Nowy rok szkolny, nowe ciekawe pomysły na zajęcia! Na pierwszy ogień lekcja autorstwa p. Martyny Bujnowicz:
Jak sprawić by nauka
alfabetu nie wiązała się jedynie z odsłuchaniem piosenek i powtarzaniem liter
do poznanych wcześniej melodii?Nic
prostszego. Wystarczy zaopatrzyć się w makaron w kształcie liter i zabawę można
zaczynać. Dzieci z klas drugich utrwalając alfabet na polecenie nauczyciela
łowiły wśród stosu makaronowego abecadła odpowiednie litery, by następnie
ułożyć je na właściwym miejscu. Śmiechu było co niemiara i alfabet został
przyswojony.
Często rodzice młodszych Słuchaczy pytają mnie, co polecam na wakacje, by utrzymać kontakt z językiem. Na pewno nieocenioną pomocą będą wszelkie aplikacje do nauki dla dzieci, ale prawdziwym hitem jest Storyline Online. http://www.storylineonline.net/
Na czym polega wyjątkowość? Otóż jest to darmowa strona, gdzie umieszczone są filmiki, na których amerykańscy aktorzy czytają bajki po angielsku. Odbywa się to na tyle profesjonalnie, że z niewielką pomocą rodziców dzieci mogą zrozumieć sens bajki.
Jeśli tematyka historyjki będzie dla dziecka interesująca, można pójść krok dalej, gdyż do bajek dołączone są karty z dodatkowymi zadaniami, często plastycznymi.
Tu przykładowa historia:
http://www.storylineonline.net/hey-thats-monster/
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.)
This is a lesson designed to prove that teaching about colours doesn't have to be limited to dictations, simple colouring or talking about your favourite ones. This CLIL lesson includes elements of Art, Music and Science.
I have to mention about my assistant, Ms Ewelina Stus, who is also a teacher in my school and eagerly engages herself into CLIL lessons and their planning. Most of the activities were designed by her.
Aims: Students can name three primary and four secondary colours. They can do an experiment with milk and food colouring, they can sing a song about colours.
Task 1
I talk to my students asking whether they know any names of colours in English. I ask them some simple questions asking to indicate examples of these colours in the classroom. Then, I explain that today we are going to do some colourful magic. They are always intrigued hearing that :)
Task 2
I show them a song by Sesame Street.
After watching it a few times depending on students' willingness, we talk about the colours presented in the song and the whole process - if they have noticed what happens when two colours are mixed.
The conclusions should be:
blue and yellow = green
red and yellow = orange
red and blue = purple
Variation! If you have time and an access to the IWB a perfect idea would be to ask students to become these colours (as the men in the song) and try to mime as it follows.
Task 3
I introduce notions: "a primary colour", "a secondary colour", "to mix". Now we can go straight to the experiment.
I show the instruments: a plate, a paintbrush, milk, food colouring in three primary colours, dish soap.
I explain that this is the part with magic and I will need their help. Giving all the instructions in English we go through all the steps:
1. Pour some milk into the plate.
3. Drop some food colouring in three different places of the plate.
5. Touch each spot of paint gently and see what happens.
6. When you have all three secondary colours on your milk, stir
everything up and see what colour you have now (brown as we get it when
red, yellow and blue are mixed).
1. Pour some milk into the plate.
2. Wait until the milk is still.
3. Drop some food colouring in three different places of the plate.
4. Pour some dish soap onto the paintbrush.
5. Touch each spot of paint gently and see what happens.
6. When you have all three secondary colours on your milk, stir everything up and see what colour you have now (brown as we get it when red, yellow and blue are mixed).
IMPORTANT! The milk should be fat about 3%. Less fat can result in the failure of the experiment.
If you have some time left or your experiment has failed - show this film.
Task 4
Especially for this lesson I bought some dry pastels in three primary colours. Each student gets three pencils and using only them they have to colour the worksheet according to the instructions. This is also a chance to show them how to use this kind of pastels, how they can mix colours using their fingers etc.
Sometimes they have to exchange pastels as the number of them is limited and it is a chance to practise asking for objects: "Blue, please", "Here you are", "Thank you".
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.
