E.L.I.O.T _Italia le unità didattiche Eliot_Italia_UDA realizzate x il progetto | Page 34
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)
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)
Steps
The teacher elicit from students the general gist of the video and check
Scheduling
whether their predictions were true or false
activities , who
(in pairs) (filling the gap) The teacher hands out the students a worksheet
do what, times,
featuring the 13 idioms mentioned in the video and ask them to fill in the
tools, assess
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)
The teacher asks the students to write down an example sentence for each
of the idioms analysed.