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PRACTICAL CASE 2

How could you use the new technologies (Computers, tablets,

interactive whiteboards...) to motivate your students? It is a
school in a little village near the city.
Give examples for the 1st grade. Reason your answer.

Nowadays, our classroom reality is characterized by a wide students’ diversity. There

are many factors that contribute to this diversity such as the fact students have their
own learning rhythm, their own information processing, a developmental level and
different familiar contexts where they grow up, as well as different interests. New
technologies may be a way to motivate and reach a big part of your students. We live
in a technological world and young people are used to all type of devices.

As requested in this practical case, I am going to analyse how could I use the new
technologies to motivate my students. Firstly, I will contextualise the characteristics of
my students as well as the main aim of Foreign Language Teaching. Then I will
consider some characteristic of ICTs as one the main resources in our English
classroom and after that I will explain some activities required in this practical case. To
conclude I will compile the main conclusions, as well as the bibliography used to
develop it.

My students are in the first grade of Primary Education. They are included in the
second stage of the four in which Piaget divides the evolution of human cognitive
development: the preoperational period. At this age, the children continue preferring
structured activities over open-ended ventures and they still need consistent directions
from adults. This means that all the activities I am going to present are always going to
be guided by the teacher, so the student feels comfortable in the learning process.

The Organic Act 8/2013 for the Improvement of Quality Education (LOMCE)
establishes as one of the main objectives of the Primary Education stage to “Initiate for
the purpose of learning and interpersonal communication, the use of information and
communication technology, developing a critical attitude towards the messages sent
and received”. This means that is our job, as teachers, to teach our students to use the
ICTs in a critical way.
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The main aim of Foreign Language Teaching established in our curriculum (RD
126/2014 which establishes the Minimum Teaching Requirements regarding Primary
Education and Decree ---- which contextualized those Minimum Teaching
Requirements within the context of –----- Community) is to develop in our student
communicative competence. Our students should be able to handle everyday life
situations in the foreign language. Through different activities, in which we can include
the use of ICTs, the students must achieve this competence and be able to
communicate in day-a-day situations

We deal with an essential topic since audiovisual materials and Information and
Communication Technologies have contributed to a great change in our society, making
it more open and communicative. In addition, the Decree –---- passed on –--- which
contains The FL Curriculum for Primary Education of –---, emphasizes the significance
of this topic by including the key competences, where we want to highlight the
importance of the digital competence, directly linked with this practical case.

It is important to define the concept of audiovisual materials and new technologies and
address the main advantages of using them in the classroom. They can be defined as
those materials that involve seeing, hearing or both at the same time. As we know, in
the past, the blackboard was the only teaching aid that teachers had. This has changed
and nowadays, we live in a technological world in which there is a wide range of
resources available.

It is widely proven that the use of audiovisual materials in the language classroom
has several advantages. In general terms, these materials have greatly contributed to
the diversification of FLT activities: They are fun and motivating, and they add variety to
the range of learning situations. They also cater for different learning styles. Moreover,
these resources can be used to introduce, reinforce or recycle any aspect of language.
Finally, they develop children’s curiosity and take them outside the classroom into the
real world, providing information about the target language culture.

When dealing with new technologies in the classroom we should mention and analyse
three of the most important ones: the interactive whiteboard, the computer and the
tablet.

The digital boards are a large interactive display connected to a computer and a
projector. The possibilities of using a digital board in the FLT class are endless, such as
displaying presentations, playing videos to teach or review any aspect, telling stories in
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a digital format, saving a lesson for absent students or teaching students to surf the
Internet, among many others.

Computers and tablets may be used in a similar way in a Foreign Language classroom.
The student can work independently and search for information, prepare and do
activities, watch videos, play games…

In order to ensure a responsible and effective use of new technologies, it is convenient

to establish some rules for their use. The teacher must visit a site before using it in
class, planning the work in order to make the lesson as effective as possible. Also,
before working with ICTs, the teacher must teach in advanced any necessary
vocabulary and explain students the purpose of the activities.

In what follows I am going to present some activities I would use in my first grade
classroom using new technologies. To prepare these activities I should bear in mind the
previous knowledge of the students so they receive the correct input of information and
are able to achieve the objectives of the activities.

I am going to present three activities, each one referred to a different stage of the PPP
method. It is important to mention that each activity will be reinforced with other
activities in the classroom which do not require ICTs and that the new technologies will
work as a resource but not the only one.

The first activity is going to take part in the Presentation stage, in which the teacher
presents some contents to the students. I consider the interactive whiteboard as a
really useful resource in this case because students can receive the input in a global
way and guided by the teacher. When presenting a simple topic like “colours”, the
teacher will show different coloured spots and will say the name of the colour out loud.
The second time the teacher will say the colour and the students will repeat the word.
After doing this process twice, the teacher will show the spots in a different order
without saying the colours and the students will be in charge of saying them out loud.
This will help those students who still do no remember the name of the colours. When
the words are quite well remembered, the students will tell the teachers things that are
that colour, for example, for “yellow”, they can say “sun”,”banana” or “moon”. The
teacher will look on the internet for those pictures and can make a collage with all the
ideas the students have got.

In the Practice Stage, we are going to use again the Interactive whiteboard because in
this stage the students start to practice but they still need the help of the teacher and it
will be easier to follow up in a classroom activity. We will play a video called “Gogo
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loves English: What colour is this?”. It is a very simple video in which a dinosaur
speaks a very simple English and deals with colours. In the video, they ask “What
colour is this?” a lot of times, the teacher will then stop the video and wait for the
students to answer. Once they have answered, the video will go on again and the
students can check if they were right. After watching it, the teacher will take some
pictures of the students holding things of the classroom (pencil case, ball, rubber,
chair). All the class will see those pictures on the digital whiteboard and they will surely
feel motivated of seeing themselves on the board. The students can stand up in order
and point to something of the pictures and say the colour: “The ball is green”, “It is
blue”, “The T-shirt is purple”.

When dealing with the Production stage, I am going to propose an activity with the
tablet. The students are going to be grouped in groups of two or three and each group
will have a tablet. They will use a simple program like “paint”. The teacher will ask one
of the students “What is your favourite colour?”. The student will answer: “My favourite
colour is...”. When he says the colour, each group will draw something of that colour on
the tablet. After 3 or 4 minutes, each group will put the tablet up so everyone can see
and, one by one, they will describe the object they have drawn: “The sea is blue” “The
balloon is blue”. Afterwards one group may start asking another group about their
favourite colour.

The main role of the teacher is these activities is not so much to teach as to provide
opportunities for learning to take place. I am going to adopt different roles, I will
provide my student the necessary information, I will correct when necessary and I will
monitor their production providing feedback when I was useful for them. I assess
through observation while my students are carrying out the activities, and it was
necessary I would provide some remedial or extension activities, such as crosswords,
wordsearchers, etc.

To sum up, In this essay I have developed some activities which deals with the use of
New technologies in order to achieve communicative and digital Competence which
are the main goal of Primary Education. We should not forget to mention that ICTs are
motivating and useful but not the only resource. We have to offer our students as many
different ways to learn as possible to adapt our lessons to all type of Inteligences.

I have based my proposal on the following bibliography:

- The Organic Law on Improvement of Education 8/2013

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- The RD 126/2014

- The RD 54/2014

Harmer,J: The Practice of English Language Teaching. Longman.