Showing posts with label Science. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Science. Show all posts
August 30, 2012
January 12, 2012
Plants
‘Plants’ is a CLIL unit aimed at the first and second grades of Primary Education.
The goals I want my students to achieve are divided into two groups:
Science goals:
- Describe the main characteristics of a plant.
- Recognize and label the parts of a plant.
- Name some common plants and trees from our environment.
- Say what a plant needs to grow.
- Find out about seeds.
- Distinguish between flowered and non-flowered plants.
- Analyse and recognize the different stages in the plant life cycle.
- Tell the difference between bushes, trees and grass.
- Find out about vegetables.
Linguistic goals:
- Understand and produce vocabulary related to plants: names of plants and trees, parts of the plant, …
- Write words and vocabulary in the second language.
- Sing a song in English.
- Listen and understand important information.
- Connectors: first, then, next, finally.
- Talk in English about plants.
- Read short sentences related to the unit.
I have developed a Notebook file for the digital whiteboard that acts as the guiding thread of the whole unit. There are different types of pages in this file, some to teach vocabulary with pictures, some to practice the contents by doing different exercises, some to elicit oral interaction, some with animations and interactive games, … You can see how the file works in the video below and if you like it you are free to download it for your lessons.
Notebook plants
One of the proposed goals deals with the parts of a plant, in order to teach them I work with the following video song that it’s quite catchy and helpful (my students love it).
Parts of a plant
A practical activity I put into practice to make students see the life cycle of a plant was “growing a bean plant”. We inserted three beans with cotton in three transparent glasses and we watered them from time to time, there were different conditions in each of the glasses (different levels of water, different position according to the sun, …) and during some weeks we drew the different stages of the plants and finally we analysed why one grew before the others and what the differences were among them.
An excellent book we read in the classroom when talking about seeds and plant stages is ‘The tiny seed by Eric Carle’. Apart from being very useful for teaching Science it’s also great to use in Art because of the so good and colourful illustrations.
Wordle
March 22, 2011
St. Patrick's Week
This will be a flash post about St. Patrick’s Day, just to tell you my teaching experience at school.
We have been working through this special date along the past whole week in the different subjects I teach: English, Art and even Science.
The contents about this date for the different subjects are:
- English: traditions, sociocultural aspects, Ireland as an English speaking country, vocabulary (leprechaun, shamrock…) …
- Art: felt-tip pen colouring, combining colours, cutting and tracing, templates, using paints and paintbrushes…
- Social Science: Irish traditions and geography.
Students learnt some vocabulary related to this special date, they read some texts and answered some questions, and they played games.
In the Art lessons, the higher-level students coloured a leprechaun poster and also cut some shamrocks in green cardboard paper in order to decorate the school. Students in lower levels coloured some leprechauns and some pots of gold, and they made a leprechaun face from a paper plate.
You can download in the link below a file with the worksheets on St. Patrick’s Day that I used in the classroom.
On March 17th, students wore green clothes and other stuff in order to commemorate the famous Irish date. I uploaded a video with some photos.
March 10, 2011
Winter
Spring is almost here but before it arrives I want to publish the post about Winter. I’m sorry I couldn’t do it earlier, but it will remain in the blog and perhaps you will be able to use it the following year.
As I told you in the past, ‘seasons’ are quite an interesting topic to work at school because they relate to Science, Art and other subjects.
My Winter lesson plan is aimed at my 11/12-year- old Art students, although it can be adapted to any level changing the difficulty of the activities and the goals. At the end of the post, you can see some Winter resources for other levels.
The contents in my lesson plan are:
Art contents: different colouring techniques (paint, wax crayons …), collage, scissor skills, fine motor skills.
ESL contents: all the language dealing with Winter, how to borrow materials, material names, the modal verb can, present simple.
Science contents: winter facts, hibernation and migration, weather.
The unit sketch is rather similar to the autumn one.
The first lesson covers a kind of brainstorming about what we know and what we can add in the English language. I write an outline of the ideas on the board:
- Winter months.
- Start and end dates.
- Weather.
- Winter clothes (scarves, coats, mitten, boots, gloves, hats).
- Sports (ice-skating, skiing, snowboarding, go on a sleigh).
- Colours.
- Special vocabulary: snow, snowflakes, snowman, snowfall, ice.
- Special dates: Christmas, Peace Day, St. Valentine’s Day, Carnival, Pancake Day, St. Patrick’s Day.
- Animals (migration and hibernation).
- Facts: shorter days, longer nights.
The last half of the lesson students start to work on the Winter poster.
The activities for the second lesson are reviewing all the information about the season, watching a video and working on the poster.
The next lessons deal with finishing the poster and writing some essays.
Students write two different compositions, one about Winter and the other about the poster and its description. In order to write the composition about Winter, I give them a list of questions that have to be answered in the form of a text.
The questions are:
- When does Winter start?
- When does it finish?
- What’s the weather like?
