UNIVERSIDAD AUTÓNOMA DE MADRID
FACULTY OF TEACHER TRAINING
4th of Primary Education (Major in English)
English Language Teaching I
Professor María Dolores Ramírez
Group 412
Unit 5. Design Utopia
Group 3
Silvia Ponce Campos
Paula Tapia Jiménez
Irene Miguel Herrero
Madrid, November 7th, 2020
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Summary presentation of our Utopian City.......................................... 1
2. Dialogue for our role-playing in class ................................................ 11
3. Reflection on the TBL learning process ............................................ 13
4. Connecting contents and units .......................................................... 14
5. Feedback group 4 ............................................................................. 15
6. Feedback provided to group 4 .......................................................... 15
7. References ....................................................................................... 16
Unit 5. Design Utopia
1. Summary presentation of our Utopian City
1. Age: 11/12 years old.
2. Level (according to the CEFR): A2 (they can talk about familiar and routine matters such
as aspects of their background, environment and things that are immediately important to
them, describing those ones in simple terms.)
3. School/Group (Primary School, EFL or bilingual): Bilingual school, 6th grade.
4. Number of students: 24 students.
5. Focus on: meaning and pragmatics.
6. Content: places and buildings vocabulary.
7. Materials and resources: specified in each one of the tasks.
8. Roles:
- Role of the teacher: active as a monitor and guide.
- Role of the student: active as a negotiator responsible for her/his own learning.
9. Goal: express preferences, agreement and buildings vocabulary by considering 5 features
their own ideal city would have.
10. Objectives:
- Who? The twenty four students of 6th grade class.
- What? Design an utopian city allowing to communicate and negotiate meaning.
- Where? In class.
- When? Total time: 4 classes, 1 per day, so it will last one week. According to BOCM
it will be four hours per week in bilingual schools; each of the classes will take 45
minutes long.
- Why? To learn some different places and buildings that are in a city while using the
functions of agreeing, disagreeing and expressing preferences.
- How? Creating their own town and justifying why they have chosen those places and
buildings.
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Unit 5. Design Utopia
11. Task Stages:
Pre-tasks:
● 1. Storytelling to present the task
Organization Timing Place Resources and
materials
A story (created by
Whole class 10 minutes (1st Classroom ourselves), cork
class) board,
pushpins/bluetack,
cards as visuals and
a disguise of a
worker.
First of all, the teacher will enter the class disguised as a worker or an architect to promote
curiosity.
Then, she or he will read aloud a story (created by ourselves) using a cork board, pushpins
and cards as visuals. This way, varying intonating, the teacher will emphasize the
vocabulary and the learners will learn it in an implicit way using the read-aloud strategy and
visuals as scaffolding strategies to proportionate comprehensible input.
In this story, the cards with pictures of the places and building will be glued progressively to
the board as the teacher reads the story and after that, the pictures will fall off to engage the
students because the buildings will disappear.
Our own story called “Perfectland”:
Once upon a time, there was a man called Enzo. Since he was a child, he decided to
become an architect and studied really hard for it.
When Enzo graduated, he was told to build his own city.
Enzo: ¡That’s my opportunity to show the world my talent! Said Enzo.
And he started building it.
First, he decided what to build.
Enzo: “Let me see…. What should a perfect town have?”
He built up a school, a supermarket, a bakery, a pharmacy, a hospital, a skate park, a
shopping center and a huge park with a lake and lots of houses.
Once he finished his town, he called it “PERFECTLAND”.
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Unit 5. Design Utopia
Enzo: “Everyone would love living here” he thought.
But one Monday morning something changed in Perfectland. ¡Buildings were disappearing!
Enzo couldn’t believe his eyes. He ran around the city checking all the buildings, however
when he arrived at school, it had already disappeared.
Enzo: “Where are students going to learn now? And where have the students gone?”
As fast as he can, he went to the park next to the houses to search them but there was
nothing as well, both of them have disappeared.
Enzo: ¿Where will my citizens live now?
He decided to take a break while thinking about the problem, but when he arrived at the
shopping center, it wasn’t there either.
At this moment, he started listening to something that called his attention, he focused his
eyes on the sky and saw something he had never seen… A SPACESHIP!
