IPAD - Spontaneous Conversations

IPAD : Spontaneous Conversations using Bookcreator

One of my goals for this year was to provide my students opportunities to have spontaneous conversations.  So I came up with the idea of having my students use the app Bookcreator which they were now familiar with.  I tell my students that when you have a conversation with someone you don't write down what you are going to say to them...you may just think about your ideas, but you don't plan out every little word you say therefore they need to learn to do the same in Spanish.

First I had my students search for 4 pictures and the criteria of the pictures was: 1 was to be funny, 1 interesting, 1 weird, 1 beautiful and it could be related to the unit or not.  I didn't tell them what they were going to do with the pictures until they had found their pictures.

Once they had found their pictures, I asked them to choose one of the pictures they had found and then they were to find a partner and with their partner they were to talk about the picture for at least a 1 or more.

The criteria: They couldn't write anything down and they couldn't discuss about what each one was going to say, they were just to converse without planning.  They couldn't delete the conversation if they didn't like it. However they could record themselves twice [although some recorder themselves more than twice] and then choose the best conversation. Their conversation needed to be about a 1 or more if possible.

Challenges: Many students had a hard time having to produce a conversation on the spot and I needed to monitor some of them as it was very new to them to not be able to write a script or anything.
I had them do this activity a number of times and most became to feel a bit more comfortable as we did more of these.

I also did an activity in which I choose a picture for them to talk about in partners and they were to record themselves.  Again they could do two recordings and choose the best one.
This can be done with a commercial, a song etc....


I then had them use a rubric to assess their conversation and most were pretty good at assessing their level. I then marked them and gave them their mark.

It was great to see that those shy, quiet students were able to contribute a lot to their conversations compare to having to do something like this in front of the class or in front of the teacher.

Some talked about food, sports, movies, etc... Here are a few examples:

TIME FRAME:  about 20 - 30 minutes

Students choose pictures:





I chose the picture for them: I projected the picture to them on the document reader