Staramy się łączyć wiedzę językową z wiedzą ogólną od pierwszych lat nauki. Stąd pomysł na lekcję, którą w klasie pierwszej przeprowadziła p. Martyna. Opis zadań poniżej.
Dzieci z pierwszej klasy zapoznawały się z cyklem życia motyla. Przed obejrzeniem bajki „The Very Hungry Caterpillar”, powstałej na podstawie książki Erica Carle’a o tym samym tytule dyskutowaliśmy na temat przeobrażania się gąsienic w piękne motyle. Po obejrzeniu bajki Dzieci grały w grę planszową dedykowaną bajce - liczyły, „zjadały” nowe potrawy – karmiąc tym samym głodną gąsienicę. W ten oto sposób wraz ze swoimi gąsienicami przeszły przez fazę poczwarki, aż do motyla.
Kolejnym zadaniem Dzieci było wybranie z tacek, kolorowych makaronów, które kształtem przypominały wszystkie stadia cyklu życia motyla. Dzieci umieszczały je na swoich tackach w odpowiednich miejscach, przyklejały i rysowały pierwsze stadia rozwoju tj. jajko. Następnie uzupełniały kartę pracy łącząc wyrazy z obrazkami.
Jako pracę domową dostały kartę, na której należało narysować w motylich skrzydłach, w odpowiedniej kolejności cały cykl życia motyla.
In our offer we have lessons for big groups, usually school classes. This time we had a chance to meet wonderful children from a school nearby, aged 10/11, who decided to have a meeting on healthy food. Boring, right? Well with CLIL, with good CLIL, nothing is dull. But that needs loads of preparations, hours of writing & searching through the Internet. This time everything worked well.
The lesson plan is a part of Erasmus+ Project: "Bilingual Education - a step ahead" where we are partners.
TIME: 120 mins
1. We started with a book "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" and a small talk about nutrition. HOTS and LOTS questions appeared as usual to activate children's prior knowledge.
2. I asked Ss to fill in a short questionnaire where different products were listed, both healthy and unhealthy ones. We used their answers to talk more about healthy food and unhealthy habits ;)
3. That was an excellent introduction to a food pyramid that we analysed step by step thinking how many portions a day we should/can consume to stay healthy and strong.
4. I asked Ss to build Food Group trees. A wonderful idea for practising thinking skills.
5. Now some LEGO! Working in groups students constructed food pyramids where they placed little flashcards with food.
Well, some of the pyramids were closer to dreams that healthy, harsh reality ;)
6. The last task - a kind of evaluation - was to build My Plate with representatives of all healthy food groups.
Water, chicken, an orange, a lemon, a piece of watermelon
Some pasta, chicken, tomatoes, lemons and milk
A tomato, some milk, salad, chicken breast and a sandwich
Hot chocolate, green salad, a sandwich, some beetroot soup, a steak
Tomato soup with rice, two sandwiches, some fruit yoghurt, green salad, multivitamin juice
a sandwich, a chicken leg, green salad, milk, an orange
Kids enjoyed the lesson a lot! The feedback was very positive and we are going to meet again soon to have another lesson together!
Eric Carle as an author has created lots of wonderful books. I adore their style, design and drawings. It's always a pleasure to work with his masterpieces. This time I needed something positive to revise vocabulary concerning parts of the body, species of wild animals and the use of "can". A quick search on YT and look what popped up:
Task 1:
LOTS and HOTS questions revising previous knowledge, e.g:
1. Show me your... (names of various parts of the body)
2. Which part(s) of your body do you use to...(write, eat, jump, etc.)?
3. Which wild animals can swim?
4. Which animals can't walk?
Task 2:
We watch the film shown above. I encourage children to start singing and copying the moves.
Task 3:
We watch the chant again analysing and repeating the actions mentioned.
Task 4:
I divide the class into three groups hand out three different sets of riddles about animals. In this case I made use of a ready worksheet found at http://busyteacher.org (that I really recommend!).
The students read the riddles one by one to other teams and the first one to guess the name of the animal scores the point. The winners are of course those with the highest score.
Task 5:
It's time for vocabulary. In case of lower grade students I make sure they note down the names of the animals. For upper grade students I prepare a compilation of all the new words and phrases that appeared in the riddles.
Task 6:
Time for a game. Children play "Simon Says" but include phrases from the chant (raise you shoulders, kick your legs, bend your neck, etc.)
Children's library can be inspiring. The idea was to teach a bit of science. I thought about life cycles. Then while looking for activities I realised that in my kids' bedroom I have an excellent book - a gift from their aunt living in the UK. "The very Hungry Caterpillar" is over 40 years old but still attracts children's attention. This book was a base for two different scenarios.
Years 1-2
As you know, the hungry caterpillar gobbles more and more every day. The whole story may be treated as a great way of revising/introducing (!) names of weekdays and/or plural forms not to mention food. The story is quite short and simple so accompanied by some worksheets makes the whole lesson. Exactly 45 minutes - perfect timing.
Years 4-6
The story tell us a lot about life cycle as well. It starts with a tiny egg laid under the leaf, reveals details of all the stages - egg, larva, chrysallis to end up with a beautiful picture of an adult butterfly. I used it as an introduction to a more "serious" teaching about a life cycle of butterflies.
Both lessons started with a short discussion about the topic. It is important to involve students into the topic by allowing them to brainstorm and say what they already know about the matter.
I described the schedule of the lesson and the book itself. Then, we watched a film and the book.
Years 1-2
I asked if they remembered what the catterpillar ate each day. Together we quickly revised dishes of all days. The next step was a hand-out found here. Children had to cut out and stick the dishes on the right weekdays. Evaluation? We simply watched the video again. I asked children to remind me the story asking them some questions:
1. What day does the caterpillar eat through an apple?
2. What does he eat on Friday?
3. What about Wednesday?
4. What on Saturday? (that is a difficult question even for me! But they managed as a group to answer it).
The catterpillars before colouring
The last task was to colour the food. All the works are hanging on our CLIL board.
Years 4-6
After watching the story I asked if they could elicit all four stages of the life cycle of the butterfly. I wrote their answers on the blackboard.
Then, I handed out two worksheets found on Education.com. Both of them describe and visualise the stages.
Life Cycle - education.com
A report about the Life Cycle of a butterfly - education.com
To check if the students were right we read the texts together and watched a film made by Chicago Nature Museum.
It is great as the timelapse technique shows perfectly the metamorphosis. What is more, the whole film has got subtitles, so it was easy to understand what was happening on the screen. For me - a great use, as I could find the best words to describe the processes.
Then, I distributed the last task - a pie chart about the monarch butterfly. It also comes from Education.com. Students cooperated in pairs trying to fill the chart according to the data provided in the task.
All of them were provided with a list of vocabulary to be learnt for the next lesson.
