3 Lessons, 3 tools (Part 2)

If you want to check the previous lesson, click here

*In a previous lesson, the students had to share with their groups what they remembered about the story they read as homework and they would have to retell it. 
Also, in this lesson, students had to get with their groups and create a draft of comic strip of the alternative ending for their story that has to be set in 2018, Argentina.

STORYBOARDTHAT - LESSON #2

Language school
Age: 15/16 years old
Level: Intermediate
Allotted time per lesson: 1hr and 30 minutes

WARMER

The teacher will show a comic strip of an alternative ending for “Little Red Riding Hood” she created on her own and she will open a discussion with the class about what they know about the story and what the comic strip shows.

The teacher will tell the students that the comic strip she showed was made in a website called “StoryboardThat”. She will tell the students they are going to pass the comic strip draft they created the previous lesson to the website.



WEB

Then, she will show a brief tutorial which shows how to use StoryboardThat. The link to the tutorial is this one

The students will go to the site www.storyboardthat.com and they will start creating their comic strip using the “FREE TRIAL” option.


WHAT’S NEXT

Each group will present their comic strip which will be projected through a beamer. They will have to read the bubbles and act it out. After each group presents their comic strip, they will have to upload the comic strip to the language school virtual classroom and post a question for the rest of the students to answer.
For example:

• Did you like our alternative ending? Why?
• Is there any changes you would do to the ending?

Also, they will have to vote their favourite.

The parents have access to the virtual site so they will also have the opportunity to collaborate, vote and comment if they want to.

In addition, students will have to print their comic strips and paste them under the Fakebook profiles in the shared wall at the language school.

Theoretical Frameworks

SAMR model - Redefinition stage

In the previous lesson, the SAMR Model was mentioned and explained. In this case, the Redefinition stage is being applied with the use of digital comic strips. In the Redefinition stage, technology allows for modification of the task through to complete redefinition. Technology allows for the creation of new tasks, previously inconceivable. 

In this lesson, students share their comic strips with other students, teachers and parents through a virtual classroom. In this sense, technology allows for a completely new learning experience which will not be possible without the use of online tools.

Also, another step of the SAMR Model is present in this lesson: Substitution

In the substitution step technology acts as a direct substitute for the original tool, with either no or little functional change or improvement. In this lesson, the students had to create comic strips with an online tool which could be done with paper and pencil. 

However, using StoryboardThat to create the comic strips is more engaging for students because they do not have to draw (some students do not like drawing). They can choose the character and modify its physical characteristics, change the clothes colour, etc and all it’s done with a click! 

Global vs. Local 

Global coursebooks or materials are intended for use in any part of the world by learners of a specific foreign language level and age range.

Local coursebook or material is a global coursebook/ material adapted or localised to make it fit with the learners' background and national curriculum.  

Tomlinson (2003a: 324) favours the localisation of global coursebooks, stressing the fact that for the materials to be successful they necessarily need to 'match the target learners and the environments they are learning in'.

In this lesson, the teacher is making use of the localisation of global materials since she asks the students to adapt the original end of a foreign fairy tale to an alternative ending in which the characters are set in 2018, Argentina. 

By asking the students to create an alternative ending with those setting characteristics, the teacher is transforming the task into a more meaningful one, more familiar to the students in order to motivate them.

References:

Lopez-Barrios, M., & Villanueva de Debat, E. (n.d.). Global vs. Local: Does It Matter? In International Perspectives on Materials in ELT.

SAMR Model - Technology Is Learning. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://sites.google.com/a/msad60.org/technology-is-learning/samr-model