Actividad: Las Competencias Clave

I have designed the following activities to encompass three different European key competences: linguistic competency, social and civic competences, and digital competence.

Objectives

To appreciate the differences that exist between all of the members of the class.

To create a short video celebrating these differences.

The linguistic objectives would vary according to the level of the class, but could include consolidating knowledge of comparatives, superlatives, or the vocabulary used to express likes and dislikes in English.

Plan

Duration: one 60-minute session in the classroom.

5 minutes: The students work in pairs to create a list of differences between themselves.

10 minutes: The pairs share their lists with the rest of the class, creating a collaborative list of potential differences on the board which also models the relevant grammatical structures and vocabulary.

5 minutes: The students watch the following video, an advert for the British television channel CBeebies, without the sound. The video is paused briefly after each pair of children speaks to allow the students to take notes about what comparisons they think the children are making.

10 minutes: The students work in small groups of 4 or 5 to compare their ideas and discuss which they think is the most likely, before sharing these with the rest of the class.

2 minutes: The students re-watch the video with the sound.

10 minutes: The students are asked if they would now like to change any of the differences that they previously mentioned between themselves and their classmates. Are any of these differences really important? What are the advantages of having so many different people in the room?

18 minutes: The students are given the remaining lesson time to work in pairs to script their own dialogue of around 30 seconds about the differences between them. When they have finished writing and rehearsing, they must work with another pair to film their dialogues using a mobile phone, or cameras if these are available in the school.

As homework, these completed dialogue videos must be emailed to the teacher who will compile them into a short film to be shown in the next class.

Adjustment for Different Levels

One way in which to adjust the difficulty level of this activity is to change the linguistic focus of the lesson according to the age or ability of the students. Higher-level students may be encouraged to employ comparative or superlative structures in their dialogues, whilst lower-level students could use ‘I like/hate/love’ and their negative forms. This difference could even be present within the same classroom, with the teacher placing the children in pairs according to how difficult they are likely to find the task and suggesting different options from which they can choose.

Another way to differentiate could relate to the watching of the video. Higher-level students could watch the video with sound without any form of support, whilst lower-level students within the same classroom could be given a worksheet with different options for differences between the children from which they have to choose. If the whole class is younger or at a lower ability level, the video with sound could even be shown with the support of subtitles, perhaps on the second listening.

Evaluation

The discussions in the classroom would be evaluated formatively, with the teacher taking notes on participation and any difficulties which arise which should be worked on in the following classes. The video would form part of the students’ summative evaluation and would be marked using a rubric. 

Relevance to the Key Competencies

The activity encompasses the linguistic competency throughout as the students develop their aural comprehension skills by listening to the video, as well as their spoken and written communication as they discuss with their classmates and note down their ideas. 

The social and civic competences are included as the students are encouraged to think about the differences that exist between them and to celebrate these differences, using them to demonstrate the diversity of the class and the benefits that this brings to everyone. Having watched the video, the students will hopefully focus on differences in personality and skills, as opposed to physical differences.

The digital competence is developed during this session through the use of mobile phones or cameras to film the class video, as well as working with saving and sending files. If the students have the resources available to them, they could even be asked to do some basic editing of the video before sending the final version to the teacher.