In this teaching notes, I am going to demonstrate how teachers can modify the difficulty level of a task or activity by using one text and with the same H5P activity.
The H5P activity I am choosing is: Sorting the Paragraphs in which learners will be asked to place a number of sentences or short paragraphs in the correct order to make a coherent, cohesive, and meaningful paragraph.
This activity is useful to language learners to practice their reading skills. It can tap into several global and specific reading skills as well as employing top-down and bottom-up reading strategies.
In the first activity, learners are asked to sort a chunk of sentences. This will provide them with more content and context to process meaning and the number of steps/sequences they have to go through is controlled. Thereby, this task can be easier than the next one.
With the same text and H5P activity, learners have to sort more sentences in this task. The number of sentences and sequences learners have to go through and make decisions will consume more their processing capacity, thereby making this task more challenging to complete.
Sort the Paragraphs can also be an excellent type of H5P activity to introduce a conversation and engage learners with it. For example, learners can be asked to listen to a conversation and rearrange the transcript as in the following example.
Sort the Paragraphs can be used to introduce poetry in the classroom through a pair work or group work. For example, teachers can find a relevant and meaningful poem and prepare it in this H5P activity. In the class, learners can work in pairs or in small groups to reassemble the mixed lines into the original poem. It requires ‘deep processing’ and different levels of reading to get the task done. Again, teachers can make it easier or more difficult to introduce a chunk of poem lines or line by line. Of course, this activity can be done in paper (cut the poem into strips) or be converted into a listening activity (listen to the poem read by the teacher and arrange the lines)
GỌI BẠN Tự xa xưa thuở nào Trong rừng xanh sâu thẳm Đôi bạn sống bên nhau Bê Vàng và Dê Trắng Một năm, trời hạn hán Suối cạn, cỏ héo khô Lấy gì nuôi đôi bạn Chờ mưa đến bao giờ? Bê Vàng đi tìm cỏ Lang thang quên đường về Dê Trắng thương bạn quá Chạy khắp nẻo tìm Bê Đến bây giờ Dê Trắng Vẫn gọi hoài: “Bê! Bê!” Tác giả: Định Hải. Nguồn: SGK Tập đọc 2, NXB Giáo dục Việt Nam, 2018
In summary, I have showed that Sort the Paragraphs H5P activity can be used to teach reading, conversations, and introduce poetry in the language classroom.
Updates on Dec 30, 2023:
More demonstrations have been added to provide supplementary examples for the articles written for GUAVA Newsletter Vol 3 Dec 2023.