For Teachers

Target Group

➔ Grade: 6th graders

➔ Social organization: Half of the class (around 12 students)

➔ Environment: Alèxia’s thermometer gallery

➔ Timing: 20 minuts

➔ EFL level: A1 - A2 level

How this fits into a larger lesson or unit 

• Our activity goes in parallel with another activity related to the same topic. In both, students will work on the same language objectives. These activities can be used as one of the final sessions of a larger unit regarding descriptions. The activity that we are going to present is going to be done in a VR space whereas, the other activity will consist of a memory game related to the same topic. There, students will need to find the pairs (one with the image and the other with the written description).

Main Learning Objectives: 

• Students will be able to demonstrate their knowledge on descriptions. 

• Students will be able to experiment a new way of learning using a VR environment. 

Materials Needed:

For these activities, there will be needed: 

• VR sets

• Laptops or computers for the teacher and for students that might get dizzy.

• Memory game cards (2 sets)

• Two classrooms 

• Alèxia’s thermometer gallery

Activity Instructions

We have decided that our activities should be part of a bigger teaching unit regarding descriptions. For that reason, students will already be familiarized with the vocabulary that they will be working on. Nevertheless, as a previous activity, there could be some explanation on how the VR set functions as well as some rules and norms about it. This will take about 15-20 minutes tops but, there would have to be explained in a previous session. Moreover, since our activity is on an online platform, they will have to create their own avatar. 

Before starting the activity, it is important to have two teachers available to do the activity as well as two classrooms. If this is not possible, the activity cannot be done efficiently. 

For the activity itself, the class has to be divided into two big groups (12 students each). One group will stay in the class to do the memory game with this material while the other half will go to the other class where the VR sets are. 

Furthermore, when they are in the class, each student will put on a VR set (if there are students that get dizzy, they can do it with a laptop. We have used a platform that allows us to do the same with or without VR sets). Since this activity is only for 20 minutes, we have divided that time. The first ten minutes, students will change their appearance on Spatial. They can change everything and they do not need to look like they do in real life. In fact, we encourage the students to get as crazy as they can. After ten minutes, they will have to stop editing themselves.