Sexist lyrics (4º ESO)

On the occasion of International Women's Day on the 8th of March, I designed an activity that would make my students use their critical thinking skills to decide whether some popular songs have sexist content, whether hidden or not. The aim of this activity was, in a way, to activate the 'sexist radar' in my students and to be aware of sexism in our society.


I chose some current hits but also some older songs, in an attempt to show that these issues are not new. Terms such as infantilisation, objectification and banalisation were discussed and we looked for instances of them in order to create awareness of how they can be put into words and images. If there was something I really wanted to achieve was to promote feminism as an equalitarian movement, which favours equal rights and equal treatment between the genders, and that a wrong is a wrong regardless of who does it.

This activity encouraged a lot of debate in class- students helped each other understand the difference between healthy behaviours and attitudes (for example, a feeling of sadness after a relationship breaks up) and unhealthy and potentially dangerous ones (jealousy, manipulation, stalking). We also touched on the role of social media in human relationships, but did not explore this in a lot of detail as this alone would make for a long and complex project.

The assessment rubric was quite simple:



I definitely think this activity works well for older groups of students. Some of the songs and videos chosen were quite explicit and this needs to be taken into consideration in order to choose whether to show the videos in class, or to just talk about the lyrics. The most interesting presentations were, unsurprisingly, about the songs which attempt to hide sexism and about the ones which display deep-rooted sexist behaviours that have, to quite an extent, been normalised to such a point that a lot of people do not perceive them.

I would definitely like to repeat this activity in the future.

Thanks for checking in! See you in the next post!

Maite

Halloween Stories (4º ESO)

Hi all,

This is a bit of a tradition for me now, since it's the third year I have done this activity. As usual, I introduced the topic of Halloween and launched the creative writing task in my 4º of ESO class, which this year are working towards a C1 level. They're a really strong class, with plenty of creativity and language skills to match.

The stories have been published in Stories at Base blog, and you can enjoy them by clicking on the link.

Enjoy!

Maite

Start of the year ice-breakers

New year, new students, and new routines!

I don't know about other teachers, but I seem to get new groups of students every year. Obviously, this means I don't even know their names, let alone their skills and learning styles. To me, this means I need to do both as quickly as possible in order to start feeling productive.

This year, I have done the following activities with my students:

First, my youngest students (1º ESO or Year 7). I have asked them to create a time capsule of themselves. I asked them to include information such as their height, their age in days, their favourite things, and other random questions. It was a bit of fun, but it got them thinking- 'how should I include my exact height if I don't have a tape measure?'... I asked them to be creative. Some of them used pens and pencils ("I'm 15 pens tall!"), some others asked their friends to walk toe to heel next to them ("I'm seven feet!")... It was a bit of fun but it allowed me to get to know the way they solve problems, how they interact, and also, how they express themselves in English. Another activity we did was to write Crazy Chain Stories. I gave them all the same start to a story, which they had to copy at the top of a piece of paper. Then, folding the sheet so only the last sentence was visible, they had to continue the story and then, fold again and pass it on. At the end, we read the resulting stories. I was more interested in the process of writing than in the final result. Again, it allowed me to check how they worked and it forced them to write in English, even if it was a simple sentence.

My next group, 2º ESO (Year 8), did a grammar revision activity with a prize attached to it. I gave them 15 gapped sentences and they had to fill in the gaps. Every correct answer allowed them to throw a paper ball into the bin. The person with the highest number of successful throws would get a lollipop. In this case, there was no cooperation- it was clearly a competition, but even then it gave me the chance to observe them when they were motivated and eager for the prize: some of them tried to copy someone else's answers, whereas others didn't complete the work and others breezed through it.

My oldest students, in 4º ESO (Year 10), were given a challenge. After showing them a short video on the 6 degrees of separation theory, I gave them random names of public figures, some of them already dead and some of them still alive, and I asked them to research them in order to find a plausible connection between them. Incredibly, some of my students managed to connect really diverse people in less than 6 steps! I watched them as they worked in pairs, as they tried to figure out how to 'crack' it, as it were, and finally, I asked them to explain their thought process in order to connect the two people they had been given. With an activity like this, I gained some knowledge of them, which I think is a good basis for a successful start of the year.

What do other people do to start their school year? Let me know in the comments box below!

Thanks for popping in! :)

Maite

Project: news stories (2)

And we're back after the Easter break!

My 4ª ESO students showed their news stories projects on the last day before the holidays began. As the group is so reduced (only 11 students), there were only 3 projects to present, but the experience was really positive for everyone. 

The first group had chosen a kids' programme. They adapted the topics to children and included songs and a dance to highlight the importance of taking care of the environment; interviews with experts to talk about the importance of health and vaccines (no doubt an important aspect of every child's life!), and they gave news of a celebrity baby in the most tender way possible. The students wore animal onesies as well, so they definitely had the target audience in mind. 

