Activities based on "Uxue was born" project.

This week we have planned different activities related to the “Uxue was born” project. First of all, we decided to work around the family topic in the activities, thinking that this topic would match very well with the project and also that it would give a continuation to the family tree they had already done.

1st activity: Family album or short story

In this activity kids have to make a photograph album with their family members. This activity will help to introduce them to the family vocabulary (father, mother, brother, sister, grandmother, grandfather, pets...).

The older ones can make a short story using pictures, drawings and simple sentences talking about the day they were born, what was the weather like, which day of the week was, where were they born, which people went to visit them...

2nd activity: Who lives at my house?

This is a craftwork activity and we are going to need a house shape cardboard and different color stickers for it. Each color represents a different member of the family. For example: red sticker for dad, yellow for mom...

The kids have to fill their cardboard house with the family members that live in their house. So, if one kid lives with his father and his mother, he would have 3 different stickers on his cardboard. In the end we are going to put all the houses together an d make a mural with them, as the one that shows the photograph above.

3rd activity: Guess de card

We need cards with different family members pictures on them: grandmother/grandfather, mother/father, brother/sister, pets (fish, cat, dog),...

Then we ask for a volunteer, who will be the one that is going to guess the card. We put the flashcard on that kids back (we can hold it with a clothespin) so that he can´t it. The kid has to make questions to guess who is in the card. "Is it my...?" And other kids have to answer "yes" or "no", until, he/she guesses the family member that is in the card.

For the older kids we can use the same activity but to make it a little bit more difficult, instead using the "Is it my...?" question only, they can make questions about personal characteristics like: "Is she a girl?", "Is he older than me?", "Does she got long hair?"...

Discussing if Zerain´s proyect can be considerate as CLIL.

This week we have worked analyzing the "Uxue was born" project developed by the school of  the little town of Zerain. 

At first sight, we thought that this project could not fit in CLIL, because it mainly works with the first language (euskera) and only in a little part with the second.

Despite, CLIL project is usually used to work on a second language, we have  realized that CLIL is not exclusively for the learning on a second language, it is possible to make use of this methodology on the learning of the first one too.

Keeping that in mind, and taking into account how they integrate context, content and language in a fully interdisciplinary way, we have arrived to the conclusion that Zerain´s project can be undoubtedly considered CLIL.

Blue planet tales. Isn´t it a CLIL tool?

Now that we are working on CLIL, we have found an interesting tool that can be used on this methodology. In Blue Planet Tales´ website, we can download a variety of children’s stories based on some of history’s most important moments, available in both languages, english and spanish.

The extinction of the dinosaurs, the discovery of America, Laika, the first living creature in space, the Pirate Blackbeard, the discovery of fire, the migration of the birds ... All stories are well told and illustrated are magnets for children. They are attracted because they are part of reality, because they are adventures, because they know the value of success and failure and make them feel the story in first person. With interactivity to also have fun, with questions and answers to reinforce learning and all supervised by psychologists, speech therapists and teachers so that each story is a unique, fun, educational and very safe.

What is CLIL?

CLIL: Content and Language Integrated Learning

The CLIL is an approach for learning content through an additional language (foreign or second), thus teaching both the subject and the language. The key issue is to avoid working on the language learning exclusively. The main focus of the CLIL is the content and by the way when we are learning we practice and produce language (communicative situations). 

Now we know what CLIL is, but after reading different articles in class, we have realized that there is not a unique interpretation of this methodology, but there are many different versions of it. We have some examples of the CLIC project as the Artigal method, the one in Catalonia, another one in Zerain or the Reggio Emilian version.

All of them form part of CLIL, but they may respond to different situations conditioned by the context they are surrounded to, because we can´t work in the same way in each school. According to what Dahllof, U. says:

“Too much attention is directed  towards finding the ‘best method’, even though fifty years  of educational research has not been able to support such generalisations. Instead, we should ask which method or combination of methods is best for which  goals, which students and under which conditions”. Dahllof, U (1999).

English? Yes, but when, why and how?

Deciding the appropriate age to start learning English has been for long time, and still continues being a source of debate. Here, in the in the Basque country, since the implement of the “Eleanitz” project, in the early 90s, children start learning English at the age of four. But are we sure that this is the optimal age to start?

Some people argue that there is no necessity to start so early. In many other countries of Europe, kids start much later and they get even better results than here. Why does this happen?

In our opinion one of the keys would be the exposure to the foreign language. Maybe, in some countries start later, however, they spent much more time in contact with English. This aspect of giving much time to English in higher stages of the school has been seen like a threat to the euskera for many people, and this was the reason, to start teaching children English so early. The younger they start, they will have an earlier contact to English and they will not need so many hours of English in later stages. In conclusion, “Eleanitz” decided to give a graduate exposure for long time, instead of a higher exposure in older ages, when euskera is supposed to be more present.

After saying this, is quite obvious that having a high exposure is indispensable to acquire a language, but this does not guarantee a good competence of the language. It is also indispensable to have high quality learning. A naturalistic approach is meant to be the best way to introduce children to a foreign language, in other word,s the opposite of a grammar focused teaching.

In conclusion here are two key factors to take to account when learning a language. So if you have a high exposure and quality learning, you could learn English at any age.

Keeping in all this in mind, we had to decide for our project in which age should start kids learning English. Considering what we have explained before about exposure we think kids should start as early as possible, so four years would be a perfect age to start with it at school. 

Furthermore we have found other important reasons that support this idea of the early starting. One of them would be the pronunciation, children at this age have an advantage to acquire a good pronunciation. And the other one is that children at this age, learn by playing and do not feel under pressure.