My group and I worked on Station number 1 and Station number 3 the same day which was in fact the second session. The second part of Session one was devoted to Station number 2 which you will found on the next post.
We found some activities on “Lamb to the Slaughter” short story:
– In the first activity we had to discuss the differences and similarities between Mrs Bixby (Mrs Bixby and the colonel’s coat) and Mary Maloney. Our group found that Mary Maloney is a scheming wife, totally devoted to her husband and she feels alone as he doesn’t pay attention to her when everything she wants to do is please him. Mrs Bixby has everything in life but she lacks passion.
They are similar in that both women suffer from unrequited love from their partners and they have everything in life except for happiness.
Regarding the differences, each of them behaves in a different way; Mary Maloney actually kills her husband in an outburst and Mrs. Bixby has to resign and continue with her dull life.
– Then, we had to discuss if we would use EDMODO (http://www.edmodo.com) in class with our students and if we would classify the previous activity into pre/actual/post-teaching. We agreed that it’s a fantastic tool where teacher and students can share different points of view and every activity can be adapted to fit into pre/actual/post-teaching. However, in this case, it could be used as a post-teaching activity because students have to discuss the similarities and the difference between the female characters of both shortstories and this means that they must have already been working each shortstory individually.
In my opinion, I would use EDMODO with my students as it is a fantastic way of sharing information with them and you can also interact with each other. Nowadays, teenagers spend most of the time online, why not taking advantage of it and adapt it to education? The teacher can communicate with his/her pupils but they can also comment to each other, share info, like their classmates’ posts…etc. I think it is very easy for them to use and a very interesting active technique to provide significant learning. It is very motivating as the teacher can give “badges” to the students that are participating and our students need some kind of recognition when they make an effort. It is easy to use and it’s similar to Facebook or Tuenti so our students will know how to work with it perfectly. We can tell them to use Edmodo whenever they come up with an idea, or share videos, pages in English they like…etc. We can also tell them to post their reflections on the lessons and so have some feedback and organise better our time.
– Then, we talked about the ironic symbols on both shortstories:
In Lamb to the Slaughter, the lamb is actually an ironic symbol because it is the weapon that Mary uses to murder her husband.
In Mrs. Bixby and the Colonel’s coat shortstory the neckpiece is the ironic symbol because it represents unfaithfulness, disdain and greed.
We looked for pictures to represent both symbols: a leg lamb and a neckpiece.
– In the next activity we had to pretend to be Mrs. Maloney in a radio programme and convince the audience of her actions. I did the recording myself and it was a funny experience as I changed my voice to be the radio presenter, I added some background music and I pretended to be Mrs. Maloney who was felt sorry for what she did and tried to excuse herself. We were supposed to used either https://soundcloud.com/ or http://vocaroo.com/but those only work if you have a microphone so I used the recorder in my mobile phone and it worked perfectly.
-We agreed that we would use recorders in class as students can get to know their mistakes in pronunciation and they can improve by themselves. We can suggest our students to use their own mobile phones to record their voices so they can see that technology can also be applied in class.
I would also use a recorder in my lessons, and I would also recommend my students to do recordings as it is really useful to hear how you pronounce in English. It is a good way in which students can get inmediate feedback and hear themselves speaking. You can do lots of activities in which students have to record their voices as: interviews, radio programmes…etc. They’ll love it for sure!
– In the last activity we had to discuss whether the recording could be classified into pre/actual/post-teaching and we think that depending on the content of the voice message we can adapt it into all types of teaching. In this case, we think that it is part of the actual teaching of the shortstory because while students are writing the reasons which justify her acts, they are reflecting on the plot of the story and they are also putting into practice their speaking skills.
I liked very much working through this station as I learnt more aspects of this shortstory and I discovered new ways of teaching reading comprehension I can actually apply in my lessons that can catch my students’ attention as working with EDMODO and doing voice recordings.
Teaching English actively 