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Group: Violeta Almor, Natalia Ballesteros, Laura Márquez and Alba Martín
Short description
The activity consists of creating different drawings with ‘Quick, Draw!’. The AI speaks to the students, trying to guess their drawings. Afterwards, with these drawings, they will create a story with ‘Storybird’. Then, they will present them to the other classmates .
Contextualization
Target Age: This activity is thought for 5th grade students.
Target Language Level (based on CEFR): A2 elementary level.
Location: The activity would be devolped indoors, in the classroom.
Lesson Aims
Reception: p. 56:
LISTENING AS A MEMBER OF A LIVE AUDIENCE: ‘Can follow the general outline of a demonstration or presentation on a familiar or predictable topic, where the message is expressed slowly and clearly in simple language and there is visual support (e.g. slides, handouts).’
Production: p. 70:
PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENTS: ‘Can deliver very short, rehearsed announcements of predictable, learnt content which are intelligible to listeners who are prepared to concentrate.’
CREATIVE WRITING: ‘Can write an introduction to a story or continue a story, provided he/she can consult a dictionary and references (e.g. tables of verb tenses in a course book).’
Interaction: p. 83
INFORMATION EXCHANGE: ‘Can find out and pass on straightforward factual information.’
Learning Objectives
To repeat and describe the words given by the AI to enhance their listening comprehension.
To correlate the new vocabulary and the drawings to construct a coherent narrative text.
To judge their own written work to detect mistakes and improve it.
To present their final stories to the classmates to demonstrate their speaking skills.
To discuss other peers' stories to express their opinion based on their listening comprehension.
Skills
Promote creativity: as students will have to come up with ideas when drawing and writing the story. They will use their creativity skills to connect the different objects with the story they want to create.
Reading and coherence: throughout all the project, students will have to use their reading skills. First, they will need to read the words the AI proposes while listening to them. Furthermore, they will have to read what they write to see if it is coherent and if everything is well written.
Listening abilities: learners will also listen to the different words the AI proposes and try to understand their meaning. Then, they will practice their listening skills by paying attention to their classmates’ stories.
Speaking fluency: by presenting their stories to the other classmates and providing feedback, pupils will develop their oral communication, improving their fluency and confidence in speaking.
Vocabulary acquisition: students will learn new vocabulary by associating their drawings with the AI words proposals. AI keeps suggesting other words while trying to guess the drawing, and the teacher will use this as a resource to keep learning new words. Then, they will recognize the words and relate them with their meaning.
Writing: pupils will learn about the narrative structure and apply it to construct their stories. Moreover, this task will help them to improve their sentence construction, by taking coherence and grammar skills into account.
Preparation for the app task cycle
The first app, ‘Quick, Draw!’, can be used without downloading it and without an account. It will be necessary for the teacher to show how the app works so the students can get prepared. In that, the students will be able to see how they are supposed to draw and see how quick the voice of the app goes. On the other hand, they will be given a few minutes before the activity so that they become familiar with the app and can be better prepared for its use in the pre-task activity.
For the second app used, ‘Story bird’, it is necessary to get an account before using it. For the purpose of this activity and to facilitate students’ work, an account has been created for all the pupils. The teacher will provide the students with the tablet or laptop already signed in with that account, thus avoiding wasting time. That way, once they finish the story, there is no need to share the document, the teacher will have in one account all the projects, which will be easier to assess them.
Materials
Apps used:
Quick, Draw! https://quickdraw.withgoogle.com/?locale=en_US (this app is 100% free)
Story bird https://m.storybird.com/ (this app has a free option, and also a paying option with more features.)
Equipment: Devices (tablets or computers) with access to internet and a projector. Any digital device can be used to carry out this activity. Despite that, in school, they would have to use tablets. Because this will be a grouped activity, they only need one tablet for each group. With that, an internet connection will be needed to use both AI tools. The AI tools, as it has been mentioned many times, are ‘Quick, Draw!’ and ‘Story bird’. For the non-technological aspect of the activity, both the teacher and the students will use the board to write down some reflections.
Handouts: Paper and pencil to write the story.
Screenshot of the Quick, Draw! AI app
Screenshot of the Storybird app
Brief description of each phase of task cycle
Context: The students before this session would have already seen narrative texts, and they would be familiar with them. In the following session, they will apply their knowledge to create a narrative text, demonstrating whether they have understood this typology of text and whether they are capable of creating them in a simple way. Furthermore, it is crucial for learners to understand the real purpose of the project so that they can be encouraged. Therefore, we will explain to them at the beginning of the session that the best story will be presented to an audience, first-graders.
Pre-task: First, in small groups, students will make several drawings in the AI app within a given time. Meanwhile, the AI will try to guess and recognize each one. The AI will read out loud the different words so that they can work with their listening skills. The AI goes too fast when saying the words, which could be seen as a limitation for students when writing the words. For this reason, they only need to write two of them (bonus point if they get more). After each drawing, the teacher will comment on the words, making them try to remember what they said so that there is more communication between the kids. For instance, “What words have you listened to?”, “What does ____ mean?” “Could you describe this word?”. That way, we are exploiting all the input pupils receive from the AI, creating new discussions about language and promoting the interaction between AI-pupils-teachers. (We have created an additional language support template with the three key sentences that AI uses, in case any group needs it). Moreover, to promote everyone's participation and involvement, all the members of the group would have an active role (one drawing, the other being the speaker of the words listened to and the one writing the words suggested), which will change after each drawing so that everyone can experience every role. At the end, the AI gathers the different drawings created. (25 minutes)
Main task: Then, the teacher will ask them to create a story that connects those objects. Learners should use the words related to the drawings to make sentences and organize their story with the Storybird app. A template, instructions and an example will be provided as scaffolding. Once they finish, they will revise the spelling and coherence. (35 minutes)
Post task: Finally, they will present and show their stories to the rest of the classmates so that they can listen to them and provide feedback. The best story will be chosen by a general consensus. (30 minutes)
Final step:
During the following week, the students, whose story had been chosen as the best, will perform and present it to first-graders. The English teacher will be with them all the time, she will explain to the kids the purpose of the project, introduce the fifth graders and support them during the presentation. She will also translate or illustrate arduous words in case there are some doubts and ask some questions and general feedback to the audience.
PLAN B:
As teachers, we always need to prepare a plan B in case there are some added difficulties, for example slow internet or, in the worst-case scenario, no internet connection at all. We propose to split the project in two sessions. For the pre-task, the activity with AI, the teacher will play a recording of the app. Instead of using the tablets, they will draw in a paper, and the AI will be saying some words. For the main activity, in this lesson, they will only make the draft. Hence, an extra session will be needed to create the design in the Storybird website and present the final output.
Furthermore, Storybird sometimes does not have a picture for all the objects AI proposes. However, it allows you to upload pictures. Thus, we have uploaded some extra illustrations in the Storybird account students will use so that they do not need to search for them on the Internet and upload them. In case, the teacher notices some pictures are missing, while the students are brainstorming and creating the story, she can upload new ones.
Attention to diversity
This project is easy to adapt to the special needs that some students might have. As universal measures, we will provide pupils with clear instructions, visual support and scaffolding. The grouping will be flexible and previously organized so that the groups are diverse and balanced. Finally, we will give extra time for those groups who need it and provide active breaks during the lessons. Further measures will be implemented for specific needs.
Example of materials and app in use
This is the folder with all the scaffoldings we have created:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1cV114x8hwuKU-tdpT__F2i67tr7xJRMX?usp=drive_link
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