Action Research at CIIE w/ Claudia Sánchez

For English as a Second Language, 1er Año de Escuela Secundaria N°5 – Pigüé, Provincia de
Buenos Aires

Juan Pablo Pardias

1. Identify the problem. Problem: Students don’t engage in activities.

There have aggressive attitudes between them, bad manners,
hygiene difficulties, addiction’s backgrounds in some cases

2. Why is the problem List several possibilities:

happening?
a. Socially problematic backgrounds
(The “why” determines
the action plan.)
b. Lack of motivation

c. Low self-esteem and frustration

d. Not motivated by culturally distant topics

e. Lack of attention by elders

Centennials, such as the case of these students, tend to
f. have a very short concentration lapse

3. Brainstorm possible List several possibilities:

actions.
a. Work with topics closely related to their own life
All of them love animals: How do I look after my
dog/cat? Why do I like from my pets? How can I
b. describe them?

c.
Boys like playing videogames. Identify English vocab.
 “Scratch” as an easy programming platform. Short
gameplay fragments can serve as triggers for various
activities
d. Girls love Ed Sheeran songs as well as some Netflix series.
Short song fragments can be used as triggers and to identify
transparent words, recognize already studied vocabulary as
well as syntactic and grammar structures
e. What do you like to do on weekends? Describe a normal
day of yours.
f. Carry out a survey among students to identify tastes, uses
and learning preferences. Survey should be structured
(multiple choice) since most of them are hardly capable of
expressing own opinions in an open way.
g. Activities with Ed Sheeran bio. Proposed article: “Ed
Sheeran 'Cried Every Day' At School From Bullies For
Being Ginger & Having A Stutter”*

Certain changes from the original idea had to be made since I finished teaching at First
grade.
I went on with my action research with 5 th grade. Though this group is quite different in
terms of behaviour, they do share some characteristics with the former groups, such
as:

 Lack of motivation,
 Low self-esteem and frustration, as well as a
 very short attention lapse.

In that sense, the former diagnosis was partly applicable on this other group.

One of the advantages found in this group is that they tend to work collectively very
well, so the group itself and I took advantage of that and. Many of the students in this
group is also highly motivated by social issues, like poverty and inequalities.

After working alone during two classes with songs like Natalie Imbruglia’s Torn,
Paradise (Coldplay), and The one that got away (Kate Parry) to learn and practice
simple fast both regular and irregular forms, results have been evaluated. 62% (8 out
of 13) of the students were able to pass theoretical exam (Simple past, regular and
irregular verbs in affirmative, negative and interrogative forms).

The student’s satisfaction with this teaching method has also been surveyed in an both
informal and oral way. Students show themselves satisfied. Nonetheless, the teacher’s
intention was to make little changes in the strategy.
Activity:

At the end of the year I chose some activities that allow me to assess contents worked
along the year and that work as a review of the topics of the year.
The main changes compared to the former activities were:
 Students would no longer work neither alone nor in pairs, but all together with
the teacher guidance. The intention was to take advantage of the collective
intelligence.
 A song had to be chosen with which we were able to review most (or at least, a
big parts) of the contents of the year.
 Adding new features, the activities acquired some gaming characteristics

The chosen one was We Are the World (USA for Africa), a song that also condenses
their social interests and that is a huge collective and collaborative piece.
1st DAY
Firstly, we listened to the song without subtitles and each one of them wrote down the
words he was able to recognize. Few of them recognized more than 7-8.
Afterwards, we listened to it again (just one time), but all of them were involved
collectively in recognizing the lyrics.
These (in bold) are the words and sentences they were able to recognize
cooperatively:
There comes a time
When we heed a certain call
When the world must come together as one
There are people dying
Oh, and it's time to lend a hand to life
The greatest gift of all
We can't go on
Pretending day-by-day
That someone, somewhere soon make a change
We're all a part of God's great big family
And the truth, you know, love is all we need
We are the world
We are the children
We are the ones who make a brighter day, so let's start giving
There's a choice we're making
We're saving our own lives
It's true we'll make a better day, just you and me
Oh, send them your heart
So they know that someone cares
And their lives will be stronger and free
As God has shown us by turning stones to bread
And so we all must lend a helping hand

