Assessment (2008-2009)
French teachers
Gymkhana (Maths and English)
For the second year in a row, our Spanish partners proposed their gymkhana about Seville. They changed the “Alamillo Bridge” problem that we had found too difficult last year and they added new steps. They also translated the whole game into both Spanish and French. They waited for us to have finished the gymkhana before publishing the French version as we had asked them to.
As this new Gymkhana contains about ten problems and our pupils are not on the same level at all, we divided them into four groups – two groups with weaker pupils who worked on the first part of the gymkhana together with the activity about recycling and two other groups who worked on the whole gymkhana except the recycling.
Here is precisely what each group did:
Group
1 |
Individual presentations
of the four questions
about recycling |
Train station (1 problem + clue)
The Giralda (3 problems + clue) |
Group
2 |
The Triumph square (1 problem + clue)
Torre del Oro (1 problem + clue)
April Fair (2 problems + clue) |
Group
3 |
|
Alamillo Bridge (2 problems + clue)
Barqueta bridge (1 problem + clue)
Isla Magica (1 problem + clue) |
Group
4 |
|
Sevilla Football Stadium (1 problem + clue)
Las Aguas High School (4 problems) |
The fact of having extra hours for our project this year and allowed us to go deeper into this activity. It turned out to be really profitable for the pupils.
As far as English is concerned, we spent three hours explaining the cultural information of the gymkhana then the pupils were given an oral test in which they had to talk about the famous monuments and places of Seville.
In Maths, as the teacher had decided not to correct the exercises before being given the result by one of the pupils, they got more involved. Even if the two weaker groups did not study many problems and were reluctant to work on their own (always resorting to the same excuse that the problems were written in English and that they did not understand them), the idea of having teenagers solve problems written by other teenagers definitely remains a good one ; moreover they grow more and more accustomed to read and use English outside the English lessons which is one of our major aims and also for them an opportunity to feel more at ease with this language.
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