Are you looking for ideas for getting your students to do speaking activities and practice
the language and the great thing is the ideas I'm going to show you today can work in any language
so whether you're teaching English or Spanish or French or Chinese or German all these ideas will
work every one of them slightly different and every one of them is using a tool that we can
use for free called Padlet and I'm also going to give you some tips to how you can maximize using
Padlet for free because you can archive your recordings and that way you can actually have
more free copies really hope you like the video as always please like it please share it with
other teachers and of course please comment on it I'm showing you five ideas for getting your
students to do speaking using the free tools love to know which one you like the best let's start
so the first idea I want to show you is that what we can do is we can
get people to upload a picture and then add an audio recording talking about their picture
and then on top of that they can then connect the two things together so that we can see for
example we've got an example here where someone's written about Barcelona and they've added up
their picture and then they talk about it and the same here where I've added up my one and of
course other students can come on and do exactly the same I love this idea because it really gives
you something to talk about it gives the students something to talk about it's personalized because
they're uploading their own picture and I'm going to quickly take you through how you can do this
so the first thing to remember with this one is you need to click on make a Padlet
and the one that you want to work with is this one here called canvas okay so select canvas
all you need to do is give your canvas a title so for example I'm going to call this connections
okay and then click on next and click on start posting and now you can start posting
so to add up the content all you need to do is double click on the screen
choose image grab the image that you want to work with so I'm going to use this picture here
and then just open that image onto the screen try to encourage the students to use pictures that
aren't too big I think Padlet does size them down anyway but it just makes it much easier
so I'm going to click on that it adds the picture now you need to click again on the screen so it's
second time and this time click here and this time you want to add audio recording and I'm
just going to click and record myself very quickly this is a picture of Devon the coast of Devon and
it was a couple of years ago when I was doing some hiking along the coast and uh absolutely beautiful
done it click on playback and save you don't need to write any titling click on save and you can
actually write your title here at the top okay so I'm going to call this one walking in Devon and
then click on publish now this is the interesting part this is the really interesting part now you
need to connect these two together and all you need to do is click on either one of them
and click on connect to post and it's going to say well which post do you want to connect to and you
can connect to any of the posts this is quite clever we only want to connect to this one of
course so we click and click click on it and now we've connected those two okay so when you click
click on the button connect to post it offers you the option of connecting to any of the posts that
are on the screen but obviously the one that you want to connect to is the one that you've added
up and that is the way that students can build up really nice presentations talking
about pictures it's a bit personalized it can be really an engaging way of getting the students to
speak and practice language now remember whenever you create a padlet and you want to share it with
other students it's very easy you just simply click on the link at the top and copy that link
and then share that with the students and that way they can access the Padlet and then they can
make their contributions okay so I really like that connections idea and the next idea that I'm
going to show you is using what we call the maps feature in paddy which is absolutely brilliant
because you can place recordings on a map talking about different places that you visited or you
want to visit or that remember in your childhood absolutely fantastic just a quick point if you
don't know Padlet and you need to learn about how Padlet works then there is a link now on
the screen that you can link on to actually find out from the beginning everything about
Padlet and I'll also put that in the description below but let's now move on to the second idea
this was not my idea it was actually in a lesson I was observing and it was so simple all the
teachers did was ask the students to investigate one area in England one city okay in England that
they had to find out about and then to record themselves talking about it and each student in
the class had to choose before the activity a city that they were a place in England that they were
going to talk about and then they had to record themselves and add the information so to give
you an example of how this was done and we can see here that the recordings are on the screen and if
we click on them we can then play the recordings now this is my own example of this activity as I
said I'm actually copying someone else's idea but it's a really good one and I just want to show you
how you could do this so you could choose any place in the world it's so easy to do
and very very quick activity as well so let me show you how you can do that you click on make
a Padlet the one that you want to choose is select this one because you want to obviously make a map
now one little tip just make sure that you've got the right map there are actually if you click here
several different options and the best one for this type of activity I mean I think to be honest
with you most of them would work fine is probably the standard one so click on that to choose that
as the map style come back and the only thing that you need to do is just come back up to the top and
give it a title so the teacher was doing two facts or three facts about and then click on next now
click on start posting now you use this button here to come in close and the one that I just
did was about England so let's do another one let's choose another country and the great thing
about this is that students can actually choose a place and then obviously look on the internet get
some information together prepare their recording and then they can do their recording afterwards
so I'm going to click on Seville now the easiest way to do this let me just show it's really simple
which is just click on the button drag this on right onto where you want to add your name or
sorry add your audio recording click on the city and then start so you're going to click here and
I'm just going to click on audio recording and I'm just going to start uh here Seville is one
of the biggest cities in Spain it's uh in the south of Spain in the area of Andalucía uh it's
about a hundred kilometres from the coast and it has a population of just over a million people
I've done my recording just click on play I can actually play back and save so I can listen to it
okay perfect click on save and then it even gives you the title automatically so you don't
even have to write that in just click on publish so now the first one has been added now another
student might come on and say prep samples click on Barcelona so again the same thing click here
just drag I need to move this map slightly just drag this onto Barcelona
it will bring up the list of places okay and just click on that at that and it's going to
then allow you to do exactly the same thing so you would then click here and click on audio recorder
and then again the majority of people or the local people speak Catalan as their first language
okay so then I can add that onto the screen click on save again no need for me to put in the title
in this case because it's given me the coordinates I could just change that and put Barcelona
okay and then click on publish so now we've added the recall into Barcelona
and the recording to Seville so the students could carry on like this this is a great way
of getting the students to add up their recordings talking about different places I think choosing a
