Turning a flat activity into a super learning mission! Part 1

Hello everyone,

Today, I bring you a post to show you how to change a boring activity into a super learning mission!

I have turned two activities in super learning mission, so I have created two different posts, explaining the process of changing those activities into a super learning mission individually. The two activities that I have chosen are selected from my prototype of my educational project.

Therefore, this post will be just focused on explaining one of the two activities I have planned and created. First of all, I decided to change the flat activity and turn it into a mission, to make it more fun, dynamic and innovative. The objective of the flat activity is that the students make a poster using a cardboard, explaining the different types of vertebrate animals. However, I wanted to change this activity and make it a more entertaining mission taking advantage of the use of ICT. 

The objective of the activity does not vary, because the curricular objective of this the learning is the same: To know the different types of vertebrate animals. Nevertheless, the resources that we are going to use in the mission are different from the actual flat activity. The mission is called: "Vertebrate animals" and it will consist of creating and designing an infographic by using applications that allow to create that infographic. The goal of this mission is to show the different types of vertebrates in a more visual and attractive way.

The objectives of this mission are:

• Take a closer look at different groups of animals.

• Create a classification key.

• See the characteristics that make animals different from each other.

• Deal with the quantity of new vocabulary and concepts, through colourful images.

• Presents work in an organized way  digitally either individually or in groups.

• Uses the correct vocabulary according to the content block.

• Review animal behaviour, what they eat, and their habitat. 

• Begins to show autonomy in the planning and carrying out of actions and tasks and begins to take the initiative when taking decisions.

• Consults and uses images and graphs.

• Identifies some animals from each of these groups.

• To create a digital artifact using an adequate web tool.

• To work collaboratively and actively during the mission.

• Create artifacts that can be shared with others.

• Learn and use the vocabulary related to vertebrate animals.

The mission is aimed at second grade of primary and the mission will be carried out in one session. In addition, the competencies involved in this mission are: Digital skills, learning to learn and social skills.

The skills that we are going to improve in this mission are the four skills: speaking, writing, listening and reading. In order to do it more visual, students need to use different digital artifacts. The digital artifacts used during the mission are the following ones:

• In order to create our infographic of vertebrate animals we can use several applications such us Canva , Piktochart, Easel.ly, Infogr.am or Visme.
• A blog for the class. In this blog children will upload the digital works done. In this case, teacher will upload to the blog each one of the infographics that children have created.

This mission allows student to:

• Learn to process information
• learn how to organize information visually
• Enhance the assimilation of concepts
• Make the transmission of information in a more attractive way.

As I said before the purpose of this mission is to learn the different types of vertebrates. Another objective related to the mission is the learning of use some digital artifacts to show in a more visual way the content that student want to learn.

Here you can see a sample of an infopgraphic showing the different types of vertebrate animals:

                                        Piktochart by Samia Saidi

On the other hand, I would like to mention that this mission is aligned with InfoEDUgrafias, which is the collaborative project to which I would be delighted to collaborate and participate with, because as in the case of infoedugrafias, one of the fundamental objectives of my project is the learning of a specific curricular subject using visual resources.

Self- reflection

After created this post, I came to the conclusion that it is important for teachers to know how to create an innovative and creative mission from a simple activity. In this way, we can take advantage of the activity by using different digital resources, applications and web pages. All these resources facilitate the student's learning in a specific content. While I was doing this post, I realized the importance of creativity in the creation of activities, because through creative activities the teacher motivates the child and encourages their learning.

Therefore, I would like to stress the importance of creating meaningful and motivating activities or challenges for students in the teaching-learning process.

I hope you like my post!

See you soon!