Ana Paula Cortez, a Portuguese teacher at Graded, The American School of São Paulo, got her 7th and 8th Grade students excited about practicing the target language during a Life Cycle unit. Students were learning vocabulary words and traditions around the birth of a child, their school and college years, work life and retirement. Ana Paula designed a project titled: “De volta para o futuro” (Back to the Future). She asked her students to create a character and fake Facebook pages to accompany the character throughout his/her life.
Objectives (Objetivos)
- Describe past and future events (Descrever atividades passadas e futuras)
- Speculate about destiny, professional and personal future (Especular sobre destino, futuro profissional e pessoal.)
Enduring Understandings (Conhecimento Duradouro)
- Values (A criação de valores)
- How does the present establish the basis of the future? (Como o presente estabelece as bases do futuro)
- The importance of planning for a successful future (A importância do planejamento para o sucesso futuro)
Essential Questions: (Perguntas Essenciais)
- What values ??today will I take into my future life? (Quais valores de hoje levarei para minha vida futura?)
- How will my actions in the present create my future? (Como minhas ações presentes vão criar o meu futuro?)
- How to plan for success? (Como planejar para o sucesso?)
Content (Conteúdos)
- Review of the Present Perfect Subjunctive (Revisão do Pretérito Perfeito do Subjuntivo)
- Vocabulary related to adulthood (ex. getting married, student exchange, gap year, etc.) (Vocabulário relativo à vida adulta (ex.: casar, formar-se, fazer intercâmbio, ter um ano sabático etc.)
- Conjugations (Conjunções)
General Instructions (Orientações Gerais)
- Create a page on Fakebook (fictional character – from birth to retirement) (Criar uma página no Fakebook (personagem fictícia – do nascimento até a aposentadoria)
- 4 snapshots: before birth, childhood and adolescence, adulthood, retirement; (4 snapshots: antes do nascimento, infância e adolescência, vida adulta, aposentadoria)
- Include all basic elements: profile, photos, videos etc; use Facebook Template (Incluir todos os elementos básicos: perfil, fotos, vídeos etc; Usar template do Fakebook)
- Use Creative Commons images. (Usar imagens do Creative Commons)
We found a Google Apps Presentation Template to start,
Ana Paula Cortez translated the template into Portuguese and shared the file via Google Drive with her students. They each made their own copy and shared it back with their teacher.
Student examples:
Students created a page announcing the birth of the “person”, during the infancy/childhood, High School time,adulthood and retirement age.
Student comment about the project (Hint, use Google Translate to copy and paste the comments and translate into English)
By Andrew:
Este projeto foi muito divertido. Foi muito legal como criamos uma pessoa e seus amigos e familiares. Foi como fazer uma história. Eu aprendi muito e espero que possamos fazer outros projetos como este.
cross posted at langwitches.org/blog
Silvia Tolisano is a Curriculum21 faculty member, author of the book Digital Storytelling Tools for Educators and founder of the Around the World with 80 Schools project. Read more at http://langwitches.org/blog.
