The Gruffalo spotters

Contextualitzation

Target group: 3rd or 4th grade (8-9 years old)

Context: This activity is an important part of the didactic unit we created. It’s focused on learning about the environment and wildlife. 

Sequence: First of all, we’re going to introduce the topic to our kids by reading them a tale about The Gruffalo, which is a British book that is really useful to work on descriptions. In order to help them understand better and to make them engaged, we are going to read the tale while doing a mimic game, so they can learn some vocabulary by relating it to the mimics. For instance, we will read the book out loud and say the Gruffalo… and do a mimic related to that character. 

Once we have read the tale and the students are engaged in the activity, we are going to read it all together in class while doing the mimics.

Afterwards, they are going to read it on their own to internalise and assimilate the story.

Finally, we will head to the nearest forest in order to do the final activity. In this activity, we will divide the class in groups of five and, with the help of their electronic devices, students will have to look for animal footprints and scan them with the Gruffalo app so they can learn more about the characters. They will have to follow this procedure until they finally complete the level the app offers. Once they finish, they can take pictures of themselves with the AR animals.

Scaffolding

Pre-scaffolding:

We would have worked the vocabulary and the book in previous activities of the didactic unit, so students will already recognise all the characters and more or less their characteristics. During the previous activities, we will have assigned a mimic or gesture to each key word or important vocabulary. 

During-scaffolding:

During the activity in the forest, students will have an orientation basis with the basic structures to interpret and explain the information that appears in the card of the animal they have found. This material is the following:

Post-scaffolding:

The post scaffolding technique that we would use consists of asking questions to the students and they have to answer by making a gesture with their body. For example if the answer is “yes” the students should wave their hands. If the answer is “no” they should stand on one leg. This technique can also be used with other types of questions, such as True and False, but we have to set different movements, for instance clapping hands to say “true” and jumping for “false”. Moreover we will repeat some sentences of the story and the students will have to continue the sentence while they repeat the movements that we taught them while we were reading the story.