EARTH DAY – How to help the Earth to stay „COOL“
This activity was developed by English teachers in cooperation with the science teachers of the Slovan elementary school, Kroměříž, Czech Republic.
The Earth Day, which is worldly renown, was used as the basis for this activity. Starting from the 1st grade, students learn about the Earth Day in subjects related not only to the nature but to citizenship education (CE) as well. They learn about the environmental issues and also about their civic responsibilities. In hand with this comes the need for the digital skills and ICT education. This activity may be carried out in the subject areas of science (Physics and Chemistry; Natural Sciences, ICT) but also CE, English and others. The age group this activity is aiming at is 10 to 19 years old.
Relevance
Formative assessment is the significant issue of this activity. Evaluation involved in this activity is displayed in the form of two types of questionnaires described below. But the assessment aspect is integrated in the process itself as the final video created by learners assumes the form of formative assessment.
Roles
• Students themselves – self evaluation
• Students within the group – peer evaluation
• Teacher – traditional evaluation
Educational contexts
Student-Created Video (SCV) as evidence-based learning is relatively a novel practice in English language teaching and learning. SCV could support the students’ learning and encourage learners to construct new knowledge as they were exposed to the video-making activity, meanwhile, it could also improve students’ motivation and active learning engagement. During the video-making project, the intrapersonal learning of each student could be influenced by the student context of interactions and cultural setting that informed a meaning-making process. The procedure goes through three phases:
1) pre-task (framing the activity, planning time, doing a similar task)
• The teacher gave a thorough introduction to the task (what, why, and how to do the task).
• The teacher explained the structure of the task (video-making task, duration/the length of the video, the language, and flow of the talk).
• The teacher explained the technological tools they could use to perform the task (video/sound recording, video editing software).
• Task modelling (engaging participants to the task).
2) during task (time pressure, number of participants)
• Self-study and group discussion about the task topic.
• Preparing the technological tools needed for the video-making takes.
• Lesson planning (this was a step where the participants designed a plan for the video-taking session; it covered some aspects such as the opening, the main talk, the closing, the lighting, the sound, the angle/position, etc).
• Practice, self-evaluation, and re-practice.
• Video recording.
• Video editing.
• Video submission.
3) post-task (learner report, consciousness-raising, reflection)
• The teacher watched the submitted videos for several times.
• Reflecting on the task (teacher and students viewed the videos together and performed a teacher-student discussion about the videos).
• Focusing on forms (review of learner’s errors, consciousness-raising task, production practice activities, and noticing activities).
Learning situation
In order to commemorate the Earth Day, students were asked to create a video that would promote environmental issues such as recycling, waste disposal, clean water, protection of wildlife etc. This activity was a follow up after the lessons devoted to environment topics and vocabulary. There were altogether 8 lessons covering this issue. Even though it was a part of the English language lessons the topic crossed to other subjects as the citizenship education, geography, media education and ICT. Students were asked to prepare the video according to the basic principles when fighting the climate change – 5 RE (refuse, reduce, reuse + repair, recycle). The teacher followed the above-mentioned procedure of the 3 phases when giving the task. The whole class worked on this as one team – everybody had their own role – director, actors, screenwriter, camera man, etc.
Evaluation
As this was a school event all the 8th graders were involved in the Earth Day project in their English lessons. On the actual Earth Day – 22.4. – there was a gathering of all the 8th grade classes and every class presented their video to others. Once everybody saw the videos, every student was given two evaluation questionnaires prepared by the teachers. The first was to rate the videos they saw and to assess whether the video met the set criteria:
• stay on the topic, do not change it;
• use the vocabulary only from the textbook, DO NOT search for new one;
• the length of the video should be 5 minutes at maximum (see Appendix).
The second questionnaire was class based – was the task clear, did we have all the necessary information, was it easy/difficult, was the teacher support sufficient, did the team work well, how did we overcome some troubles, was my role in the team clear, did I get enough space and time to realize my ideas etc (see Appendix). All the questionnaires were then collected by the teachers and a summary was prepared. In the following lesson, the teachers presented the results of the questionnaires and provided the class with their own feedback.
The teacher highly regarded these competences:
• ATTITUDES – civic mindedness, respect, self-efficacy – Am I responsible? What do I do for my town to make it a better place for living?
• SKILLS – flexibility and adaptability, communication skills, cooperation skills, conflict-resolution skills – Can I quickly adapt to changes? Do I know how to behave among others and how to make myself be heard without being too intrusive?
• KNOWLEDGE – knowledge and critical understanding of the world – Do I know the country rules when it comes to the environment? Do I know the policies that rule the environment protection?
Note: To see the full video, please visit: https://www.zsslovan.cz/aktuality/jak-zaci-8-d-slavi-v-anglictine-den-zeme-earth-day-ways-to-celebrate-v-dobe-distancni-vyuky