Then he realized what was happening, aliens were stealing his buildings. Up to this point, he
decided to build up another city as far away as possible but he had no more materials to
start again.
Could you help Enzo to create a new Perfectland?
The resource created by ourselves that we used in our presentation:
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Unit 5. Design Utopia
● 2. Brainstorming using a Word Web
Organization Timing Place Resources and
materials
Whole class 20 minutes (1st Classroom A whiteboard and a
class) marker
After hearing the story, the teacher will use graphic designers (scaffolding strategie),
specifically a word web, to write down what words the students remember learned in the
reading and to elicit new vocabulary to set the context. This way, we will be pre-teaching and
focusing on the words they will use in the during-tasks.
For this purpose, in the middle the teacher will write “our perfect city”, and then she will ask
the students what they remember about the building and places that Enzo considered to be
perfect for him. Later, they will say what they want to be in their ideal town. In this stage, we
have to take into account the importance of asking the right questions, for example, this or
that questions because they don’t know yet the vocabulary we are going to use.
In this picture, we can see an example of the WordWeb made by ourselves:
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Unit 5. Design Utopia
Task preparation
Organization Timing Place Resources and
materials
A sheet of paper for
Whole class 10 minutes (1st Classroom each group with
class) clear instructions.
Then, to provide very clear instructions each group will have one piece of paper with a step
by step handout and an engaging title “The city is broken! Can you fix it?” to elicit
participation. The whole class would read it together to understand every step and make
clarifications.
Afterwards, we can see the instructions and the worksheet that we have created to provide
real examples of what we mean:
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Unit 5. Design Utopia
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Unit 5. Design Utopia
During-Tasks:
● 1. Debating what our perfect city has
Organization Timing Place Resources and
materials
Students: sheet of
Groups of 4 45 minutes (2nd Classroom paper with the
class) instructions and the
worksheet, a pencil
and a rubber.
Teacher: a clipboard
To start with, we will use group work as a scaffolding strategie. In this stage, they will start
independently building their own ideal city, so group collaboration and creativity take hold.
First of all, they will do a debate to communicate their preferences, agreement and
disagreement about the buildings their ideal city has. After this, they will write down their
conclusions including at least five characteristics their town has. To reach this goal, the
specific outcome for them to know how to complete the activity, they will find five differences
that the city where they live and their ideal city have.
Furthermore, the teacher would be a monitor quietly circulating around the room and taking
notes on weak or strong language features on a clipboard. Here, there is our own example
of the teacher’s notes:
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Unit 5. Design Utopia
● 2. Including online resources
Organization Timing Place Resources and
materials
Groups of 4 45 minutes (3rd Classroom Powtoon
class)
When they have their five or more features, they will create their Powtoon presentations to
back up themselves in their future presentation with pictures and ideas. This way, they will
have a tangible product and they will be really motivated as they can create a video with lots
of pictures and materials.
Thus, here we can see an instance of a simple Powtoon presentation made by ourselves:
https://www.powtoon.com/s/dcUFIn4iDHT/1/m
● 3. Persuading and mixing time
Organization Timing Place Resources and
materials
Groups of 4 First part of the last Powtoon
Whole class session (about 20-25 Classroom presentation, notes,
minutes) poster, pencils
Finally, each one of the groups will present their ideal city to the rest of their classmates
following these rules: the presentation will be 2 minutes long, each person will talk for less
than 1 minute saying two sentences.
Then, the whole group will have to discuss the most interesting fact of each one of the cities
writing it down or drawing on a poster. Then, they will build their ideal city as a group
considering the best idea of each of the groups.
Once again, the teacher will be a monitor making notes. It is a fluency activity, so she
shouldn’t interrupt the students when they are talking.
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Unit 5. Design Utopia
Post-tasks:
● 1. Spinner to learn
Organization Timing Place Resources and
materials
An online spinner, a
Whole class Second part of the Classroom blackboard and a
last session (about ball.
20 minutes)
Finally, the teacher who has taken notes on mistakes, does some kind of activity or
rehearsal to correct them. This time, she will take a look at her notes and will write on a
blackboard those words or structures that need to be revised and corrected. So, while giving
feedback to the students about the task she will be correcting those mistakes and she will
use this spinner (classroom management) to choose a student and ask him/her to repeat
what she’s saying (if it is a pronunciation mistake, the student selected will have to say the
word aloud to make sure she/he is saying it properly and so with every mistake noted down
and few times each).
