When I first discovered Glogster just over a month ago, I realised straight away that it had great potential as a tool to engage my students and to get them to want to write and even speak in the foreign language.
In this case, I decided to integrate the use of Glogster in this week’s schemes of work and, as I did not want to leave myself to the mercy of our school network, I decided that in this first attempt at using Glogster, I would play it safe and set the creation of an online poster for homework.
My students, a Year 8 group (13 year olds), first year studying German, had recently been learning vocabulary relating to family, such as father, mother, sister, etc and in the previous lesson I had just introduced vocabulary pertaining to character, such as nice, boring, intellingent, etc.
On the day the homework was due to be set I dedicated 15 minutes (out of a 40 minutes lesson) to introduce Glogster to my students, demonstrate and exemplify its use and to explain clearly what I wanted them to achieve. This is what I outlined to them:
- Make up an imaginary family, pick four members and describe their age, their character and their relation to you, as well as their name. You must be one of the members of the family.
- Upload photos, add banners and text as you see appropriate.
- Absolutely no offensive or inappropriate content.
- You must email me the link to your Glog in time for our next lesson.
My objectives were:
- My pupils should demonstrate knowledge of vocabulary acquired in recent lessons.
- Pupils should demonstrate their ability to use the verb heißen (to be called) and sein (to be) to describe themselves as well as other people (first and third person use).
As the homework started to show up in my email’s in-tray, it was clear that the boys (I teach boys only) had done exactly what I had asked of them and it was patently obvious that they had enjoyed themselves in the process. Not only that, but it also made my marking much more enjoyable!
This is a very tentative first use of Glogster and I deliberately kept it simple by not requesting on this occasion that they recorded themselves speaking in the target language in order to add their voices to the poster. This is however something that I am certainly keen to explore in the near future.
Have you used Glogster yet? What do you think?
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