For this activity I have used the following introductory material plus the poster sample and some question samples for the interview: link
Next these are the 2 videos used in the activity:
Video 1
Video 2
These are 2 examples of the posters created in the class by my students:
poster 1
poster 2
Description of the task:
I chose the
2 videos from the That’s English platform because I already knew them and I
thought they were a perfect starting point for my communication activity
dealing with volunteering. They are
adequate for the level of my 4th of ESO class and they could follow thm easily thanks to
the questions introduced in the editing.
As regards
the learning objectives, I wanted my students to delve into the concepts of
charities and volunteering trying to raise a social conscience in the group by
means of knowing and debating about realities, different from theirs but
inevitably linked to our environment. To do so I introduced some brainstorming
questions to bring in the topics
mentioned before (I have learned that some of my students had experience as
volunteers since some had participated in altruistic activities such as helping
with the Food Bank at the supermarket
or performing in a local choir to raise funds for ANDEX). Then they linked photos to different ways in which people
can help others, and third, they watched the video individually with the
schools netbooks, answering the questions and checking them in pairs.
After that,
we divided the class into groups of 4 and asked them to produce a digital
poster related to an area of volunteering they identified themselves with. In
this part there was negotiation among the members of the groups so as what to
make the poster about. Moreover, they had to select the relevant information
and download the pictures from the net; (this was a task that they performed
surprisingly fast).
The last
step was to advertise the posters to the rest of the class so that all the
groups learned about the different options they had and then they prepared a
series of questions to interview other classmates and see how they could help
in their charity or event. Two members of each group were interviewed by other
two from a different group so that they had the chance to speak to students
different from those of their group.
To
conclude, I’d like to point out that it has been such a fun activity for them
for various reasons. They have used English effectively, they have also worked
cooperatively to negotiate the posters and the questions for the interview and
most importantly, they have shared their own feelings and experiences with the
rest of the group. In most of the time of the three sessions dedicated to this
task, it has been the students who have held the floor, showing a great deal of autonomy to tackle the tasks proposed.
In my particular case, I have really appreciated the fact that they are a very
receptive and warm group, really committed to social issues and perfectly aware
of some of the problems inherent to our present day society.
