“C” for Compose

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)

-          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.

 

-          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.

-          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)

-          “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:

 

   -          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.