Ins. Maggioli

Water on planet Earth

IC Lugo 1 - Scuola Media "Baracca"

Classe 1A - A.S. 2015/16

Prof. Lucio Maggioli

Project plan

Objectives

At the end of the project students are expected to be able to

describe water as a chemical substance and as an element of our planet;
debate the importance of keeping water clean in our environment;
recall the fundamental English vocabulary about water and use it to make up simple sentences.

Topics

Water as a chemical substance; the salinity of water.
The water cycle.
Water on our planet: oceans, rivers, lakes, glaciers, aquifers.
The motion of water: ocean currents, waves, tides.
Water pollution.

Class

26 students aged 11/12

Language level: A1

Timetable 8 hours total

Jan. 23rd

Lesson in computer lab on Powerpoint

Feb. 6th

Lesson on water as a chemical substance and the water cycle

Feb. 13th

Revision of vocabulary, lesson on water on our planet and the motion of water

Feb. 20th

Revision of vocabulary, lesson on water pollution

Feb. 27th, March 5th, March 12th, March 19th

Students work on their multimedia presentations in computer lab

Types of collaboration

The content teacher prepared the material and was always present in class during the lessons. A native language assistant was often present in class and in computer lab as an aid for the teacher and for the students.

The material used in class was agreed upon by the foreign language teacher who assessed the language level of the students in L2 before the beginning of the CLIL project.

Medium of instruction

Content teacher taught the lessons on water mostly in L2, but had to switch to L1 whenever the students had trouble understanding. All of the teaching material used (PowerPoint presentations) was in L2.
Native language assistant spoke in L2 at all times.

Resources and materials

Resources

Science books in L1 and L2, GCSE Science books, websites.

Materials

PowerPoint presentations, quizlet activities.

Modes of monitoring

Classroom observation.
Discussions with the students in the classroom and on Edmodo.
Discussions with the native language assistant and with the language teacher.

Activity types

Warming-up mainly consisted in brainstorming activities about the topics which the teacher was about to discuss.

Lessons were as interactive as possible and were conducted with the aid of multimedia presentations.

Students had to build their own dictionary with the key words used in each lesson. Key words were clearly underlined in the multimedia presentations and the teacher directed the students' attention on them during the lesson.

Students were often asked to make up simple sentences about the topics discussed.

Vocabulary was revised with gap-filling exercises and quizlet games (the web link was shared with the students on Edmodo).

Methodological strategies

Teaching the students simple ways to ask the teacher for a clarification (“Can you please repeat?”, “What do you mean by...?”, “What is the meaning of...?”).
Providing the students with a written text which they could read while listening to the teacher.
Using pictures and images with callouts.
Asking some students to translate sentences into L1 for their classmates.

Final assessment

The final assessment consisted in a multimedia presentation prepared in L2 by the students on one of the topics discussed in the lessons.

Students worked in pairs on their presentations in a computer lab with the support of the content teacher and of the native language assistant.

Lessons

Here is the PDF version of the multimedia presentation that was used during the lessons.

Quizlets

Here are the links to the quizlets that were used to revise the vocabulary.

Students' works

Here are the students' multimedia presentations, just as they were submitted to the teacher.

They were converted to PDF to reduce their size.

Valeria Valentina

Camilla

Alice

Emma

Giulia

Samuele

Giulio

Eugenia

Erika

Riccardo

Emanuele

Fatima

Simona

Leonardo

Aisha

Christian

Matteo Luca

Francesca

Anna

Sofia

Caterina

Alexandra

Paolo