- What clothes do you usually wear in Winter?
- What sports can you practice?
- What happens to some animals?
- What special dates do you commemorate?
As you can see, there are many contents involved and that’s the reason why we spent a long period of time working on it, the unit was about two months long.
The results are:
Winter song: lower levels.
Snowy weather: advanced video
Winter websites with worksheets and facts.
Winter Websites
January 3, 2011
A multidisciplinary lesson plan: Autumn
Autumn, as well as the other seasons, is a very interesting topic to work at school because it can be approached from different subjects, Science, Art, Language and even Maths.
In my case, the lesson plan on autumn has a place in the Art programme during the first term of the school year. It is planned for the 3rd cycle of Primary Education.
The Art contents involved are mixing colours, collage techniques and painting vocabulary.
The Art contents involved are mixing colours, collage techniques and painting vocabulary.
The contents related to ESL are dates (reading and writing), fruit vocabulary, animals, weather and clothes, and traditions.
The first lesson of the unit will mainly deal with talking about the season, so students and I make a brainstorming on autumn covering the following points:
• Autumn months.
• Start and end of autumn (dates).
• American name.
• Colours.
• Weather – clothes used.
• Fruit and food (acorns, chestnuts, corn, nuts…)
• Scarecrows
• Special Dates (Columbus Day, Halloween, Chestnut Party and Thanksgiving days): what day is it celebrated? where does it come from? traditions involved and why?
• Hibernating animals (hedgehog, beaver, squirrel)
• Autumn facts.
The different points will arise out of the observation of some pictures, see the example below:
At the end, the students and I will design the sketch of an autumn poster.
During the second lesson students will learn a song about autumn and they will work on the poster.
In the third lesson we will watch a video to learn some facts and vocabulary about this season and they will continue with the poster.
The following lessons will help review the contents learned and finish the poster.
This unit can be also adapted for lower levels. A good clipart autumn book to work with lower levels is the one that follows:
You can check how the students performed their task by watching the poster:
Apart from the poster, it’s possible to do some crafts related to autumn or to special dates, depending on the time you have. Some easy craft ideas are:
- Leaves collage.
- Leaves place mat.
- Scarecrow.
- Turkey.
November 1, 2010
Living and not-living things: lesson plan
My first post on Science, let’s see if you like it. I will present you my lesson plan about living and not-living things. It’s aimed at the first cycle of Primary Education.
First, using some flash cards (tree, monkey, giraffe, ball, train, caterpillar, daddy, …) I try to elude from students the differences between living things and not-living things, explaining the main characteristics of living ones.
At the beginning of the different lessons I always review the contents seen using some examples, I ask: what’s this? Is it a living thing or a not-living thing? Or is a teacher a living thing or a not-living thing? I try to use vocabulary they can recognize from previous years (toys, animals, school objects…)
In order to differentiate between those two categories, they do some worksheets (colour and circle living things, cut and paste into the appropriate column…). They also learn to name the pictures that appear on them.
They use their notebooks to draw some living and not-living things.
After some lessons, students have to say by themselves names of living and not-living things.
When all the students have a clear concept of living and not-living things they will make a booklet (the template is at the scribd document), they draw pictures and then, with the help of the teacher, they will write the names of the pictures and they will learn the words if they don’t know them.
The next stage deals with learning the main characteristics of living things. To be able to do that, I present the next sentences with the use of mime and gestures:
The next stage deals with learning the main characteristics of living things. To be able to do that, I present the next sentences with the use of mime and gestures:
Living things grow.
Living things need energy.
Living things move.
Living things reproduce.
Living things remove waste.
Living things breathe.
Repetition is an important part in the process of learning the sentences. At the beginning they hear the sentences and they do the actions, and then, when they feel more comfortable, they also say the sentences. They write the sentences on their notebooks.
The same living-thing flashcards I used the first day will be used in order to categorize the three groups in which they can be divided: animals, plants and human beings. We will talk about the main differences among them and they will categorize some given examples and they will give some more.
They will learn the next sentence and they will copy it on their notebooks. They will also draw some examples below each category.
Living things can be animals, plants or human beings.
Finally, I work with the students on the concepts of natural and man-made, analyzing some examples and doing a worksheet.
Some useful worksheets about this unit are:
Living and not-living things
Here you have some presentations that can be adapted or used with older students:
September 9, 2010
New bilingual section: our project
Back at work again, after a long and well-deserved period of holidays. And I start with good news, this year I will also be teaching Knowledge of the Natural and Social World through English, yes, that’s it, our school will offer another bilingual section in the first cycle of Primary, so that means, there will be new CLIL resources in my blog related to this new subject. Let’s see how it goes, it will be more difficult than teaching Art through English but I’ll do my best.
Have a look at the project if you are interested and don’t doubt in asking for a bilingual section in your school, it’s a great experience for pupils and also for teachers.proxectoseccionbilingueconocimiento
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