Talking about compose in CLIL is talk about
activities relevant to art, music or anything where the students have to create
o compose something to learn a Second Language, also learning from official art
or pictures.
Compose means to put together or make up by
combining. So the goal of doing a coursebook of art consists in work different
parts of the language by creating an art result, such as vocabulary, grammar,
or also referring to different subjects as science process or writing
literature.
In the moment we are going to create an
activity that involves composing results, we need to be sure that activity must
wake up the motivation in our students. Children must appreciate what they do.
Compose activities doesn’t mean only creating
for ourselves, also interaction with others is part of the process. The opinion
and help of each other, creates perfect situations for conversations applying
the topic that they are working.
To compose a writing we don´t need more than
sense of humour. The most important thing when we are creating is that we must
enjoy that action of imagination and satisfaction, and that must be transmitted
by the teachers.
We can have lots of activities.
(Coronas,
2000)
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PHOYOMONTAGE: With magazines and
newspapers you take a photograph of a face and we try to change it adding
different elements, like a new ear, a different nose an eye patch. Maybe you
can do it with your own photograph. After finishing the character you write
something underneath it, to describe how the character is.
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WHICH PIGGYBANK DO YOU PREFER?: We
can put forward an activity for a visual poem, using an actual topic, for
instance war and peace. We
draw to pigs as piggybanks, one is war and the other one is peace, children
must put inside each piggybanks words or sentences related with the name of the
pigs. The words can be already given from the teacher or they can think in
other words to finish the activity.
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SET PHRASES OR FIXED EXPRESSIONS:
This kind of language is used in normal conversations but they have a different
meaning. To do this activity you must do a list of all the phrases or expressions
that you know, after that you can try to draw literally those phrases:
·
A bird in hand is worth two in the bush.
·
To kill two birds with one stone.
·
Don't put the cart before the horse.
·
That's a horse of a different colour.
·
Wild horses couldn't keep me away.
·
They were dropping like flies.
And
finally, after drawing these phrases literally, you describe the expressions
correctly with your own words.
(Kay
Bentley, 2009, 100 and 101)
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“A CITY SCENE: Before provide pencils and
crayons to our pupils. Draw a circle, a semi-circle, a square, a triangle and a
trapezium on the board.
·
Finding out – in pairs they must think
of a name of a building. Ask some pairs to describe the purpose of their
building. The rest of the classes guess the building.
·
Point to the shape drawings
on the board. Elicit or teach the names of the shapes. Ask what parts of a
building they look like.
·
Give out worksheet to each
pupil. Ask them to look at the city scene and then tell you the shapes the can
see in it. Next, tell pupils to draw lines to match the words and the shapes.
·
Now tell pupils they are
going to create their own city scene using these shapes.
·
Tell pupils to describe one
building in their city scene by completing the sentences. Ask how many different shapes did you see?
·
Round up – Pupils read out some of their sentences from
activity 3 while the others listen for two descriptions which are the same.
Finally,
put the pupils into groups. Explain that they are going to use their city
scenes to create stories. Ask Who lives there?, What time of day is it?, What
time of year is it?, Which country is it in?, What happens in the city? Write a
mind map on the board for the pupils to complete in groups to help plan their
ideas.
WORD
BOX: building, door, roof, wall. Window, circle,
semi-circle, rectangle, square, trapezium…
SENTENCE
BOX: The door is rectangle. The roof is a
trapezium. The windows are circles.
LEARN
ABOUT ART: Circle, semi-circle, rectangle, square,
cylinders that are seen in famous buildings around the world: Taj Mahal, the
Coliseum…”
All these activities have something in common,
they try to help, motivate and create a good environment for imagination and
learning skills. The last activity involves a lot of subjects; writing,
grammar, vocabulary, mathematics (shapes) in a very different and funny way,
apart from memorizing.
The action of composing is not easy for
beginners, so sometimes is better to start this kind of activities combining
CLIL vocabulary with compose, and then approach to CLIL grammar activities.
We´ve seen a lot of examples of activities of this topic, but I want to finish
with one activity that I have created:
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GRAFFITIES: In this activity, we chose
a topic, for example “the mammals”. We work the definition and the children
look for animals in the world classified as mammals. After that, they need to
choose one animal, they draw the word very big in a piece of paper, and they
start drawing and decorating it, like graffiti. The can draw the animal, the
environment; decorate the letters as they want. This makes them focus in
vocabulary, in this case, mammal’s vocabulary. When everyone has finished, we
create an exposition, so that all the class can learn the rest of the
vocabulary.
Remember that everything that it´s related with
creation or composition, must have a motivation for the children, so that they
can have fun at the same time they are learning.
In my opinion, the idea of composing gives us
liberty of how we want to acquire some specific parts of the second language.
Human imagination is where everything starts; an idea, a project, so it is
important to develop this part of our mind that is essential for becoming in
the future a good and useful person for society, and also to be a great person
for humanity, because understanding art and creation makes people sensitive and
more humans.
References:
-
CORONAS CABRERO, M. (2000). Con H
de humor (Para leer y escribir) Fraga (Huesca): M.R.P AULA LIBRE.
-
BENTLEY, K. (2009). Primary Curriculum Box. CLIL lessons and
activities for younger learners. Cambridge. United Kingdom: Cambridge
University Press.
