Teaching English Toolbox
Science and Social Studies lessons
There are so many ways of making your Science and Social Studies lessons more enriching by adding some English elements into them! Keep in mind that many aspects such as short documentaries or creating products can be done in English, but the in-depth discussions are most likely best held in the local language!
Keep in mind that many aspects such as short documentary or creating products can be done in English, but the in-depth discussions are most likely best held in German!
Short Clips to Introduce Topics
You can find so many short appropriate videos online. Make sure when you show them in English, you show the subtitles (if they are correct - sometimes the machine-generated ones are not). And showing short videos needs scaffolding and reasons for watching/listening so for example:
- Have one learner watch with their ears plugged and one listen and not watch. Then they can share what they learned;
- Have different learners watch for different purposes or answer different questions that they can then put together in groups;
- Have the learners write true/false statements after watching for a class quiz.
Below you will find a selection of videos that have been useful in ELT.
Stories
The Big Myth
In the context of creation stories, we used materials from the site "The Big Myth" in English and German.
Learners were assigned a culture, had to read a creation myth from that culture, and then draw the story and integrate it into their altered book. These were then cross-shared in a jigsaw way. As some kids in the class had contacts with certain cultures (e.g. one boy's father from New Zealand), the selection was based on their personal lives (this boy read a Maori creation myth).
This topic came again later in the school year with different creation myths where the learners had to read the story and re-tell it using shadow puppet theaters.
Cultures Fair - Fifth and Second Graders
For six weeks (1.5 hours per week), second and fifth graders worked together in English and in German to create a fair for parents and siblings. The English tasks were to:
Decorate a cereal box about that country:
- What is the basic information about the country?
- How life in Switzerland different from life in this country?
Shadow puppet theater based on a story from the country:
- Can you understand a short story from that country? Can you retell the story (in German and English).
Lapbook development:
- To gather basic facts about the country, to be able to present that in EN.
- To learn about the population of that country – their religions, their cultures
- To learn about traditional arts of cultures in that country.
Recipe:
- Write out a recipe from that country in English or an overview of different foods commonly eaten there.
Interactive Posters
The wonderful students of Assessment for Learning 2020 helped a class of 6th graders put together a display for the school hallway - all via Teams, a visit or two outside, and occasional one-on-one visits. Despite these terrible times, there was a lot of joy and productive work!
By googling "foldables" or "flippables", you will get ideas for interactive posters where the viewer can open flaps, answer quiz questions and more! There are some general questions to think about (and certainly many more you could come up with yourself!!):
- How do you get learners to not simply copy-paste from Wikipedia or use ChatGPT but really own the information and language?
- How do you guide such a project if you have 24 learners putting together posters on 24 different countries?
- What is the balance of English and the local language in such a project?
- How can you assess both the process and the product?
Science Fair!
Why not have a science fair in the local language AND in English and invite parents, schoolmates and community members?