If anything could have been improved, I think it would have been the setting in which the programme was recorded, as it was fairly obvious that it had been filmed in a classroom and no attempt was made to hide desks, chairs, and other school paraphernalia. I guess that if we do this again next year I'll have to make students think of this aspect as well, and bring easy-to-use decorations and props to dress up the classrooms a bit better. 

The second group had chosen a standard news programme. In this case, the main difficulty was to adopt the right formal tone usually found in this kind of show. The students had to work a bit to remove opinion and bias from their news stories, achieving a more neutral register. This group used Touchcast Studio, and they benefitted from more professional-looking backgrounds and format for their videos. They thought their project lacked spark in comparison with the previous one, but I think that they still produced a decent news programme. 

The final group had chosen gossip, and this was a bit harder to adapt as there are few TV shows that combine gossip with current affairs, so they reached a compromise by producing a talk show with guests who were commenting on news stories, including dramatic fall-outs between them, heavily opinionated contributions and the hostess trying to keep the peace. It was fun and there definitely was a lot of thought behind it, but I think this group could also have made a bigger effort to make the classroom elements less obvious. They used the IWB to project a background for their programme, including a picture and their logo, but this could have been done more 'professionally' using a green screen as the background. 

The students had a lot of fun making these programmes, and they said they also learned about different reporting styles, apart from practising writing, speaking, audiovisual skills, teamwork, critical thinking... 

Have you done anything similar in your classroom? How did it work? 

Project: news stories

Last week, we started working on a new project in my 4º ESO class. In this project, the students have to research a journalistic style and report three news stories according to their chosen style.

Here you have the presentation I used in class:

First of all, the students got into groups, and before choosing a style, we discussed some common characteristics of each of them together. We discussed things such as bias, neutrality, focus, the importance given to personal commentary by the person reporting the news, the general tone, the role of the audience, and some other generalities. Then, each group chose a style and they started working on their scripts. 

Although I have given them three stories to report and examples of raw news to my students, I've actually given them the freedom to develop their stories as they like. In other words, they all have to talk about an oil spill, a new vaccine and a celeb becoming a mother, but the stories described by each group can differ. 

I am really excited about this project because, although we are working on fictional news, the students will gain a deeper understanding of the role of the media in news reporting, and hopefully, this will make my students a little more critical when they read or hear the news, by asking themselves the same questions we discussed at the beginning of the project: is this biased? What political agenda does it have, if any? Is this news or opinion? ... 

All the groups have decided to record a video, and one of them has asked to use Touchcast. As I write these lines, however, we're still at the script-writing stage of the project. I shall update again in a few days. 

Thanks for reading!

Project: a survey (2)

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post about the surveys on role models, which my 4º ESO students had made. These surveys were filled out by other students at school. Once enough responses had been received, the authors collated and analysed the data and presented the results to the class. 

Google Forms is great because it simplifies this job for you. It makes pie charts and and bar charts, so it makes the job of interpreting data easier. The open questions (short or long answers) yielded different results, sometimes unexpected or even wasteful, as the students who took the surveys didn't always take the questions seriously. I think my students learned a lesson there. 

Finally, the results were interpreted and analysed. My students used Google Slides to make their presentations, using some of the graphs provided by Google Forms, and conclusions were drawn in insightful ways, which made this part of the project meaningful and informative. 

The general feedback from the class was positive. They had never done a project like this and they relished the challenge. It was nice to create a questionnaire that was treated like a real one (by most people, anyway), and not like a classroom activity that stays within the same four walls where it was created. 

They did say that making three different surveys about the same topic (role models) was a bit samey, though, and that it would have been better to have used different topics instead. I have to say that I agree with this, and for next year I will probably ask my students to make surveys about a few different topics, such as stereotypes, independence, the rights of young people, and so on.  

The next step is to do a writing on the back of this. We're working on reports and proposals at the moment. I'll write a post about this once we get there. 

Thanks for checking in!

Project: a survey

Last week I started a new project with my 4º ESO class. The project consists in writing a survey, analysing data from answers and presenting the results to the rest of the class.

Here's the presentation I used for this project:



One of the conversation topics for ISE III is role models, so I decided to use this as the topic for the survey. I asked my students to create a survey in order to find out what their peers consider role models and how they choose their role models. To make it a bit less abstract, I established some areas in which people normally find them: sports, entertainment and close personal circle. Within these categories, I allowed them to use sub-categories, such as the world of cinema, music and technology/design. 

The first step was to get my students familiarised with the term 'role model' and to give them a more neutral point of view. I gave them links to several sites so they could read about role models and what it means to have or to be a role model. These are the links I gave them:

Article on female role models

Link to Diversity Role Models, a non-for-profit organisation that promotes role models from diverse sexual orientations.

Rolemodel.net, a website about the importance of role models in general, focusing on celebrities and their influence on others. 

A class discussion about what they had read ensued. The students had realised that having a role model meant something slightly different to what they had initially thought, and their understanding of the influence a role model can have on young people was deeper. 

Then, the students were arranged into groups. I used TeamUp for this. I asked each group to choose a team leader, who would be in charge of keeping time and assigning jobs. I usually find that students don't always make the most of the time I give them for projects, so a tight deadline, a reporting system like Team-Up and a manager within each group normally take care of all this. As usual, the students had the assessment rubric at hand, so they had a fairly clear idea of the quality that was expected. 

