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THROUGH A FOREIGN LANGUAGE
How to organise classroom activities
in primary school
In young learners, acquisition of the foreign language follows the same
patterns as the acquisition of the mother tongue. Therefore the teacher has
to take into consideration that the learner initially will just be listening and
responding to the language and that spoken production should not be
forced. The CLIL teacher should involve the children in many listening and
responding activities, such as miming, problem solving tasks and games.
As the attention and concentration span of a young learner are short,
change of pace in activities is recommended.
An activity for the primary school
The game practises an arithmetic and a linguistic component
(prepositions). The arithmetic component aims at checking the children’s
knowledge of multiplication tables, the learning of the preposition
component is incidental. This game allows the children who may be weak
in arithmetic still to be able to experience success by choosing the correct
preposition.
Materials:
Picture cards with drawings of relative positions (a person sitting on a
chair, on the floor, on the table, under the table, etc.)
1 The teacher asks children to multiply two numbers (e.g. 4x5).
2 The children write down the answer.
3 Each child chooses a relative position (Sitting on the chair, on the floor,
on the table, under the table etc.)
4. One child draws one relative position card from the pack and says what
the picture shows.
5 The children who have chosen the correct relative position get a point.
6 The teacher asks children to say the answer to the multiplication
question out loud.
7. The children who provide the correct answer get a p oint.
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