A few wee gems for engaging learners

Ok so it took a little longer to blog than I promised but here I am and raring to
get back to work. For those not on Twitter or Facebook with me, I broke my ankle on
2nd January (don't ask, a random act of kindness gone wrong) and was off until the
last week before Easter. It really took all my energies to get into work that week
and catch up with where all the classes were so I'm looking forward to teaching
properly this week. One advantage of being off is that I've had time to check out
some cool websites and make some nice resources.

Dobble
Some people may have heard of the brilliant kids' game Dobble (Dobble Game on
Amazon) There are a number of different ways to play including dealing the cards
out and the players turn the card one at a time, trying to find the image their
card has in common with this card. At the time, I wondered about using the game in
class but the icons are tricky enough in the target language. Then a month or so
ago, I happened to spot a link to a Dobble card generator on Twitter
http://www.gorfo.com/dobble/#/home/ Here are the cards I have made for Form 2
Spanish after I have introduced prepositions
http://www.gorfo.com/dobble/#/share/56fe880ed6f6b/en

Meme Generator
https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/meme-generator-free/id645831841?mt=8
Coffee with teacher friends yesterday and one of them happened to mention her new
favourite app. Which is now mine of course. Within a few minutes, I had created
these four memes to illustrate Si clauses for my A level Spanish classes. (For
those non Spanish speakers, they translate as "If I study, I get good marks", "If I
study, I will get good marks", "If I studied, I would get good marks" and "If I had
studied, I would have gotten good marks") I foresee hours of fun ahead..

Quizizz
This is an online quiz website http://quizizz.com/ which allows you to play in real
time or to set it as homework. You can browse and duplicate existing quizzes which
obviously can save you a lot of time and select two, three or four options. You
choose how many questions you want in the quiz.

Once you have finished, you then can play live or set it for homework. Useful
features include jumbling the questions for the students (which avoids too much
collaboration between computers ??) and a Quiz Review whereby the students see all
the answers at the end of the game.

As a teacher, I can see how students answered the questions which enables me to
better inform my teaching for the next lesson.
Quizalize
https://www.quizalize.com/quiz/welcome
This is another quiz website, similar to Quizizz and Kahoot. Again, you can browse
for existing quizzes to use or adapt and you choose how many questions you set.

The quiz adds a competitive element as with Kahoot, as the students gain more
points, the faster they answer. Whilst some would argue that this is detrimental,
it does add to the ambience in the classroom and can engage boys particularly.

Interestingly, when you set up the classes and assign quizzes to them, it does this
via https://live.zzish.com/learninghub which also allows you to assign Kahoot
quizzes to the class as well. I really like the look of the post-quiz features such
as 'who needs help' and 'what we need help with' NB A word of warning that the
free account only stores the last five quiz results.

Posted by A Salt at 10:41 No comments:

Labels: Dobble, engaging learners, ICT, iPads, Kahoot, MemeGenerator, Memes, MFL,
modern languages, Quizizz, Quizlalize, SPANISH
MONDAY, 29 FEBRUARY 2016
Some useful articles
So I'm horrifed how little I have blogged recently. I'm going to post some links to
interesting articles I have read recently and I'm making a promise to myself to
blog in the next couple of weeks.

https://gianfrancoconti.wordpress.com/2016/02/21/six-things-i-tried-out-this-year-
which-really-enhanced-my-teaching/

http://www.learningspy.co.uk/assessment/marking-act-love/

http://eltplanning.com/2015/06/22/35-ways-to-introduce-your-lesson-topic/

http://www.vistawide.com/spanish/top_spanish_vocabulary.htm

http://www.gorfo.com/dobble/#/home/

http://morganmfl.weebly.com/mfl-ideas/gcse-spanish-trivial-pursuit

http://www.huntingenglish.com/2016/02/27/thinking-hard-practical-solutions-for-the-
classroom/

Posted by A Salt at 05:29 No comments:

TUESDAY, 25 AUGUST 2015
#niedcamp Apps R Us
This is the powerpoint of my talk from #niedcamp which I made in case the
technology failed me. I actually used http://www.popboardz.com/ on the day and then
did live demos of Tap Roulette, Decide Now, Plickers, Padlet, iAnnotate, Kahoot and
Nearpod.

Apps r us #niedcamp 2015 from Amanda Salt

Posted by A Salt at 12:40 No comments:
Labels: #niedcamp, Decide Now, iAnnotate, Kahoot, Nearpod, Padlet, Plickers,
Popboardz, Tap Roulette
TUESDAY, 18 AUGUST 2015
#niedcamp 2015 Trailblazers

With the cancellation of the annual RTU summer camp, a group of 14 teachers got
together and said 'We can do this and we'll do it our way' And so we did. Today saw
the exciting culmination of two+ months of very hard work and planning. It went
better than we could have thought possible, going by the tweets with the #niedcamp
hashtag. There were freebies galore from our generous exhibitors, a yummy lunch
funded by GTCNI and Kainos and fab prizes for the Teachmeet.
The feedback about all the talks has all been extremely positive and we've been
left with an exhausted but contented warm fuzzy feeling after spending a day with
like-minded educators who gave up the nicest day of the summer to come and learn
more, to talk to others and to take all the new ideas back to the classroom. Here's
to us all!