Spanish version: Aula Inclusiva: Clase 1 (Cram) 

TOPIC:

The topic of the following classes will be “A day in my life”. Each student will be working with  different applications and/or tools, to create a presentation which they will have to share with the rest of the class. In their presentations, the students will have to share which activities they do in a day.

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE GROUP: 

• The students are between seven and eight years old. 

• Our school works on social inclusion and so there are students with different disabilities within this group. 

• Given the current context of the pandemic, we have decided to plan these classes so that they can be carried out both in a classroom or virtually. 

OBJECTIVES: 

• Encourage teamwork for the integration of students.

• Incorporation of new vocabulary.

• To encourage written production through descriptive texts.

• To encourage the children to be able to ask questions orally and answer them in a foreign language. 

This lesson will be conducted using the "WWW" format: Warmer, Web and What 's next suggested by Dudeney and Hockly (2007).

Warmer (5-10'): 

The teacher will start the class by greeting the students and welcoming them. Both oral and written roll call will be taken, the teacher should write the student's name on the board as well as say it out loud so that all students can know what it is time to say present.

Then the teacher will announce in the same way the topic to be discussed in class, in this case A day in your life: 

*How do you start your day? 

*Do you use an alarm clock to wake up? 

*What do you do when you wake up? 

*What do you do during the day? Do you go to school, read a book, play with your pet? 

And the children will be asked for Notebooks so that they can work.

Web (30-40'): 

The teacher will explain the task that the students will have to carry out in a way that all the students understand, and using a YouTube video

https://youtu.be/qD1pnquN_DM the students will listen and observe the new vocabulary.

Students will then listen to the teacher as she explains the vocabulary and express if they have any doubts, taking note of the words, as these will be used in the next lesson. 

The idea is that with the Cram application, the children, in pairs, can create activities such as Flashcards for their partner to do with the vocabulary they have seen.

They have the option of Flashcards and Memorize, then they have the option of Test and finally they can choose the option of Games (all the options are done with the same vocabulary).

Bloom's taxonomy explains that in the category Remember some of the suggested activities to achieve this could be Flashcards and Quiz/Test and the Cram application allows us to develop these options. Then we can find the Apply category when students have to carry out the activities proposed in class and developed with the application. And when using the games proposed by the application, the students entered the Create category. (Andrew Churches, 2009)

What's next(10- 15'): 

The teacher asks each group to come to the front and share the Flashcards they created with their classmates to see what vocabulary they considered important.

Finally, the teacher can ask the students which presentation they think was the most outstanding and with the best vocabulary to play one of the games in the app and play among the students to continue reinforcing the vocabulary for the next class. 

For a more complete and detailed instruction you can watch the following videos:

https://youtu.be/SEqqTbpfebI

(Tutorial on how to use the audio option): https://youtu.be/menWB35mOEQ 

According to the research, other teachers believe that this site has both advantages and disadvantages.

Advantages: *"One of the best sites for the creation, distribution and use of such flashcards that I have been using with my students is Cram. As well as being available online at http://www.cram.com, it has a mobile app for both Android and iOS devices. It is also completely free to use. (Nenad Paunović Paunović, January 21/2020)

*It is worth noting its versatility and the wide variety of content that allows the user to choose from a wide range of ready-made flashcards. It is not necessary for a teacher to register in order to create a series of flashcards. However, it would be a good idea to do so, as this would allow the teacher to save his or her creations, edit them and access them at any time. Another advantage is that the author can set the privacy of each series of flashcards" (Nenad Paunović Paunović, January 21/2020).

 *"Very handy tool indeed" (terrydrose, 2015)

Disadvantages: *“I love this app I use it for every test, but I'm finally going to have to switch to a new flashcard app because of one problem... if you copy and paste something into a card it looks fine when you're editing it, but as soon as you close out and open the app again it has jammed all the words together likethisandit'sreallyannoying. I was just going back and editing it all, but it takes a lot of time away from studying. If they could fix that problem I'd never stop using cram. Please fix it!!” (Mariah, 2016)

*”Cram itself is nice but I pay for the upgraded version which gives me folders to organize my flashcards. I don't have access to these folders on the app which makes it hard to find the cards that I want in a timely manner. There need to be a lot of improvements to this app. Quizlet is better.” (HR, 2016)

*“It has potential, but the following points must be corrected:

1) A lot of screen estate is wasted for the buttons.

2) Only cards with long text offer a zoom-in. Why not have this for every card?

Background: I use a lot of pictures in my cards and on the phone they are often to small to see all the details. A zoom function would help.”(aGamer,2015)

In conclusion, we can see that the application needs to improve some things that users find inconvenient, such as not having the Zoom function or not saving the edited material properly and having to do it again. But it is still a tool that they find useful for classes and they consider it one of the best.

Bibliography:

Hockly, N., & Dudeney, G. (2007) Chapter 3: Using websites , pp 35-38. In How to Teach English with Technology. Essex: Pears

Churches, A. (2009) La taxonomía de Bloom para la Era Digital. Recuperado en Octubre de 2021.

Link to the second class: Clase 2 (StoryJumper)