quiz based on this table and the vocabulary that they learned and practiced.

There was a birthday boy in 5. C, Luis, so the whole class sang "Happy Birthday!" to him.

posted by: teresadeca at 15:47 | link | comments (2) |

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