E.L.I.O.T _Italia le unità didattiche Eliot_Italia_UDA realizzate x il progetto | Page 27

E.L.I.O.T. - ENHANCING LITERACY BASIC SKILLS AND FIGHTING DROPOUT WITH
CROSS-CURRICULAR THEATRICAL EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING
ID Number: 2016-1-IT02-KA219-024165
Development (40 minutes)
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The teacher writes the phrase “a piece of cake” on the
whiteboard and ask students to guess the meaning of "a piece of cake".
The teacher displays a picture of a piece of cake on the
whiteboard and asks students to describe the experience of eating a
piece of cake. The teacher guides students toward answers such as
enjoyable, easy, fun, delicious, etc. The teacher records answers on
the board.
The teacher helps students eliciting that when someone
describes something as being "a piece of cake," they mean that it is
easy.
The teacher tells students that "a piece of cake" is an example of
an idiom. Define an ”idiom” as a saying that has a meaning that's
different than the literal meaning of the phrase.
The teacher shows the students a video called “Confessions of
an idiom” and explains that they are going to watch and listen to a video
based on an extensive, humorous and ironic usage of idioms.
(https://vimeo.com/63083013)
Students are asked to predict what is going to happen knowing
that the protagonists are an enormous elephant in a room (idiom) and a
skeleton in the closet (idiom). (1st listening)
The teacher elicit from students the general gist of the video and
check whether their predictions were true or false
(in pairs) (filling the gap) The teacher hands out the students a
worksheet featuring the 13 idioms mentioned in the video and ask them
to fill in the gaps. Students are also requested to infer and write down
what they think the meaning of the idioms is from the context.
The teacher connects to the website
https://en.islcollective.com/video-lessons/confessions-idiomlistening
and check with the students the gaps filled. On the website the
meaning of every single idiom is explained. The teacher discusses with
the students whether in their opinion there’s a connection between the
literal and the figurative meaning of the idioms analyzed.
The teacher elicits from the students the fact that often idioms
are culturally bound and invites the students to identify the foreign
cultural elements in the video.
The teacher asks the students (in pairs) to write down the
equivalent in Italian of the idioms analysed (if any) and whether some
other Italian idioms would fit the situation.
Final (5 minutes)
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The teacher asks the students to write down an example
sentence for each of the idioms analysed.
2nd lesson:
Selecting the idioms and research about them (in the computer