Discovering TimeToast

 



Hello everyone!! 

Today I want to tell you my experience using TimeToast. 

TimeToast is a tool to create online time lines. I think it is a great way to work some topics with students because using time lines children learn in a more visual and organized form. So, it is easy for them to retain and internalise new ideas. 

As the last Friday was the Book Day, I use this app to work on different topics related to that. I am going to explain how I organize this Friday lesson:

Firstly, I told the students what day was and why we celebrate that. Then, I showed the webpage (TimeToast) and explained the fucntioning to them. After, that I made groups of three or four and gave to them a piece of paper with different information. For example, some of them had important authors information and other had information about significant books. 

What they had to do was reading the information, underlining the key ideas or words and searching for the words they didn't understand using a dictionary. After that, they had to draw in their notebooks a time line with the highlighted information. They must do a complete time line, it is to say, they had to include information and drawings, as it appears in TimeToast web. 

The aim is that they learn to summarise while improve their reading skills, increase their vocabulary and know new things about authors and their books. 

There were two main problems: 

1. The English level of my students (5º grade of primary) is too low. 

2. They have a disruptive behaviour in class and it is very difficult to work in groups, and it is impossible to use laptops. 

For that last reason, I decided that the best thing was doing the time lines in the notebooks and then, I selected and did some of them  using the TimeToast. I did it step by step with my students help and  using the digital board in order they can watch how to use this tool.

I was surprised by their reactions, they worked quite well and showed interest by the activity. They liked TimeToast too much although they told me that it seems to be a bit difficult for the first time. So, for the next time, I will try to work with laptops in order they can learn better the way to use TimeToast. Besides, I will try to present the information in a different way as they found hard to understand the texts, because they understood few words and as consequence, they wasted lot of time looking for unknown words in the dictionary. 

Finally, I want to say that using the TimeToast web have been a good experience, in spite of the particular difficulties of my class. TimeToast helped me to motivate my students, and it also have given to the children a new dynamic form of learning contents and making summaries. 

For all of that, I encourage you to use this resource and I leave here two examples of my students works. 

Bye!!

Authors time line: https://www.timetoast.com/timelines/2548610

Book time line:  https://www.timetoast.com/timelines/2548619




Comentarios

  1. anais5 de mayo de 2021, 9:28

    It is always interesting to learn about books and authors. Thanks!
    I like the tittle of your blog My Special Corner! and the colours you have used.
    In my opinion blogs become attractive because of this main points.
    Maybe I would try to use a darker typography . Otherwise, I like it a lot.

    ResponderEliminar

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