Getting to university! - Reading activity

Hello, 

I am Georgina Lliró and I am happy to present an activity based on the topic “Getting to University!” for students in 2nd Batxillerat. I am presenting a reading activity and two exercises that will check on reading comprehension and vocabulary.

Teacher email: georginalliro@gmail.com

Learning objectives:

1. Enable students to read authentic materials about topics that personally affect the student’s lives.
2. Enable students to use ICT tools to learn English. 
3. Enable students to reflect on a topic that affects them personally
4. Enable students to share ideas.

Basic Competences: 

• Communicative competence: Ability to understand written messages
• Digital competence: Using ICT tools as an information source and as a vehicle to express knowledge.
• Autonomy and personal initiative: making decisions
• Social and civic competence: Comprehending the social reality

Description of the activity: This activity will be done in the computer room with a group of students, but each student will have to work individually. Firstly, the students will have to answer a matching vocabulary exercise, so that it is useful for them to learn the meaning of some critical words of the text. After that, they will be ready to face the whole text, so they will have to read the article “How (Not) to Choose a University”. Once this reading is done, the students will have to answer a quiz to check if they were able to understand the reading. In order to provide further discussion and thinking, the teacher will create a Padlet entitled “Criteria to choose a university”, in which all the students will have to post an idea of what they think is important to take into account when choosing a university. This wall, could be used for the following class in order to provide material for a speaking or writing activity.
Click here to do the vocabulary pre-reading activity. Click here to do the reading comprehension activity. Each exercise gives instant feedback about the students' performance. So assessment will be done through the application.

Description of the tool: The tool used for the activities related to the reading (the vocabulary matching exercise) and the quiz will be presented through the tool Hot Potatoes, since it gives automatic feedback to the students and it can be seen as a game, which makes these activities more engaging and challenging. Padlet will be used to create a collaborative brainstorming with tips about how to choose a university, which will allow having all the ideas in a wall and visible for all the students in the screen, which will be useful for their next activity.