Mes: novembre de 2016

IDENTIFYING THE COMUNICATIVE SKILLS

In the following chart I have gahtered the different communicative skills I want to develop in my student through the unit plan.

CALP Content Language	BICS Basic Interpersonal Language	Language through Scaffolded Language.
Vocabulary about ingredients: dough, toping, water, oil, flour, ham, tuna, cheese, grammes… Vocabulary about tools: spoon, bowl, cloth, rolling pin, recipient Vocabulary about procedure: mix, pour, roll up, wash hands, cook Grammar: Have got, present simple	Can you give me the… Anyone can help me? Do you want to try it? Does this taste/smell good? We can do it like this. Use this for…	What’s the name of this? How do you call …. In English? I don’t know how to say… I think that is better to…

 

USING COOPERATIVE LEARNING IN MY UNIT PLAN

In the following chart I describe how I am going to organize my students in the class and the cooperative learning techniques I will introduce into my unit:

Class Organization: Students will work in pairs and in teams of 4 people. The teacher will make the teams mixing students with learning difficulties with other students who are more competent.

Cooperative Learning Technique 1: Kagan structures Task you are going to work: Students will do a worksheet with basic vocabulary before starting cooking. Student will also do another sheet transforming the measures of the ingredients to the size of the group. By pairs one student will make the sheet while the other supervises and the other way round.

Cooperative Learning Technique 2: Jigsaw Task you are going to work: In the kitchen every student of the group will have a task. One will specialize in taking photos of the process and recording a video with the recipe, one student will read the recipe and give orders, the other two students will cook. They can swap the roles once during the preparation of the recipe.

INFORMATION AROUND US

This poster will be hung in the class so student will be able to read the vocabulary they need during the activity.

K – W – L

When we are going to teach a topic it is really important to know what the students are supposed to bring into the lesson, what I want to teach to them and what it is supposed to be learnt at the end of the unit.

With the following chart I was asked to think about it.

K What do my students know about the topic before I started the unit?	W What do I want my student to learn along this unit?	L What have my students learnt at the end of this unit?
My students have some ideas about what is necessary to cook a pizza and also have some ideas about the mathematical problem they will have to solve. The estructure have got has been explained previously and one of the aims is to revise it.	The vocabulary about the ingredients and tools used to cook a pizza. How to explain a process followed in a récipe. Verbs about cooking. How to measure weigh. How to calculate proportions in a recipe according the number of portions we want to cook.	That it is posible to cook a pizza at home with few effort. That cooking involves maths. That cooking in a team is fun and easy. That it is posible to learn English while we do fun things.

MY THOUGHTS ON THE MODULE

In this modeule I have discovered some new techniques of cooperative learning wich I didn’t know. In my opinion when we work in groups it is also important, at the begining, to provide some rules as often students do not know how to cooperate. In the firts sessions they cooperate we can provide the rules and also strategies to solve conflicts and later we can encourage the teams to establish their own rules and strategies. It is also important to help the students to configurate the groups mixing good students with those who need some help, thus all are enriched. The students with more difficulties can have a tutor and the good students can learn more by explaining what they already understood.

It is also important to have clear wich is the vocabulary we want to work with our students. This will help to focus the activities. Although the accurate planing I am sure that the students will learn much more vacabulary than the one we intended at the begining.

In the first module we have been asked to analyze our enviromnet through a SWOT chart ans also start planning the lesson we want to develop.

Here I share my SWOT:

STRENGTHS	WEAKNESSES
·      My students have personalized curricula so we do not have to stick to the official curricula. ·      I teach more than one subject (Maths, Science and English) so it is easier to introduce CLIL as I do not need to coordinate with other teachers. ·      I spend many hours with my students (10 each week) so we have a lot of time to work together.	·      My students’ communicative competence in English is very poor. ·      My students have learning difficulties so all the learning processes with them take long time. ·      My students may feel that we are working in a different way tan their schoolmates, and refuse to do different things.
OPPORTUNITIES	THREATS
·      We have a blog which can be a great tool to publish what we learn. ·      In the school we also have a kitchen where we can learn at the same time that we cook. ·      Soon we will receive new computers, which can help in the students learning process.	·      Other teachers may not understand why we are teaching in English when students are not competent in their native tongue. ·      Some teachers may ask me to work too many contents with my students, and if we learn in English we will not have time. ·      It will not be possible to work at home as my students do not have the habit and their parents do not help with the school assignments.

And I also share my Unit Plan:

SUBJECT: Maths and English
TITLE: We cook
YEAR: 2016

Step 1: The driving question.
Let’s write down your driving question and why you think this is important.
Which are the basic mathematical skills needed in the kitchen? Which other competences are needed?
Students will have recipes and they will have to understand them, transform the quantities into the number of people we are, decide which ingredient will bring each one.

Step 2: The preview of the whole unit
Preview the whole unit. Take a look at the title, headings, and captions to obtain 15-20 basic vocabulary that must be internalized by my pupils at the end of the unit.
Vocabulary about ingredients: water, oil, flour, ham, tuna, cheese, grammes
Vocabulary about tools: spoon, bowl, cloth, rolling pin, recipient
Vocabulary about procedure: mix, pour, roll up
Grammar: Have got

Step 3: The easiest and hardest section of your unit.
The easiest part for my students will be the practical part in the kitchen. The hardest part will be to learn the vocabulary to solve the problem of transforming the quantity or to understand the steps included in the recipe.

Step 4: Law aspects.
The LOMCE defines 7 competences: (let’s define some aspects of each competences)
• Linguistic competence.
• Mathematical competence and basic competences in science and technology.
• Digital competence.
• Learning to learn.
• Social and civic competences.
• Initiative and entrepreneurship.
• Cultural awareness and expression.
I will include these LOMCE standards in my unit plan: (try to find it into your Autonomous Community curriculum)

Mathematical competence: Problem solving, Proportionality (transform the quantities of the recipe), Measure (measuring the grams of each ingredient)
Linguistic competence: Acquire the English vocabulary before mentioned (orally and written), know the text typology of the recipe.
Initiative and entrepreneurship: Students will have to take the initiative when we are in the kitchen.

Step 5: Content
• Which interdisciplinary subjects could be connected to in this unit? Why and how?
Maths (measure and proportionality), Languages (recipe typology), English (Vocabulary and grammar before mentioned)

Steps 6: Soft Skills.
• I will include these soft skills in my unit plan:
o Sharing their belongings
o Team work
o Be responsible of something I have to bring from home (my students do nothing at home)
o Planning and organizing

My thoughts on this lesson:

This lesson made me think about the importance of planning before acting. If you take some time to preview the content, analize wich are the difficulties that can appear and wich opportunities can benefit you, it will be more likely that you take more benefit from the context and your students characteristics.

It is also important to know exactly which are your goals for your students, why is it important thi reach those goals and then the lesson is more easily planed. I like to have a plan on the contents I will work but learning is a flexible process and somenteimes we can learn other things that were not in the inicial plan. When this happen it is wonderful!

One thing I miss from the six seteps plan is the assesment of the students competences after doing the unit. It is important that students and the teacher can review together at the end of the unit what they have learned.

This blog will be my portfolio during the course “Why not CLIL?”. ALl the posts will contain the activities I do during the course and my reflections.
So let’s start this new adventure!