According to Rachael Roberts, a lesson should be more than a pile of disconnected things. A successful piece of material is something that is more than just a collection of worksheets or activities. In the lessons in which those activities will be carried out each stage should be a natural progression of the last stage. Those materials she mentions should be interesting, engaging and relevant and when selecting them we must take into account what the students need to know in order to understand them. So, we must think about what background and cultural knowledge will they need in order to engage with the material. Rachael also mentions that in a class there should also be a balance between heads up and heads down (moments in the lesson when students have their heads up and moments when their heads are down maybe reading, writing or thinking) and for this reason in order to have this balance we should carry out different kinds of activities.
In our presentation we focused in this paradigm. Rachael Roberts came across it in 1987 and she finds it very useful as a way of thinking about lessons that have some kind of input.
On the one hand, we have input which is anything that provides a stimulus for activities or a topic for communication. This topic for communication is essential as it gives the students opportunities to develop their information processing skills, use the background knowledge and of course it also provides a context for language. On the other hand, we have the content focus which can be anything you like and on the other side we have the language focus. It is important to mention that not all English lessons will necessarily have a language focus but most will. Finally we have the task or output stage in which the students will use the language themselves.
Bearing in mind all these ideas we implemented some activities that could be carried out in a classroom. First of all we did a kahoot in order to engage students with the topic (Youtube) and to preteach the vocabulary they would have to use in the main task. Kahoot is an excellent tool that can be used in a classroom, students love it and it is fantastic as they can learn while playing. After preteaching this vocabulary we moved to the output stage.
We divided the class in 6 different groups. Students had to simulate they were youtubers and they had to record a video following the instructions we gave them. Each group was assigned a different kind of video that can be found on Youtube (Haul, Make up tutorial, Try your own hairstyle, Trying candy, What's in my purse?, First date tips)
In the different cards we gave them there was general and specific (related to their video) vocabulary they had to use. There were lots of vocabulary but they had to use at least two general and two specific words.
After explaining the activity and giving the cards, students were given 5 minutes in order to record their videos and upload them in a Facebook group we created to share the videos and show them to the rest of the classroom. It was a fantastic experience and “students” love it, it was really funny!
Therefore, it could be said that there are many ways in which we can motivate our students to actively participate in class as for example doing activities related to topics which may be of their interest as it is the case of Youtube. Apart from that, social networks and new technologies are an excellent tool to make our lessons more dynamic and engaging so instead of rejecting them we must benefit from that.
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