Why sequences?
Textivate is used primarily in the following ways:
- to create resources for students to use in class or at home.
- to create resources for use in class with an IWB.
- to print worksheets for use in class or for homework.
- to allow students to practise their own texts in preparation for assessments.
Many teachers and students use it as a way of practising language, learning vocab in context, learning a text etc. It is a great practice tool, a really easy way of providing lots and lots of repetitions of the key structures and vocabulary that you want your students to learn.
The addition of sequences greatly enhances and expands number 1 in the above list and adds a whole new dimension to textivate. Here's why...
You can still create resources for your students to practise their language, with access to the full range of activities available on textivate, just as before. But additionally, you can add an activity sequence to a resource, which steers students through the various activities in the order that you specify. For many of the activities in your sequence you can add a target score, so that students have to achieve a decent score on one activity before they can move on to the next one.
This means that you are no longer simply saying "here is a link to a load of activities for you to play around with" (although they can do that as well). By using a sequence you are ensuring that they do precisely the activities that you want them to do, AND you know they have to get a good score on all activities in order to complete the sequence, AND you're getting a record of all scores and time spent on every activity in the sequence, as well as the number of attempts made at each activity in the sequence. You KNOW that they have put the work in.
When it comes to learning vocab, you are no longer pointing students to a hyperlink with a few vocab games to play - now you KNOW that they have to have done a reasonable job of learning their vocab. Otherwise, they wouldn't have been able to complete the sequence.
Want your students to spend half an hour learning their vocab and/or going over a text containing your key structures and vocab? Set them a sequence of a dozen activities starting with easier ones, getting progressively more challenging, and preferably ending with text input activities.
And you can use sequences as an assessment. Just create a sequence of activities (or even just one activity) without targets, tell the students to complete them to the best of their ability, and the score they get gives you an assessment score. Couldn't be simpler.
Here's a link to a 5 activity sequence (the one used for image at the top of this page): www.textivate.com/sequence-p0ijn1
And here is the same thing embedded:
How about the following as an assessment?
After some time in class or at home learning the vocab, let students complete this as an assessment and submit their scores: www.textivate.com/sequence-m1ijn1
Here is the same thing embedded:
Related posts:
Introducing Sequences on textivate
LIGHT - an embedded KS3 Science sequence of 10 activities
Chez moi (a textivate sequence = a substantial bit of homework)
How to submit work at the end of a textivate homework sequence
Sequences based on activities from more than one resource