They used Google Forms to make their surveys. I love the Google suite because its apps enable collaboration, and since I always ask my students to share their documents with me, I have visibility all the time. I can check progress, praise students, make comments and so on. 

At first, the students weren't very clear how to start making their survey. I had asked them to include some questions for statistics (age, gender, background ... ) and then, I suggested grouping their questions into sections, each section dealing with a particular sub-topic of their chosen category. This would allow the students to interpret answer results more easily. 

The students could use all different types of answers, but most of them used multiple choice, tickboxes and short answer. I helped them fine-tune the range of answers available, reminding them that surveys are purposeful questionnaires-- this proved a bit harder than I had expected, but then again, making surveys isn't an easy task. 

When they were happy with their questionnaires (and so was I), I suggested adding pictures to the questions in order to make them more appealing. After all, students from all different year levels are going to take the surveys, and teenagers like to look at pictures as well as reading questions. 

This is how far we've come. Once the surveys have been answered by enough people, the students will complete part 2 of the project, which will consist in analysing the answers and presenting their findings to the class. 

I'll update you once this is done. 

Thanks for reading! 

A class debate

As far as speaking activities go, class debates are both entertaining and educational. I like them because you can work a lot of skills, some of which go beyond the purely linguistic ones.

This week, I have done a class debate on the subject of ambition.

We looked at a couple of quotes about ambition, highlighting both its positive and its negative side.

Ambition is the path to success. Persistence is the vehicle you arrive in. Bill Bradley

He who sacrifices his conscience to ambition burns a picture to obtain its ashes. Proveb.

Then, the students were divided into two groups-- those who would argue that ambition was mostly a positive quality, and those who would defend the opposite. Not every student was going to argue according to their belief, which made it all the more interesting. I have an odd number of students, so one of the teams had one extra member.

We agreed on a few different subtopics: the business world, historical figures, people in our own personal circles, etc. Each team would research these to fit in with their position. I gave the class two periods to prepare, and we established the debate would last between 30 and 45 minutes.

Finally, both teams chose a main speaker, who would start the debate by stating their team's position and a short but strong supporting reason.

On the day of the debate, the classroom furniture was arranged in such a way that all students were sitting down in neat rows, each team facing each other. I had prepared a rubric measuring the 5 main aspects I wanted to assess:

• respect for the other team
• quality of the information used
• relevance to argument
• presentation (voice, body language, eye contact)
• language skills

The students were made aware of the standards required. We tossed a coin and the debate began!

After the debate, I assigned the students an opinion essay with the following quote by Thomas Morton to discuss: "Where ambition ends, happiness begins."

I think that having done the class debate prior to the writing assignment works well to help students generate valuable ideas to use in their essays. A lot of them suffer from writer's block when it comes to talking about abstract ideas, so doing an 'undercover' brainstorming by way of a debate is an effective way to get those creative juices running. 

I am really happy with the result because students have 

• researched a topic they had some pre-conceived ideas about
• worked as a team in order to build solid arguments, in some cases anticipating counter-arguments 
• listened to each other in order to rebuff arguments effectively
• put into practice some complex language, such as second and third conditional sentences, reported speech, relative clauses, modal verbs... 
• used both speaking and writing skills

How about you? What is your experience with class debates? 

Creative writing

I would like to share a classroom experience that I feel particularly happy about.

Last year, I tried out a creative writing activity with my 4th year students. During the week leading up to Halloween, I asked them to write a horror story set in school, the reason being that the creepiest stories are always those that happened near the place where they are being told. I gave the students a few pointers, asked them to get into groups of three, and gave them a bit of time to work on a basic horror story. They were a fairly strong class, and they delivered the goods. 

This year, I have a slightly weaker class in the same year level. Weaker in their language skills, but really imaginative and with a high level of commitment to any 'different' activity I bring to class. I pitched the task to them by first reading a horror story set at school (with some characters they recognised even after a name change, and some locations they could identify without trouble). Then, I explained the basics of story writing (rising action, climax, denouement), and gave them a target of two pages. This time they would work in pairs, and just like last year, I gave them time to work on their stories in class. 

Their response was amazing. They threw themselves into it- they weren't just completing an assignment, they really wanted to create scary stories, and they really wanted their classmates to picture their characters and what they were going through in no uncertain terms. They researched vocabulary I would never have dreamt of teaching them at their skill level, they used grammar structures we had just been working on the week before to express uncertainty and speculation (and if I may say so, successfully as well), and they even were a bit worried they would have to go over the 'limit' of two pages because their story just needed that extra bit of development, or to create a certain effect on the reader. 

To them, this was a writing assignment, yes, but it was also a chance to imagine something and bring it to life. 

To top it all off, we read the stories in class, curtains drawn and creepy music playing in the background. 

The general comment? "We should do this more often!"

You can check their stories (with some minor editing and corrections) clicking here.