CALL Lesson 9 (May 7-8)

Today we are going to continue working with maps. We will look at a table that I created with information on where our teacher-friends are and complete it. Then we will create a map, locate the teachers in their countries and leave a message in the map for each one. This way you will really see how different the times are in different parts of the world where our friends live and work.

This task includes the group of teachers that left comments in the Easter post and in the post about my presentation about our two blogs at the Microsoft Conference. Both these posts are in the "Have Fun with English! 2" blog.

You will work with a table in one window and a Google map in another window. That's where you will locate each city and country, and write a simple message.

Once again, it will be a multidisciplinary lesson: Geography, (simple) Math, the Internet and… English!

 

Objectives

Students will:

— state the current time in other countries

— calculate the difference in number of hours between Portugal and other countries

— create a Google map

— locate each city and country on the map

— write a message in the placemarker.

 

Activities

1. complete information in the table: columns for "time there" and "hours differ. re: Portugal" (remember that we are in GMT +1)

2. create a Google map

3. locate on the map the country and city where each teacher lives

4. placemark it

5. write a message.

At the end of this lesson students should have a good overview of the distance between different locations in the world and the differences in time they represent in relationship to Portugal.

Enjoy the lesson!  

 

Resources (= Recursos)

— Table created by the teacher

— Google Maps

 

Help

How to create a Google map

— go to Google maps

— click the "My Maps" tab

— click "Create new map"

— give it a name and click "Unlisted" (= private)

How to locate a city and leave a placemarker

— write the name of the city and state/country in the "Search Maps" slot and press Enter

— click on the blue placemarker (second icon, top left of the map), drag it (= arrasta-o) to the location and click (for it to stay in place)

— write the message and click Ok

— click on the blue placemarker to see the message

 

Tables

 

Table for 6.C

Name	City	Country/State	Time zone	Time there	Hours differ. re: Portugal
Aiden Yeh	Kaohsiung	Taiwan	GMT +8	16:30	+7
Hala Fawzi	Khartoum	Sudan	GMT +3	11:40	+2
Cristina Costa	Manchester	England	GMT +1	9:48	none
Carla Arena	Key West	Florida (USA)	GMT -4	4:55	-5
Dennis Oliver	Phoenix	Arizona (USA)	GMT -7	1:58	-8

 

 

Here is 6.C's map created in class.

 

 

 

Table for 6.E

 

Name	City	Country/State	Time zone	Time there	Hours differ. re: Portugal
Sasha Sirk	Nova Gorica	Slovenia	GMT +3	11:18	+2
Nina Lyulkun	Kiev	Ukraine	GMT +2	10:33	+1
Ramona Dietrich	Carcavelos	Portugal	GMT +1	9.37	none
Conceição Brito	Setúbal	Portugal	GMT +1	9:37	none
Mônica Veado	Belo Horizonte	Brazil	GMT -3	5:45	-4
Nelba Quintana	La Plata	Argentina	GMT -3	5:45	-4
Berta Leiva	Toronto	Canada	GMT -4	4:50	-5
Jane Petring	Quebec	Canada	GMT -4	4:50	-5
Angeles Berman	Cd del Carmen	Yucatan, Mexico	GMT -5	3:55	-6
Cora Chen	San Francisco	California (USA)	GMT -7	1:58	-8

 

VIP: The kids worked very well and quite fast, but I had to help them finish four entries: Conceição, Nelba, Jane and Angeles. It was a demanding plan even for 50 minutes.

 

Here's 6.E's map created in class.

 

 

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Follow-up

1. Nina Lyulkun, one of our teacher-friends, left a message with a link to a very interesting map that she created. It's a possible route by land for us to visit her in Kiev, the capital of the Ukraine. Take a look at her map!

2. Sasha Sirk, our teacher-friend in Nova Gorica, Slovenia, left a message with a very interesting video about bears (= ursos) in her country made by Matej, one of her students. Watch the video! And… enjoy it! 

 

* * * * * * * *

 

Report on CALL Lesson 9

The lesson with 6.C went as planned. They read the whole plan carefully out loud (one student at a time for each paragraph or part) and some translated what others didn't understand. There was curiousity about what the plan would really turn out to be, that is, what they would really be doing. They were eager to participate and volunteered enthusiastically to go to the computer and carry out the plan. Margarida, InêsT., Luis, InêsF and Rodrigo were the volunteers this time.

We started out by completing the table with the necessary info (last two columns). To save class time for the map, I wrote down the information they gathered and inserted it online at home. First we revised the concept of GMT. Then I asked in which time zone we were (GMT +1), how many hours separated us from each person and what time it was in their country. Several students quickly grasped that they have to subtract "1" when people are in a "+ / plus" GMT to find out the number of hours difference between us, and that they have to add "1" when people are in a "- / minus" GMT. They created the map easily and immediately grasped how to search for the city and country, get the placemarker in place and write the message. Once again to save class time, they copy-pasted the first message and then just replaced the necessary information.

The bell was ringing when we finished the five entries, but they had time to see the distances between the first person in the table and the last person, as well as notice the number of hours that separate them.

We used my laptop, a school video projector and a cable connection. The lesson was 45 mins. long, but an extra ten minutes would have come in handy.

As to 6.E, I had to add the 10 mins. since I added 5 entries to their table, because I decided not to have 6.D do this lesson. Everything went according to plan, although they weren't able to finish all the entries. It was just too demanding. I completed them at home.

They were also curious and eager to participate, but maybe a bit less enthusiastic than 6.C, and also grasped all the necessary concepts to complete the two columns in their table and carry on with the map.

The volunteers at the computer were Fábia, Rafael, Patrícia, Martim, Catarina and Francisco.