CLIL Essentials

1.4 Cognitive skills across the curriculum Participant worksheet

Further analyses of CLIL lessons – Plan B: The Solar System

Look at the description of an activity below adapted from a geography course book for 10-year-olds.

Teacher divides class into 8 groups.

The teacher will draw the sun on the board and draw some other planets around it and elicit names of the other planets.

Each group will be named after one planet: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus or Neptune.

The learners will be told to look in their course book and measure the distance of the planets from the sun and then one volunteer from each
group will come out to the front and have to get into the correct order from the nearest to the sun to the farthest. For example Earth should be
the third planet along. The other team members can give their team member instructions and help.

Learners say their planet name along the planet line-up and the teacher encourages the learners to decide if correct or wrong.

Each group will gather information on their planet, using their course book, internet and reference books, and complete information cards (in
a worksheet) that are true for their planet. Such as: .... is the coldest planet. Finally the groups will be rearranged so that there is one
representative from all planets and they can get the answers for all the information cards.

The learners’ course book provides information on all 8 planets in short texts, labelled diagrams and tables .

Task 1: Decide on the content, cognitive, communication and culture demands of this activity.

Task 2: Discuss your ideas with your group in the forum.

Content Cognition
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Communication Culture
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1.4 Cognitive skills across the curriculum Page 1 of 1

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