Whether to include technology in a regular lesson or not could be problematic if you do not know how to do it properly. For this reason, we designed a didactic sequence to show you how to include a Prezi presentation in the language classroom in a meaningful way.
This sequence, which is supposed to last 80 minutes, was thought for a group of 1st year students at a secondary state school with an A1 level of English.
The aim of the presentation is to provide the students with the opportunity to practice the language, focusing their attention on the features of the description. This is to assess what they have understood up to this moment.
It is important to bear in mind that students are in the process to produce a final outcome, which is to design and describe their “ideal house” to present it to the whole class with a Prezi presentation. They are going to work in groups of five students and each member has to describe one room of their house.
This lesson will be developed before students start writing their final task. In previous lessons, students have already worked with the vocabulary, the grammar content, the conventions for writing a description and they have also designed their houses and made a check list of the information they want to include in their descriptions.
Below there is a brief description of how we developed the lesson:
First of all, we presented students a pre-reading task to hypothesize about the pictures they could see (e.g. to guess whose family these rooms belong to, recognize and name the parts of the house and the pieces of furniture).
After that, students read two texts silently from the slides and matched them with the correct picture. Finally, as a post reading task, students reconstructed two texts. The aim of this activity was to make students notice and explore the target features of this type of descriptions, in this case: there is/are, vocabulary related to furniture and prepositions.
Click here to have access to our Prezi presentation.
In 2006, Puentedura suggested the “SAMR model” as a resource for teachers to evaluate technology integration in the classroom. The following video explains what SAMR is.
Click here to have access to our Prezi presentation.
In 2006, Puentedura suggested the “SAMR model” as a resource for teachers to evaluate technology integration in the classroom. The following video explains what SAMR is.
Assessing our presentation according to the SAMR model, we consider that our proposal is at the transformation level (modification). Prezi was a useful tool for the pre-reading task because of its zooming function which allowed us to fulfill the purpose of the activity: encouraging students to focus on details. Although for the reading task the role of technology is just to substitute the worksheet, Prezi freedom of movement makes the use of the texts meaningful in this context. In this sense, the matching activity was simplified thanks to the function that helped us move forward and backward from text to image.
Moreover, for the reconstructing task, Prezi meant a significant tool to redesign the activity making it practical and interactive.
It is useful to take this model into account because it will help you asses if your presentation is relevant enough to reach your purposes. By doing this evaluation, you can realize if it is completely necessary to use tech or if it can be easily replaced by other traditional resources.
References
Moreover, for the reconstructing task, Prezi meant a significant tool to redesign the activity making it practical and interactive.
It is useful to take this model into account because it will help you asses if your presentation is relevant enough to reach your purposes. By doing this evaluation, you can realize if it is completely necessary to use tech or if it can be easily replaced by other traditional resources.
References
- Candance, M (). SAMR in 120 Seconds
- Spencer, John (2015). What is the SAMR Model and what does it look like in schools?
