TimeLine about Agatha Christie

In the class of Third Year of Compulsory Secondary Education students are reading about Murder on the Orient Express, the novel written by Agatha Christie. In order to understand the reading and the author in a better way, students elaborated a TimeLine about the writer.

Link: https://www.timetoast.com/timelines/2696429

The learning objectives of the activity:

• Using the Past Simple to describe a biography.
• Working in an interdisciplinary way with the subject of Spanish and History.
• Working together to complete the task. Collaborative learning involves groups of students. In this case, students are working in groups of three people.
• Developing the digital competence using TimeToast to create a Time Line.

The advantages of using TimeToast for this activity: 

The use of this application is a motivating resource for students in the sense of they are using the computer and they have to use visual images to complete the information. 

The steps you followed to set up the activity:

After reading two chapters, students looked for information about Agatha Christie at home. Then, in the classroom they made a brainstorming about facts of the author. In groups of three people they made the Time Line with the laptops. The first day, I was introduced them the use of TimeToast with a video on Youtube and when students knew the steps to set up the activity they were working in a collaborative way using the laptop, looking for images and sharing the information in the Drive application.

Any problems and how you and the students solved them:

The use of laptops in the classroom is a little complicated in the sense of the number of computers for everybody and also, the Internet connection is not always effective but in general, students learnt quickly the use of TimeToast and the work was funny.

The students' reaction - how did they feel about using TimeToast to complete the task?

Students liked the idea of working with TimeToast in the sense of using a computer and sharing ideas in groups. The felt motivated about the use of ICT tools and learning about digital competence in addition to learning about the life and work of Agatha Christie.

Some things that you would change / improve next time:

For the next time, I would work this kind of task at the end of the term in the sense of students work in a relaxed way.

At least 3 ways that the use of TimeToast helped you achieve your learning objectives:

1. Working in a collaborative way.

2. Looking for essential information.

3. Improving digital competence. 

Finally, when students finished reading the book they watched the 2017 film.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mq4m3yAoW8E