L5 - ACTIVITY 5.4

L5 - Activity 5.4

You have organised an exchange with a school in another country. During their visit, the students attend each other's school and stay at each other's homes. 

1-Describe the general terms of the arrangement.

Country: Spain and Ireland

Age: 16 years old 

Academic level of students: 4th of ESO (Spain) 4th year of high school (Ireland)

Length of the stay: 2 weeks

Who is visiting who this time: Irish students come to Spain 

School Context: 

• Spanish school: Catholic grant aided school situated in the city of valencia with students that come from medium/high economic class families.
• Irish school: Private catholic school situated in the small city of kilkenny Ireland with students that come from medium/high economic class families.

2- How would you prepare your students prior to the visit, bearing in mind the above set of conditions.

We would divide the arrangements for the visits in 3 phases that would last a month:

• Phase 1: Getting to know each other (10 days)
• Phase 2: Planning  (10 days)
• Phase 3: Getting ready (10 days)

Phase 1

Description: On this phase students will be paired up with a student from the foreigner country and will try to get to know their partner and exchange information about their likes and dislikes, hobbies, personality, etc.

Objectives:

• To develop their digital and linguistic competence in English.
• To practice their social and writing skills.
• To start learning about other cultures.

Activities:

• They will create an email account and exchange it with their partner through the teachers.
• Students will learn the structure, vocabulary and grammar  needed to send an email in english to the foreign student.
• After practicing in the classroom the students will have to write three emails with three different objectives: 

1. Presenting and describing yourself

2. Personalized answer to the partner's answer 

3. Talking about your city and making suggestions about the activities that will take place during the actual visit by the Irish students.

Phase 2

Description: On the second phase, students will keep the email communication with the foreigner students but the main task will be to give them some communication tips and tools to help them communicate with their assigned visitor. 

On the other hand they will gather all the information about their Irish partner and discuss in class which kind of activities would be interesting for the visitors. Being that the visit will last 2 weeks they could also plan a trip for the first weekend and a goodbye party for the last one before the Irish students leave

Objectives:

· Develop planning and organization skills.

· To give students the chance to work on a project and develop their sense of responsibility.

· To increase the students communicative skills. 

Activities:

1. Teach the target language in the english classroom and have them practice or refresh the use of useful language tips by role playing, drill activities, listenings and practicing with their classmates in class.

2. Filling the already created and used through the year "useful vocabulary and grammar notebook" with new grammar and sections with vocabulary the teacher and them believe that will be useful when communicating with the Irish visitor.

3. Organize and present to the classroom in small teams a planning with a couple of activities, the trip and the party that the team believes will be enjoyable for the visitors, taking into account all the information they have gathered from the Irish students. The best ideas will be written into a leaflet that will be sent to the Irish students.

Phase 3

Description: On this last phase, students will be arranging everything for the visit, different tasks will be assigned depending on the activities that were agreed in the last activity of the previous phase and will take place during the 2 weeks with the Irish visitors. E.g gathering the money for the trip, creating welcoming decorations, deciding the last details for the goodbye party, sending the last pre-visit emails for their partners with instructions on what to pack on their luggages or how will they meet once they get to Spain, etc

Objectives:

· To give the students the chance to work as a team.

· To teach students to value the others work and efforts.

· To Develop planning and organization skills.

· To give students the chance to work on a project and develop their sense of responsibility.

· To increase the students communicative skills. 

Activities:

The activities as mentioned on the description will depend on what the students had planed on the previous phase.

L5 - ACTIVITY 5.3

L5 - Activity 5.3

1- Describe an example of exercise, or unit, from a book, dealing with intercultural competence.

English File: Pre-intermediate Student’s Book, is one of the examples that we can use with our students in order to apply intercultural competence. 

In this textbook we can find some examples of interesting exercises that go beyond of the classic “fill the gaps” activities, i.e, we can find in page 14 a text called A moment in history about the election of Barack Obama as the first black president of the United States of America, using this social event as the conductive thread of a reading activity.

But we can find other kinds of activities, not only texts. In this same coursebook there is a very interesting listening activity about the life of those teenagers who are wheelchair users, and more activities related with other intercultural topics.  

2- In your opinion, has the subject been dealt with appropriately? Explain why it has or why it has not.
A moment in history, is a very interesting text about how the afroamerican breed has changed on the USA society, a topic that goes beyonf the curriculum. The text includes the grammar and the vocabulary of the unit, but is also a great opportunity of bring the intercultural aspects of our society to our classrooms as something real, meaningful and worthy for the student.

Is an example of how to EFL exercises can also help the students on his/her way to become in critical thinkers.

3- How would present/include it in your teaching?
 The reading of the text A moment in history could be a very useful tool to work the Curriculum and behind it. But it will be a more complete activity if it would include a chance to make the students build their own knowledge, using the Constructivism theories for that, it would be interesting add some some pre-reading activities and a debate as a post-reading activity.