Working with genially

[GENIALLY ACTIVITY]

This activity has encountered many problems – once again- due to the poor technical availability in the high school.

Nevertheless, the activity was developed in three sessions as shown below:

     - The activity was introduced to the students in the second year of ESO. The students were shown a short video of Australia and the teacher located the most popular Australian cities in a map. Then, they were asked to design a presentation (no longer than three pages) in pairs covering the most interesting facts about Australia. The students were shown a list of questions that could be used as a guide for their project (they were provided handouts).
     - The second session was dedicated to the design and development of the project. Due to the weak wifi signals, most pairs/groups needed an extra session.
      The students should have handed in their projects during this session but the due date was ultimately delayed.

-    -  The last sessions were dedicated to the presentations of the projects by each pair.

Long story short, although the activity has originally been planned to last no more than three sessions it finally took five to develop. 

Once again, the students seemed to be very motivated at the beginning but the technical problems encountered during the process were very difficult to overcome in some cases. They found the tool very useful and other teachers have reported their use in their subjects, so that is an interesting turn. I’ll probably continue using this tool to prepare my lessons but I won’t design any more projects involving in-class work until the technical problems are solved. Most of the sessions turned up being stressful and upsetting as a teacher although the final result was OK. 

And here are some of the materials I used to develop this task. 

[STUDENT'S HANDOUT]

Answer the questions – your partners can help you.

1 Who were the first people who came to Australia? Where did they come from? How did they travel?

2 Who was James Cook? When did he arrive in Australia?

3 What colours does the Aboriginal flag have? What do they represent?

4 What symbols appear on the Australian official flag?

5 What is Uluru? What is another name for it?                  

6 What is interesting about the Great Barrier Reef? How many islands are there?

7 What is the climate like in Australia? What do the Australians celebrate in summer?

8 What Australian words come from the Aboriginal language?