The student who has to speak will have a ball on his/her hands representing his/her turn to
participate.
How will the teacher evaluate this task? She will be attentive to the students’ speeches when
presenting their ideal city and she will also take into consideration the attitude towards this
task during each session. Students have to be active and motivated to keep learning.
Here is an example of our spinner with the name of the 24 students of the class and a QR
code if it’s needed.
And here is the link to use the spinner online:
https://www.classtools.net/random-name-picker/44_YJi953
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Unit 5. Design Utopia
● 2. Let’s recycle: Taboo
Organization Timing Place Resources and
materials
Some cards with the
Small groups Few weeks later, to Classroom words that have to
revise what’s been be defined and what
learnt with this task words cannot be
said while doing it.
In this session, as the students will have been keeping learning many more things like the I
wish structure, the teacher will come back to this contents but this time she will check if the
students have actually learnt them and still remember them with a game, Taboo.
The students will work on small groups and the game consists of defining a word, one they
learnt about cities (park, station, bakery…), but avoiding saying some specific words and the
rest have to guess it.
For example: the word is park. The student have to describe a park but without saying the
following words:
- swing/toboggan
- trees
- fountain
The student could say “In this place there are many green things and plants, kids go to play,
I wish there was one next to my house… (fluency over accuracy).
Here are some examples of cards that could be used in this game:
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Unit 5. Design Utopia
2. Dialogue for our role-playing in class
Each member of our team will act out the following roles:
- Teacher: Silvia
- Student 1: Paula
- Student 2: Irene
First class
Pre-tasks
Teacher: (Comes into the classroom disguised as a worker/architect) Good morning my dear
students! How are you today?
Students: Good morning Silvia!
Students: Wow!! What are you wearing?!
Teacher: You will understand it later…
Students: Why? Tell us!
Teacher: We have to start the lesson. Can anyone tell me what can you see through the
window?
Student 1: Mmmmm I can see a park.
Student 2: I can see the library there.
Teacher: Well, let me tell you a story about my dear friend Enzo and his beautiful town.
Students: SURE TEACHER!
(The teacher reads the story to the students)
Once she ends telling the story, Silvia starts asking:
Teacher: Let’s see, what parts of the city can you remember from the story that were ideal
for Enzo? (As the students reply, she writes in the centre of the WordWeb “our perfect city”
and the answers on a whiteboard in order to provide new vocabulary for the following task).
Student 1: There was a park, a bakery, a school.
Student 2: There was a shopping center, a skate park and a supermarket.
Teacher: Well done, can anyone tell me something more? Maybe something you would like
to add to his town to make it perfect? For example, would you prefer a toy store or a
swimming pool?
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Unit 5. Design Utopia
Student 1: A toy store.
Student 2: A big big swimming pool for everybody!
Teacher: (keeps writing on the whiteboard) Ok, great, what else?
Student 1: And teacher, I want a Warner (?).
Teacher: Oh! you mean an amusement park! A Warner is an amusement park. That 's very
funny! Well, now that we know more parts of the town we are going to create our own town
in groups of 4. After that, each group will present his town to the rest of the class and later
we will create a new one all together choosing the things we liked the most of each groups’
city. Here, there are some papers with the clear instructions for you to take into account.
Make sure you understand it all and ask me if you don’t! Are you excited? Is going to be fun!
Second class and third class
Teacher: Okay guys, do you remember what we did yesterday?
Student 2: Yes! Things we like for a city.
Student 1: And the story about Enzo!
Teacher: Very good girls. So can we start with the task for today? Do you know what to do?
Any questions?
Students: No silvia, everything is good.
Teacher: Good, let’s start!
During tasks start
(Working in small groups, students debate about what they want to have in their ideal city)
(The teacher takes note of students' strong and weak features, the ones marked in red are
weak features and the ones in green are strong features).
Student 1: What do we include in the town?
Student 2: I don’t like chemist’s. I think an amusement park here and a bakery next to the
park.
Student 1: I likes swimming pools, it can go here, close to the gym.
