Second Lesson - Grade 2 - CLIL

 16: Second Lesson - Grade 2 CLIL

The next two lessons I led were specifically CLIL based lessons, in my case they were specifically based on the topic of “Games around the world”. I quickly found that it was a pretty difficult topic to plan a lesson for as while the topic would have been very interesting for the learners, implementing language and new information could get quite complicated. I struggled with my lesson plan at first, having to redo it a few times until I was happy with it. The main issue that I faced was planning a lesson simple enough for grade 2 while at the same time introducing new content and language simultaneously. My first few attempts at planning the lesson turned out to be way too hard for the age and level of my students, but in the end, this lesson plan is what I came up with.

INSERT PHOTOS OF BOARD GAMES WE PLAYED

I had thought that I had planned for all possible issues by scaffolding the lesson correctly and organising the distribution of the game effectively, however there were quite a few problems that I faced in the lesson that hadn’t really shown themselves in the previous ones. The main overarching issue was my classroom management and general control over the class. I was able to do all of the prepared activities from my lesson plan but it was generally pretty chaotic. It is something I will be working on in the following lessons.

The start of my lesson went great, the students were able to identify the different kinds of games that I presented to them and were happy to name the different ones they all played at home. However, that’s where my control over the class ended, generally speaking.

For the next activities, I invited the students to sit in a circle on the floor, however in the classroom, there wasn’t much space for everyone to fit comfortably and everyone was sitting next to their friends, meaning that a lot of them were distracted and some were unable to fit in the circle, no matter how much I asked them to make the circle bigger. So next, I showed images of different verbs, ones which are common in game instructions in order to practise speaking them and becoming familiar with them. I encouraged the learners to do the different actions with me and it only half worked. Only half of the students were fully focused and it was sometimes hard to get them to quiet down in order to focus. In reality, I only went through a few of the verbs as the students were losing focus faster than I anticipated. 

I then brought out the games to present, model how to play and explain the rules of, the presentation aspect wasn’t too bad, however as there was something in the middle of the circle, everyone came closer wanting to see it better, but that made the circle smaller and some students were left out in the back unable to see. Everyone also wanted to take a turn in the presentation process and some students were upset that they didn’t get a turn and I struggled to explain to them that they’ll get a turn to play the games when they return to their tables. 

For the next activity, I had prepared cardboard cutouts of puzzles with instructions on them. Each student was to get one puzzle piece and find their group, figure out the instructions, and explain to me what they had to do before they received their game. However, unexpectedly, they finished the puzzles faster than I had anticipated as they matched the colours of the pieces. This meant that some students lost their pieces or had forgotten what one they had. Eventually I was able to get them to the tables in their groups. That’s where another issue formed because they were not used to sitting anywhere other than their assigned seats, so some students were upset that they had to sit somewhere else other than their chair. It was an unexpected problem for me as I didn’t think it was going to be that big of an issue for them for the singular lesson, but in the end it worked out. 

Nevertheless, the final part of the activities was pretty successful, while the students struggled explaining the rules to me in English, they seemed to understand the instruction cards well and were able to play the different games well. I monitored the different groups and watched how they worked throughout the last activity. It went generally smoothly as they didn’t want to end their games for their next lesson. 

All in all, while in general the lesson didn’t go terribly, I’m not too happy with its outcomes, I definitely need to work on my classroom management and try to figure out different methods to organise the classroom and keep them focused on the different activities, this is especially the case when taking the students away from their assigned seats. I find that when they sit in their spots, they are generally quiet and focused, but as soon as they are sitting on the floor, near their friends, all of their concentration is lost. It is something I will be paying close attention to in the near future.