Implementation of “ The Power of Voice and Brush” (SOI- FI-28)
This learning scenario has been created by Katarzyna Siwczak and implemented by Sari Hopeakoski, a French and English teacher.
Context: culture and language
In the Finnish curriculum for teaching English, the third course ( 7-week-long period) is dedicated to culture. Therefore, it is very easy to find a lot of usages for Europeana on this particular course. I wanted to look for some material here that I could start my new course with. I was impressed by Katarzyna Siwczak’s LS about “The Power of Voice and Brush” because of its high level of practice of different language skills, cultural knowledge and ICT tools.
Afterwards, I divided this LS into two parts for two separate English lessons combined with other material of my own. In order to make it simpler and more useful for my needs, I did not use the Hangman exercise or the Kahoot.
Getting started
After presenting the ideas and contents of our new cultural course, I wanted to take the advantage of “The Power of Voice and Brush” so that the QR code exercise was used as a motivation to the course. I had 32 students in my group, so my students worked in groups of three or four. Each group was responsible for making a description of two pictures.
For them, it was easy to use their mobile phones for recording instead of Flipgrid so the recordings could nicely be put into Google Classroom, which is the platform I use on most of my English courses. This step in the LS was new for them and they liked doing it. Working in groups, they could choose the secretary for writing and the voluntary students for the recordings. Some of the students were a bit afraid of the next step, whether their recordings will be listened by the others…
Implementing the learning scenario
We listened to the recordings together during the next lesson. Most of the students did enjoy listening to each other’s recordings. After matching the pairs, students went on with the questions in Wheeldecide. I was familiar with Class tools and the Random Name Picker, but it was a perfect idea to use the wheel with questions. This tool was appreciated by the students, but some of the students found some of the questions a bit difficult. It might have been useful to add the correct answers somewhere.
For voting, I prepared a list of the paintings in Tricider.
Then the students gave reasons why they liked certain paintings more than the others. They could also discuss where all their artistic knowledge came from, art classes or museum visits etc.
The idea of combining useful ICT tools with nice oral activities was a brilliant idea. The Finnish students found the lessons fun and motivating.
Even though the oral expression is present on all English lessons in Finland, students sometimes prefer/are more used to pair work, so that playing each other’s recordings in public could have seemed uncomfortable for some of them. Maybe this is due to the Finnish character.
Luckily, this exercise made them braver and even proud to present their own work in front of other students. As a teacher, I got some new pedagogical tools that I am grateful for.
Going further
Did you find this story of implementation interesting? Why don’t you read about the related learning scenario?
The Power of Voice and Brush created by Katarzyna Siwczak
Did you find this story of implementation interesting? You might also like:
- ‘Letters and Postcards from War Times’, implemented by Justin Nicholas Micallef
- Implementation of ‘The Migration Socratic Seminar’, by Ivana Stiglec
- ‘The power of voice and brush’, implemented by Andrea Nagy
Do you want to discover more stories of implementation? Click here.
CC BY-SA 4.0 – The featured image used to illustrate this article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution. The painting has been made byAugust Strindberg . It has been resized and labelled to illustrate this article. To find the original image click here.