Student 2: Yes, I am agree with you. And the school can be there.
Student 1: I want a supermarket here as well.
Student 2: And a train “estation” (leido ESTATION) in front of it. Yes, I like your idea.
(This happens during two classes, so students have enough time to decide and create it
using ITC).
(Teacher: as a monitor walks around the classroom writing down the errors.)
Fourth class
Teacher: Ok dear students, today each group has to present their city. Which group wants to
start?
Students 1 and 2: We want!
Teacher: Nice! Come here and show us your ideal town.
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Unit 5. Design Utopia
Student 1: In our town there is a swimming pool, a school and an amusement park here.
Student 2: Because it is the part of the children. There are houses, a park and a train
STATION in that part.
Student 1: Because it is the adult’s part of the town.
Teacher: Well done group one! Let’s listen to group 2.
(Every group makes the presentation).
Teacher: Now, let’s see, what was your favourite one? What do you like about each
presentation?
Student 1: I like group 8 because they have a balls park.
Student 2: I like group 3 because there is a chocolate museum.
Teacher: Great, so now we can create a new town with all those things to help Enzo.
Post-tasks: time for feedback
(The teacher starts writing on the whiteboard those mistakes made by the students in the
previous classes).
(Writes the word station).
Teacher: Okay, let’s see who is going to read this word… (uses the spinner). Ok, Paula
(throws the ball to her).
Student 1: Train “estation”.
Teacher: Sorry, can you repeat it again? Train station.
Student 1: Train station.
Teacher: Great! (uses the spinner again). Irene! your turn (throws the ball to her).
Student 2: Train station.
Teacher: Perfect!
Teacher: And now, (reading it slowly for a comprehensible input) I agree with you! Paula!
Student 1: I agree with you!
Teacher: Well done! Irene please.
Student 2: I agree with you!
Teacher: Excellent! My dear students you have done an amazing job, keep on working like
this!
And now we explain the recycling at a later stage task (Taboo game) that will be done
several weeks after these tasks.
3. Reflection on the TBL learning process
As we created the different tasks, we realized how tough it is to design a well-organized
lesson. In the following paragraphs, we are going to reflect on some of our ideas, what
problems we had and how we solved them:
- Engaging our learners’ interest: we thought that one of the main difficulties would be getting
the attention of the students in order to motivate them and to stay focused. This way, we
decided to use costumes, a story, etc., so the teaching starts the lesson in an engaging way.
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Unit 5. Design Utopia
- Setting a specific goal, judging success and completion: we realized that if we set a goal
that is not specific, for example, “build your own ideal city using buildings vocabulary”, the
kids won’t be able to know when to finish and some of them will give too much information or
too little. For this reason, we decided to specify that they should need 5 features their ideal
city would have. This way, students will know when they have completed the task and
motivation will increase.
- Clear instructions: if we don’t provide a sheet of paper with the guidelines, maybe some of
our students are going to get lost because there will be a wide amount of tasks to be
completed. To solve that situation, we decided to give the learners the written directions.
- Negotiation of meaning, communication and monitoring: we’ll allow them to negotiate
meaning and then the teacher (monitor) would be taking notes about how well or not so well
they are doing at pragmatic use of the language, pronunciation, etc. We believed that it
would be better to correct mistakes at the end of the session and not to interrupt the
students while they communicate.
- Comprehensible input and scaffolding strategies: for the pre-task we decided to use
scaffolding strategies as visuals, realia, read aloud, gestures, graphic organizers, etc., to aid
meaning.
- Instructional questions: about this fact, we reflected on the importance of making the right
questions. For example, as they don’t know yet the vocabulary, we introduced this or that
question as “would you prefer a toy store or a swimming pool?”.
- Procedures: we deliberated the specific time that will take each one of the tasks, but
allowing the students to plan their group work.
- There’s room for creativity: students will decide what they want to present, so they have a
choice.
- Will the outcome have real life consequences? At the very end, we wanted to have a
product that they have constructed, so it will be the Powtoon presentation to show something
tangible for example to their friends or parents.
- Using the TBL Approach we can work on transversal topics: for instance, we decided to
use technology in order to integrate skills and develop further competences.