country is a great way of working because then the students can search about particular cities
in that country and then do their recordings just a really quick break from the video I
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one of the most interesting formats and one I haven't exploited enough and I've seen
a few teachers exploiting is this idea of the timeline and that is where you can go on and add
information about yourself or about other people or it could be any kind of historical thing
and produce a timeline now an example I saw not long ago working with a group of teachers was that
simply teachers wrote up when they started their first job and they simply added their names onto
the screen in the right place uh to add at the time that they started their job now what I've
done here is a kind of similar theme is I've added the different job or different cities or
different places where I have worked so mainly it's been in Greece in Crete Salonica Seville
London and and Warwick those are basically the five places that I've been stationed and I could
either do this as a written of course I could do it as an audio so if I was to just click on edit
then what I could have done here is obviously written the place at the top and then click
here add the audio and just quickly record myself yeah my first job was in Crete I worked in Retino
okay finish always play back and save you can listen to it of course click on save and
you can always write the title in afterwards and then publish and you've got your first recording
so people could be recording along the timeline now notice and this is the really clever thing
is that you can always update you can always add in after or before the timeline always so whenever
anyone puts in a contribution it's very easy for you to add a contribution before that moment or
after that moment so it's very easy to have people collaborating when working on Padlet so very
quickly if you want to make a timeline all you need to do of course is click on make a Padlet
and the one that you're choosing here is timeline it was one that they kind of introduced a few
years later it wasn't in the original format i'm going to write timeline here okay again i don't
have to put a description just click on next just click on start now notice that it starts obviously
with just one simple plus but as soon as and let's just do a quick example so i write Seville
1988 click on publish I'm not going to add my audio but I would click here as you know and
click here to add the audio but let's just publish that straight away I can now add something before
that or after that so for example if I wanted to say where I did my teacher training well I could
have written 1986 and that would have been in Bournemouth okay so a really really easy way of
don't forget you can archive your Padlets now you have a limit of the number of Padlets that
you can use if you use the free tool so after you've produced three of them you can't produce
anymore after three but what you can do very easily is just simply click on a padlet and
archive it and that way it will give you space now to make another one so you can archive a certain
amount i'm not exactly sure how many is in the free tool i think it's up to eight and if you
want to go to your archives you can always come to your archived and you can reactivate them again by
just unarchiving them so that is a way of making sure that you've always got the opportunity to
have more than three Padlets available you can have through up to three Padlets active at any
time but you can also archive eight and that gives you a total of eleven if you do wanna
know more about the advanced features in Padlet there's a video on the screen now
I'll also put it down in the definitions as well but we're now going to move on to the next idea
now the next one I'm going to show you is just a very simple idea it's where you can introduce
yourself to the rest of the class but then what you can do is you can turn the comments
on and then get the students to listen to the introductions and then add additional questions
so it's a really nice way of kind of adding in a little bit more interactivity into an activity and
make sure that what the students produce is being used so in this particular one what we need to do
is to click on make a Padlet and probably the best one to use is the grid form click on select
and in this idea it's just introduce yourself okay so introduce yourself
you can write a description here if you want to a little bit more detail again click on next very
quickly just click on start posting and then the student simply needs to double click on the screen
and they're going to introduce themselves by again clicking here and then clicking on audio recorder
they do they're recording hi my name is Russell Stannard I'm a language teacher and a teacher
trainer do their recording click on playback and save click on save and again they can then just
wait until it's ready they can put their title at the top so Russell and then publish now you
can get all the students to do this and then what you can do afterwards is say right now there's a
second activity I want you to go back I want you to listen to two other people and I want you to
ask them questions and what you need to do is to come onto the Padlet click here and you need
to do this later once everyone's added up their recordings i don't add comments click on save
now then click on close now students can come on and add questions for example what languages
do you teach so the students therefore have to listen to perhaps two of the recordings and then
leave a question it's a really nice idea to leave a question and you can even connect that into a
further activity for example where the students perhaps in class answer the questions that the
students have asked about them it can work really really well I love that kind of idea that we're
getting the students to produce some content and then we're actually going to use that content
now another great way to use Padlet is to do it as a kind of discussion board and you can
see an example here where everyone's posting one underneath the other so you can choose a
particular topic and then people can post their answers or post their comments etc
now again we could just do this with oral skills and that could work really well and that's what
I want to focus on now so to do that one then click on make a Padlet and this time you want
to click on stream and the I'm just going to do a really obvious one so I'm going to click on
my typical day okay and a good thing about this one is it's a really nice one where you
can do a model for the students to work from so I'm going to click on the screen and I'll start
as the teacher by doing a recording so I'm just going to do really quickly
I normally get up about eight o'clock in the morning bloody bloody blah okay do my
recording click on playback and save click on save put it at the top here just right Russell's
day click on publish now when the next person comes on the screen and wants to add their example
you'll notice if we just quickly do this so we're just going to go and do second one so we're going
to click here and click on recording and click on again just very quickly blah blah blah blah blah
click on and then save and play back remember to click on save again afterwards and then let's put
here tom and then click on publish you'll notice that it goes underneath okay fact so it goes on
the top it's always the the latest one's always stacked at the top okay so that is a really a
good way of working now the interesting thing about this again is what you can do afterwards
once all the students have added up their ideas is for example do some sort of activity
for example something that could be really good is say listen to some of the recordings and find
things that you've got in common with other people so let's just to just show you how that
would work I'm going to click on add comments so just to make that clear how I do that I click here
then I come down to the button that says add comments this one here I'm going to add the
comments on click on save click on close now let's imagine that I've listened to tom now and then I
could say I also get up at eight in the morning and I could find something that I've got in common
with another student in the class and that would work really well
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Thank you