Practical N° 14
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This document outlines a CLIL lesson plan for teaching primary school students about animal classification. The aims are for students to learn to talk about animals' eating habits, physical appearance, and how to classify animals into groups. The lesson involves students watching a video about animals, classifying animals into categories like mammals and birds, and describing an animal's appearance and diet. Students are divided into groups to research and present on an animal from their assigned category. The lesson integrates language skills like reading, writing, speaking and listening and vocabulary about animal names, classification, food and body parts.
Practical N° 14
- 1. Practice II – Camila Roldán & Federico Ramonda Practical N° 14 Deadline: 09/10/2014 I) After Reading www.clilcompendium.com, Chapter 5 “Opening windows for personal achievement” by David Marsh et al and Chapter 4 on CLIL from “Towards a Didactics of ELT at Primary School level”. Answer the following questions: 1) Which are the five dimensions of CLIL? Do they act in isolation? David Marsh mentioned five fundamental dimensions that characterize CLIL as an instructional approach: culture, environment, language, content and learning. Marsh et al. (2001) pointed out that the dimensions should not be viewed as standing alone, because they are usually heavily interrelated in CLIL practice. It is useful to distinguish the dimensions because it allows to identify the separate, yet inter-locking reasons why CLIL is implemented in diverse contexts. 2) Explain each of them in detail. 1. Culture dimension : contributes to the growth of intercultural knowledge resulting in most of the cases in cultural understanding. Likewise, culture dimension helps to introduce wider cultural context, learning at the same time about specific neighboring countries, regions and minority groups. It emerges as a means to handle issues relating to regional-political conditions where even if cross-border contact has been minimal in the past, the future invites much greater contact. CLIL is used to promote understanding and awareness through language-enhanced methodologies. 2. Environment dimension : CLIL prepares for internationalization. The programme curriculum may be influenced by specific environmental needs or opportunities identified in the institution. In the same way, thanks to this internationalization, there is an international certification access. Students have preparation for future studies or work that involves different languages, so they are ready to face any culture with all the necessary skills to take an exam in which their proficiency is valued. When integrating content and language, students have the opportunity to acquire both Basic Interpersonal Communications Skills (BICS) and Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALPS) with the former being all the social language skills and the latter the language skills to cope with academic requirements (Cummins, 2000). Being able to communicate academically and socially opens new borders and encourages students to explore and travel around the world.
- 2. Practice II – Camila Roldán & Federico Ramonda 3. Language dimension : CLIL is a significant approach to improve overall target language competence. This focus stresses language competence in general and therefore includes reading, writing, speaking and listening skills. In the same way, this dimension provides opportunities to use the language as a tool to communicate. This means that methods to be used are the ones that lead to a high degree of interaction within the class. In such cases, it is not necessary for a teacher to have native-like competence in the target language; what it matters is the ability to interact and transmit knowledge by means of the target language. 4. Content dimension : CLIL is seen as helping to provide opportunities to study content through different perspectives. Marsh et al (2001) claimed that “Languages, and the cultures associated with them, sometimes reveal differing world-views that can be seen in the ways in which some content is taught.” One obvious example lies in how educational curricula in different countries may describe shared historical events. However, traditions in the different disciplines can lead to significantly diverse ways of approaching and understanding similar phenomena. CLIL enables learners to study through these different perspectives that can lead to achieving a deeper understanding of the subject matter. Tackling a topic from different perspectives fosters critical thinking and broadens students’ perspectives on different issues. The Moreover, the content dimension enables students to acquire specific target language terminology. Students learn new lexicon in order to understand concepts or express academic language accurately. CLIL is suitable for all levels of education, from elementary to graduate or vocational to professional education. 5. Learning dimension : CLIL complements individual learning strategies. CLIL is specifically geared to learner-centered methodologies that attempt to improve learning by giving attention to individuals’ needs in terms of social and thinking skills. Likewise, this Learning Dimension suggests that CLIL helps to increase learner motivation which is at the heart of all education.
- 3. Practice II – Camila Roldán & Federico Ramonda 3) What are the advantages for acquisition/learning in young children? CLIL follows basic insights into foreign language acquisition by young children, for example that children can develop the use of two languages simultaneously until the age when lateralization occurs. Thus, they have an enormous potential for cognitive and social development. Other positive aspects as regards CLIL approach which will make learning easier are the concepts of comprehensible input and authenticity. Krashen and Biber call comprehensible input to the fact that students have the background knowledge needed thanks to their L1 which turns beneficial when working with the same content in English. Authenticity refers to learning a foreign language that builds on content related to the rest of the school curriculum. In this way it is authentic as opposed to artificial situations. 4) How do you think the following CLIL key terms interact in a CLIL lesson? Target language, exposure, ICT, Intercultural knowledge and understanding, language awareness, learning styles and learning strategies.
