To start off, I divided students into their cooperative learning groups that they would have for the quarter. (If you've read any of my posts before, I strongly believe that there are benefits in cooperative learning, and I always have students work in the same group, that I strategically create, for the length of a unit.) Since these were new groups, I spent some time doing a team building exercise to help them decide on their group name, but I will have to save that for another post. I handed all students a packet that had verb charts for all of the categories of verbs that we had learned, and all of the irregular verbs that we had learned so far this year. Along with each verb chart was space for three sentences that use that verb. I assigned each group a section of the packet.
The groups had some time to research their assigned verb(s) to correctly complete the verb chart and to write their example sentences. During this work time, I stressed their group rolls. The time keeper needed to be letting the group know how much time there was left, researcher was looking up informaton, the secretary was writing their groups information on white boards, and the "patron", was organizing everything. I was walking around checking for errors, and asking about pronunciation.
After groups had finished with their research, it was time to teach! Each group grabbed an IPad and taught the information that they had written on their white boards. I had told the students that they could use up to five white boards (because that is all I had), and someone held the IPad and recorded while someone else explained the information on a white board that someone else was holding. They were so engaged!! I had them use the camera on the IPad to record and just kept the footage in the camera roll. Since multiple classes were doing this, I had another class use IMovie to produce the video-lesson. Originally, I had wanted to use the app Educreations, but the app wasn't on the IPads, yet.
The next day, the students returned to their groups and I handed each group a different group's IPad. They set the IPad up in their group, pressed play and took notes as they watched all of the other group's videos. They passed around the IPads until they were able to complete the entire verb packet, which they keep in their binder for the entire quarter so that they can use it as a reference.
As in all cooperative learning, there are problems that occur. Inevitably, groups made mistakes that I didn't catch before the groups created their video. There are always a few bright students who will catch those mistakes, and let me know. In those cases, I kept a running list of mistakes on the board and we addressed them after everyone had completed their packet. With some videos, as I was handing a group another IPad that had a video with a mistake, I would tell them, "There is a mistake with this one, let me know if you can figure out what it is", and I would help the group out as they were watching the video. Also, there were some groups that didn't finish creating their entire video, in that case, when groups watched the incomplete video, as a group they would have to work together to come up with the missed-information.
I loved this activity. It moved fast because I kept everything to a time limit and I had a count-down timer on the Smartboard, as they were working. The end result was valuable, now students have a great resource in their binder. The students ended up learning so well from each other and I am amazed at how well they know their verbs. Since I have at least four "authorities" for each verb that we learned, when I ask the class, what a certain verb means, at least four people know and can help the others out. Best of all, they had so much fun creating the videos. I was thrilled to walk around and watch the creativity as they were writing these silly sentences to show their verbs and deciding on the best way to record their information. Yep, this activity is a keeper!
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