alice’s posterous

Last week, I saw beautiful pictures from inner Mongolia on the Relaxing Hub.

     

Click here to download:

Mongolia_a_fascinating_country.zip (76 KB)

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Today I received an email by Carla Arena (one of the organizer of Images4Education) mentioning an exciting project.

Alison Miyake was the one who suggested it on http://images4education.ning.com/forum/topics/exchange-of-photos-with

She says : "I am teaching English at my daughter's elementary school this year (in the south of Japan) to grade 5 and 6 students. I was wondering if anyone here would be interested in exchanging photos of school and everyday life in other countries with us. My students are always asking me about what is popular with kids their own age in Canada (where I am from), and I have to say that I honestly don't have any idea! My students don't have a lot of experience with the computer, although they do have access to computers at their school. I am envisioning possibly creating a special Flickr page for our project and then deciding on themes to last a month or two (ie school, school bags, classroom photos, lunch, lunchtime play could be the first starting in September, then school events or holidays, popular books, favourite foods, my house, my neighbourhood, unusual objects - ie something the kids think might be unique to their country, etc.) and having the students take photos."

It is such a fantastic idea, I want to join next year with my new school (although it is supposed to be only for elementary school?).

And you? would you be joining as well?

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A few weeks ago, I had to plan a lesson on food and drinks to a year 8 (12 years old) low ability group to show how I use differentiation. I was going to be observed by some senior managers so I decided to show them my IT skills and what I have learnt so far thanks mostly to the great professionals I follow on twitter.

The aim of the lesson was to introduce different food from different countries to my students and to create a nice menu which would include the words they have learnt during the lesson.
To find pictures of different types of food, I searched on Flickr. I was introduced to Flickr by attending a free online course on exploring images in the 21st Century Classroom organized by EVO http://aliceayel.posterous.com/free-online-course-for-educato

Flickr is a free website where you can upload you photos and videos, but not only that, you can also edit your photos and make them look nicer, add comments and captions, and search for pictures taken by other members of Flickr. So I looked for pictures of different types of restaurants and then of different types of food. I favorited them on my account http://flickr.com/people/aliceayel/ .
Then I went to http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/ to create two mosaics with my two sets of photos http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/mosaic.php
So on one hand, I have eight restaurants
and on the other hand I have 16 different types of food

My students were teamed up into groups of 3 to 4 and had to look at the mosaics and to decide the type of restaurant (French, Chinese, Mexican ....) and then on the nationality of the food and if it was a starter, main course or desert. In teams, they then created their own menu.

The lesson went well because students liked to work in teams and helping each other out and also because they liked guessing from the pictures.
You can view and download the lesson plan, as well as the slideshow for the lesson and the worksheet describing the food.

LESSON PLAN for Observations

Types of Food Explanation

Buddy Evaluation

And you? have you used Flickr or Big Huge labs in your lessons?

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