NİCOLA SARN- SARA RANDANT / ENGLISH
INTERDISCIPLINARY LESSONS IN FIRST GRADE ENGLISH
She is catching. He is hitting. She is walking.
First grade English classes are very dynamic. This year we have had many classes that incorporated differentiated instruction, interdisciplinary lessons and lessons that were tailored to different sensory learning preferences. We have also incorporated into our daily lessons games, songs, videos, computer classes, chanting, movement and more.
One of our most recent interdisciplinary and multi-sensory lessons was on action words used in playtime activities, these included running, jumping, hitting, throwing, catching, skipping, skating and more. For this lesson we collected sports equipment and conducted our lessons in the rooftop garden. Then students had relay races where they did the actions with their bodies and said the actions at the same time. For example,“ I am throwing,” and their partner said,“ I am catching.” Then their waiting classmates in line also said what the two people were doing. For example,“ he is throwing” or“ she is catching.” Then the next two students in line took their spots in the relay race and the actions and sentences were repeated.
Later on in the unit, photos of the day were shown to the students. The teachers drilled the words again using the photos. The students then had two write what they saw in the photo. If they were shown a photo of themselves kicking the ball they would write,“ we are kicking.” With the combination of doing, saying and writing the actions students with different learning needs were able to learn action words for playtime.
To reinforce this lesson, even after the unit was over, we continue to have the students act out the action words as we are walking from their Turkish classrooms to the English classrooms.
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