Page 64 - Teaching English at Primary Level: From Theory into the Classroom

Content and Language Integrated Learning

Table 3.2 Example of a CLIL Lesson Plan
Lesson Subject Science (Solar System)
plan Level 4th Grade (9/10-year-old pupils)
Lesson By the end of the lessons, students will be able to:
objective • identify and name the eight planets in the solar system in English,
• present a description of the key characteristics of each planet in En-
glish,
• use appropriate English vocabulary and structures related to the solar
system,
• write a simple description of a planet in English.
Duration Two 45-minute lessons
Materials • Visual aids (pictures or illustrations of the solar system)
• Flash cards with pictures of planets and simple descriptions
• Large drawing paper, coloured pencils, markers
Lesson 1 Warm-up • Ask pupils if they know how many planets there are in our solar system.
(10 min- Draw a solar system on the board and elicit the names of planets from
utes) them, translating the names into English as you go along.
• Tell them they will work in groups and that each group will explore one
of the planets.
Presenta- • Present the solar system using visual aids (a poster or model).
tion and • Practice the names of the planets using a flashcard game.
language • Show and describe each planet separately and encourage the pupils to
practice guess their names.
(10 min- • Practice language by playing a guessing game at class level, using a
utes) simple description for each planet ‘I’m the second smallest planet in
the solar system. I’m also called the Red Planet. Who am I?’
Group • Divide the class into small groups and assign each group one of the
work (30 eight planets.
minutes) • Tell students to work together to create a poster of their assigned
planet. Instruct them to create a drawing of the planet and draw the
members of their group on it. Besides the drawing, they should write
a description in English, including its name (for example, Mercury), or-
derfromthe sun(‘I’m theclosest to theSun.’), thenumberofmoons (‘I
haven’t got a moon.’) and an interesting fact (‘I’m the smallest planet of
the Solar System.’).
• Encourage pupils to search for information on their planet in various
sources (both online and printed).
Continued on the following page

generalist in nature which means that while they are well familiar with the
subject content, they also need to have a high level of functional FL profi-
ciency. Conversely, specialist language teachers, who are already highly pro-
ficient in the target language, need to acquire an in-depth understanding of

64