From the first sole activity to this collaborative part, the improvement was great.
They were able to see the power of group work and showed themselves surprised with
some companions’ achievements.
The third part of the activity consisted in listening again to the song, but with the
subtitles. And there was only one word they ignored: heed.
Many of them said things like: No! It was so easy! How couldn’t we recognize that or
this word!
2nd DAY:
After that, having the whole lyrics on the white board, we continued working using the
lyrics to make a review of various topics seen along the year.
1st: We turned collectively the whole lyrics into the simple past and simple future,
when possible. In some verses we did the same turning both simple past and simple
present into the negative form.
2nd: We looked for synonyms of underlined verses
In bold, other related topics on which we made focus.
There comes a time
When we heed a certain call
When the world must come together as one
There are people dying
Oh, and it's time to lend a hand to life
The greatest (comparative and superlative revirew) gift of all
We can't go on
Pretending day-by-day
That someone, somewhere (undefined pronouns review) soon make a change
We're all a part of God's great big family
And the truth, you know, love is all we need
We are the world
We are the children
We are the ones who make a brighter day, so let's start giving (let's and what about
review)
There's a choice we're making
We're saving our own lives
It's true we'll make a better (comparative and superlative revirew) day, just you and
me
Oh, send them your heart
So they know that someone cares
And their lives will be stronger (comparative and superlative revirew) and free
As God has shown us by turning stones to bread
And so we all must (modal verbs review) lend a helping hand
3rd DAY:
We’ve watched The story behind the song (with subtitles)
We are the World 1985 (the story behind the song) https://youtu.be/9XTcdAmmnVk

Results:
Both teacher and students were surprised by the results achieved in terms of learning
as well as enjoying the activity.
It was an action that combined learning english with a game, collaborative work and
learning about recent history and music.
Hardly to compare with previous results, since it was the first time we work in a fully
collective mode and we lack of a common measure, at a first glance it seems to be
successful. Anyway, this should be a starting point to continue improving the
pedagogical approach.
It is also worth noting that, due to the good resultd I applied a similar activity with
other two grades in two different schools.

On the text below, you will find the original plan for first grade which I finally wasn’t
able to continue:

Plans:
Thanks to some reading and the brainstorming made at the CIIE, many ideas have
emerged in order to act on this problematic groups.
From the above mentioned “Brainstorm possible actions”, I´ve decided to start
working with Ed Sheeran bio. The main aim here is related to their attitude. Sheeran
seems to be a good example of a boy that suffered from a lack of self-esteem in the
times when he attended school. He can be a good example of how hurdles can be
overcome.
Afterwards, I’ve planed activities with the YT-based learning site
https://es.lyricstraining.com/ and Scratch (https://scratch.mit.edu/), the visual
programming language and online community
Activity # 1:
The teacher reads the article aloud. He explains the
general meaning while asks the students to recognize
some transparent words, as well as some others which
have been seen in the classes. After c losing the activity,
students are suggested to share orally what they feel and
think after reading the article. Some questions from the
teacher may serve as a trigger: Did you know Ed Sheeran
has been bullied? What do you think about it? Why do
you think he could overcome the bullying? Was it that he
just didn’t care about it when he was bullied, or do you think he was only able to
overcome it after some time? What has bee his passion? Do you think that passion
could have played a role in overcoming his suffering?
Activity # 2:
Since the students are highly interested in
videogames, the teacher will propose them working
witch Scratch. Scratch is a block-based visual
programming language and online community
targeted primarily at children, which can be used in
Spanish as well as in English.

Students are proposed to turn a short presentation

dialog into an easy programmable game.

Activity # 3:
Lyricstraining in Begginers mode. Proposed songs Ed
Sheeran’s Perfect, Nothing on You, South of the
Border. In the case of Nothing on you we’ll watch the
video in which Paulo Londra -an Argentinian trap
singer also followd by the students- participates.