Sharka Dohnalova is a teacher trainer. She has been working for Pilgrims since 2007. She is located in the Czech Republic where she teaches at Masaryk University, Faculty of Education focusing on didactics for Young Learners and drama in ELT.

 

Introduction

The current global situation is forcing teachers into being more and more IT literate on various videoconferencing platforms for synchronous online teaching as well as getting to know apps and platforms for asynchronous teaching and learning.

Even though many students prefer synchronous learning with a teacher being present either in the classroom or online, asynchronous learning is a great opportunity to serve students activities they are able to enjoy on their own, they are able to decide which ones they will only look at and, maybe decide they do not like them, and which ones they enjoy and can return to if they feel like it.

Therefore, for the time before Christmas, I have decided to create an advent calendar as a menu of various activities (listening, reading, videos, games, etc.) that your students can dig in.

Having mentioned various platforms above, I have decided to use freely available platforms and sources (Google slides, Google spreadsheets, Flippity, Youtube videos, Epic books, Free pictures, Pinterest, etc.). You will find that I have used pictures from Pinterest that are linked to the individual activities.

 

Suggestions for use

I have used Google slides as they are a very good tool to create interactive documents or even escape rooms. The trick is that you paste objects (pictures, writing, etc.) onto a slide and then you can link them to other activities by clicking onto “insert” and the “link”.

As I wanted this to be sort of an advent calendar I wanted to have 25 objects, therefore, decided to cut out 25 pictures with numbers 1 to 25 and maybe some pictures or writing on it. The pictures are cut out from a bigger free picture from Pinterest but if you do not like them, you can decide for your own numbers or pictures. Then I linked the pictures to youtube videos, tutorial, read alouds, activities, or games corresponding with what was in the pictures. I divided the document into two parts, i.e. you can share it weekly with your students showing them only up to 7 activities a week or you can use slide 5 with the complete advent calendar.

As I do not know your students, feel free to copy the Google slide document and recreate it according to your needs, i.e. using the weekly or month format or both, linking the numbered pictures to any activities that you prefer or feel better suited to your target audience.

It is very easy: click on a numbered picture and you will see the link and a little marker on the right. If you click on the marker you can change the link inserted to the picture.

Picture 12 is linked to a game that I have prepared in Flippity, which is a platform that uses Google sheets for programming various games from flashcards to escape rooms. This particular one is a board game that uses picture vocabulary, cards with questions, a die to be thrown by clicking on it, and colour coded pieces to be moved around the board.

If you like these activities/exercises and would like to know more about creating them contact Pilgrims and ask for a course on interactive slides, games and escape rooms.

 

Some glimpses of the calendar

 

 

 

The whole calendar

You  can access it and have fun by pasting it in your browser

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1a4sJZE-XnU5ZzObmJGysUHcldictFZIxVG65gUorG1U/edit#slide=id.g1033dbacc72_0_37

 

Enjoy J Merry Christmas!

 

Please check the Pilgrims f2f courses at Pilgrims website.

Please check the Pilgrims online courses at Pilgrims website