Lesson #5
Writing and Unscrambling Sentences about Minnesota History Using Wordle
Purpose or Language Learning Objective
Students are finishing a unit on Minnesota history. The
purpose of my instruction is for students to present information they know
about Minnesota history to another student and to assess fellow students’
knowledge about Minnesota history. The purpose is also for students to practice
typing sentence accurately on a computer keyboard, to practice unscrambling
words into complete sentences, and to practice speaking complete sentences out
loud to their peers.
Lesson time: 30 minutes
Student group: 6th grade intermediate to advanced
Lesson details
- During the last month or two students have been building their knowledge of Minnesota history, both during social studies and during ELL time. This activity will be part of a culminating set of lessons in which students will demonstrate what they have learned.
- In a previous class period, students will have written out 10-15 complete sentences in their own words describing facts about Minnesota history. Ex. “The fur trade was a reason why Europeans first came to Minnesota.”
- Students will work with a partner. Each student will have a laptop.
- I will demonstrate how to use Wordle, and I will model how to complete the activity using the SMART Board.
- Students will each privately type one of their 10-15 sentences into Wordle. Once finished, students will click “Go.”
- Students will show their laptop screens to one another, then one at a time each partner will try to unscramble the other sentence, forming the complete sentence that the other student wrote. They will speak their answer out loud to their partner.
- Students will continue to do this, one sentence at a time until they are finished with all their sentences. More advanced students could type in two or three sentences each time, making the unscrambling more challenging for their partner.
Review/Analysis
How will you use this resource to meet the needs of your
instructional purposes?
Wordle is easy to use, does not require a student login, and
is very engaging for students. It offers them an authentic way to practice
keyboarding skills and it provides a simple, one-button option for sentence
scrambling. Student will find, for this activity, that the technology will not
be complex and will not get in their way. The skills of keyboarding and unscrambling
sentences will definitely take center stage as the technology disappears into
the background.
Why is this topic, information or content appropriate for
the lesson you plan to create (e.g., level of authenticity, relevance to target
language, register, accuracy, interest level, and motivation)?
These students are still perfecting the skill of writing
complete sentences with subject and predicate and supporting features like
adjectives and adverbs. Wordle will help them take their complete sentences and
use them in an authentic way. It is also important for these students to
comprehend the information about Minnesota history they are learning in social
studies class. Therefore, spending time learning the content and checking for
understanding will help the students succeed in their mainstream classroom.
What handouts or directions will you provide students to
focus learning and adapt this resource for your instructional resources?
I will demonstrate how to use Wordle on the SMART Board and
will address any questions that come up. I will tell them that the assignment
is to type their sentences into Wordle exactly as they are written in their
notebooks. I will make sure students know that the idea is not to confuse or
trick their partner, but to present their sentences to their partner with the ultimate
goal of teaching them some facts about Minnesota history. I will also tell them
that in some instances their partner might misspell a word or have some errors
in sentence structure. It will be important for the partners to support each
other and to work together so learning occurs in a constructive way.
What are the potential problems, either language based or
technical that you may need to troubleshoot or prepare for?
Students may have some sentence structure errors or
misspellings in their sentences. Or, students may make some mistakes while they
are typing in their words. As I stated above, the concern would be that
students might get angry or frustrated at one another due to the fact that the
mistakes make it difficult or impossible for the other partner to unscramble
the sentence correctly. Again, dealing with this ahead of time will hopefully
create an environment between partners that is supporting and helpful.
Hi Chris-
ReplyDeleteWhat an interesting idea - Word clouds. I think you have proposed using it in a very constructive way, integrating Wordle into your grammar lesson plan seamlessly. Even for me, more than one sentence would be too much for one word cloud - I would be stumped and I've been reading English for more years than I would like to admit!
An extension to your lesson plan might be a writing component where student A, after unscrambling the sentence, would write down student B's sentence and vice versa. Would increase each student's review by potentially 15 new sentences. Also, this might be the time in which the students work out any sentence errors that have been identified.
I could see this lesson plan being slightly adapted to work nicely in an adult ESL class; the major modification being the content, not the LP structure. Also, I think word clouds would be an interesting way to have students locate parts of speech like adverbs of possibility. They would be mixed in with other words to make it more challenging. Then in pairs or threes, students could competitively find the target grammar.
Endless possibilities!
Hi Chris,
ReplyDeleteI must say I haven’t used either the smart board or the wordle, so I don’t have a clue as to how they work logistically. As for your lesson plan, it is packed with plenty of communicative opportunities for using language by practicing with English sentence structure, reading, speaking, peer work, in addition to history review (comprehension of factual information about Minnesota history).
It is very important to give the necessary information about the use of technology as you have planned: “will demonstrate how to use Wordle on the SMART Board and will address any questions that come up. I will tell them that the assignment is to type their sentences into Wordle exactly as they are written in their notebooks.” It may be useful to follow this kind of introduction with actual examples the class could do together to experientially show applications of the said procedures.
You had, also, mentioned the possibility of students making grammatical mistakes that might make unscrambling more difficult and frustrating. What about inserting an extra step of working with a peer; reviewing and correcting sentences, before starting unscrambling with a third peer who hasn’t seen the sentences?
What a fun site, I'd never heard of moodle before. I love the way this forces both students in the pair to write out the full sentence and think about both meaning and sentence structuring while doing it. Good point too about how this encourages them to work on accurate typing skills as well. I keep wondering if at the end you could do some kind of mock game show with the kids. I remember my 6th grade history teacher used to always play class jeopardy with us the day before a test as the final review and we were soo into it. I am trying to remember how he set it up... I think he split us into 3 rows and then three people were "up" for a question at a time. I think we had to write the answer correctly within so much time in order to help our team get whatever amount of points was allotted for the question. In your case it could be true/false sort of questions based on all the facts they've written or just a continued word scramble but as a big class game. I don't know... just a thought! I really like the moodle thing though, thanks for sharing it
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