- 4. Practice II – Camila Roldán & Federico Ramonda It is maintained that teaching school subject content by using the target foreign language increases the amount of exposure the learner gets in the foreign language and provides him with richer L2 input. In classrooms, the most common scenario is to find various learning style preferences which need to be taken into account as they can act as bridges that enhance communication and learning. 5) How do visual organizers help to scaffold students’ learning? Provide graphic examples. The use of visual organizers such as webs, diamond frameworks or fishbone graphic organizers will allow the students to classify, categorize or summarize the information provided. By dividing long texts into chunks of meaningful information we favor the understanding of our students. 6) Explain the impact of Bloom’s taxonomy to help students reach higher order thinking. How can we achieve this at Primary School level? In education circles, perhaps one of the most widely known models of critical thinking is Bloom’s taxonomy. He states that all learners need to develop both lower and higher thinking skills. The six levels of difficulty start with practical lower order thinking (eg, labelling a diagram) and move upwards to more abstract and complex higher order skills (eg, critical evaluation). However, not all teachers have found all levels of Bloom’s model easy to use. Creativity employs cognitive as well affective skills explained as fluency (ability to generate ideas), flexibility (ability to change categories), originality (being able to come up with a unique idea), and elaboration (expanding on one’s idea). Basically, teacher’s intervention is needed to help students achieve these intellectual processes of observing, interpreting, comparing, classifying, generalizing, inferring, analyzing, synthesizing, making predictions and evaluating outcomes. In this way the teacher will be a guide who will support learner’s critical thinking and who will help them develop their creativity.
- 5. Practice II – Camila Roldán & Federico Ramonda II) Design a CLIL lesson plan for Primary School level. Follow this format to design the class: Aims, content, language (lexis, grammar, functions, macroskills); preparation, procedure, students’ production, extension. Animals Aims - Students will be able to talk about animals’ eating habits and their appearance. - They will know how to classify animals according to their structure and their diet. Content - Describing animals’ physical appearance and eating habits. Language - - Writing - Reading - Speaking - Listening - Names of animals - Classification of animals - Food of animals - Parts of animals’ body - Use of the verb to be - Have got/ haven’t got Preparation Teachers will prepare one copy of the worksheet per pupil, so as they can complete the activities there and then glue the worksheet on their notebooks. Also, teachers will save
- 6. Practice II – Camila Roldán & Federico Ramonda the video that the children will watch in a flash drive or they can bring it in one of the teachers’ computer. Procedure Warm –Up: 1) Watch the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtblQQvT2Nk 2) Teachers ask the students what animals did they see in the video and provide names they may not know. After the names have been recovered, teachers ask about student’s previous knowledge as regards animals’ classification. To help them remember the teacher could ask some questions: · Do you know the name of the animals who…. o Have got hair and breasts? o Have got wings? o Have got fins and gills? o Eat other animals? o Eat plants? o Eat both animals and plants? Main Activities: a) Classify the animals under the correct column. Wolf / camel / buck / baboon / ground-hog / lion / giraffe / rabbit / owl / parrot / pigeon / ostrich / elephant / Mammal Amphibian Reptile Fish Bird
- 7. Practice II – Camila Roldán & Federico Ramonda b) What do they eat? Are these animals herbivorous, carnivorous or omnivorous? 1. Wolves eat elks, moose and caribou. 2. Camels eat grass. 3. Lions hunt baby elephants, giraffes and hippos. 4. Owls feed on insects. 5. Ostriches eat roots, leaves, insects and frogs and lizards. c) Teachers will provide students a model of an animal’s description of physical appearance and eating habits, making use of the structures presented at the beginning of the lesson, so then they can choose one animal from the video they saw and write a short description of it. Students’ production: Teachers will divide the whole class into 5 (five) groups, assigning each of them a category of animals from activity “a”. They will choose 1 (one) animal from the category assigned to them, in order to produce a craft of the animal chosen and write about its physical appearance and eating habits, so they can present their productions to the rest of the class orally next week.