4. Connecting contents and units
The Task Based Approach is mainly influenced by the Communicative language teaching as
during the 1980s the term “communicative activity” was replaced by “task” and the first
approach mentioned is a sequence of communicative tasks. Both approaches look for the
student's interaction providing them with many opportunities to do it.
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Unit 5. Design Utopia
They are focused on fluency over accuracy as the learners are seen as language users so
the most important aspect is to interact as much as they can rather than doing it perfectly. To
achieve it, the role of the teacher has to be a monitor who does not interrupt the students’
speech during the preparation and the presentation of the task. Corrections are given after
the whole task and process is completed.
Furthermore, every task has a function and a goal but to reach it we can’t forget the
importance of asking the right questions, always according to the student’s age and level
specified in the CEFR with the can-do statements and scales of the four skills. It is also
considerable to remind them of some vocabulary already taught but also giving them a piece
of paper with everything they may need as instructions or inputs in order to obtain a proper
outcome.
5. Feedback group 4
To begin with, we think they have done really nice work. The task was very complete and
they had covered each aspect of the activity.
First of all, they have used routines in the pre-task, such as daily questions “What can you
see from the window?”, and also they introduced the activity through a tale with specific
vocabulary for the next stage of the task, using images stuck to a blackboard, which we
consider very dynamic. After having explained the tale, they used a mind map to establish
new concepts, a resource really useful and interactive.
Continuing with the next stage of the task, they presented the activity using a worksheet with
the respective instructions, it was very clear, so each student knew what they had to do,
which is an important characteristic for a TBL learning process. We really liked the resources
used; they make it more active and appealing to the students in order to achieve the main
objective and spread their knowledge. In addition, they had promoted teamwork to reach the
targets of the task.
Despite the activities being complete and perfectly raised, we have noticed they may have
not centralized the activities on the development of creating the Utopia. They give a brief
presentation of their Utopian city, and give more attention to the pre-task and the post-task,
which are important, but not the main objective.
Finally, we would like to stand out the way they have presented, playing the roles making it
entertaining, we have enjoyed their presentation a lot.
6. Feedback provided to group 4
Firstly, it must be said that we really enjoyed Carmen and Paula’s presentation.
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Unit 5. Design Utopia
On the one hand, there were several points we really desire to highlight such as the
scaffolding strategies they used to provide comprehensible input, which were some
homemade flashcards, an avatar (astronaut) created by the Voki website (to work on
different accents and engage the students) and a map of the island. We also appreciate the
idea of including different topics related to the island they would like to create, on the
grounds that they started talking about professions and then in a really natural way they
included animals and community topics.
What is more, their acting was really good as they accepted the chance of being teacher and
student and it could be appreciated when the teacher acted as if she was taking notes about
student’s mistakes while they were filling in the task. Then, the student presented their job
about their own island in which they included: place, no money society, four families divided
by colours and way of transport. Finally, the teacher gave students feedback and corrected
the mistakes they have made acting as a monitor which we really liked.
On the other hand, we realized that, even though the activity was created for 6th grade, they
have tried to approach too many topics and maybe they were not adapted correctly for the
level they were exposing. For example, we really liked the initial debate and brainstorming
about professions, but the animal’s flashcards used after that include really basic vocabulary
for them and the questions they made weren’t for that age level. Furthermore, they
presented the island including some topics they have not talked about during the pre-task,
such as way of transport.
Finally, we would have liked to see a guideline as students were supposed to have precise
clear instructions of what they have to do, in order to know when they have completed the
task and to make sure they achieve the main goal of the task. This one wasn’t really defined
so the students could not know whether or not they had reached it.
7. References
Websites and online resources
Classtools random name picker website (n.d.). https://www.classtools.net/random-name-
picker/
Eminemxu27. (n.d.). Taboo cards - Places in a city. https://en.islcollective.com/english-esl-
worksheets/grammar/nouns/taboo-cards-places-city/5563
Powtoon website (n.d.). https://www.powtoon.com/
Ramírez, M. D. (2020). Unit 3. Communicative Language Teaching [lecture notes]. English
Language Teaching I. Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. Retrieved from
https://moodle.uam.es/pluginfile.php/2660178/mod_resource/content/1/UNIT%203-
%20Summary%20of%20Key%20Ideas.pdf
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