Who is Miamo Lydie ?

MY CLIL LESSON ON FOODS AND DRINKS

 

I was asked to prepare a CLIL Reading lesson on Foods and Drinks for grade 7. Some of the students went for the Erasmus program the week before, and there were 10 students in class. My mentor teacher gave me the coursebook she was using to teach so that I could base my lesson of the text on foods and drinks, and see the type of post-reading tasks that the students were expected to be able to answer at the end of the unit. The passage was basically talking about the disadvantages of fast foods and the damage they cause to the body, as compared with healthy food, with the aim to sensitize people about adopting a healthy lifestyle.

To prepare for the lesson, especially the pre-teaching part, I did some research to get some names and pictures of Polish fast food and nutritious food, because I needed to show something that the students would easily recognize, and I check confirmation from my Mentor who said they knew all that I chose. I was very satisfied. Then I prepared some questions to elicit vocabulary, with some printable materials to share with students individually and as a group. There were also 3 short videos on food, 1 of which was a game requesting the students to guess the name of the food before all the parts of the picture appeared. This was to be used as a warmup. I put all of these as a PowerPoint Presentation. Finally, I thought of a way to introduce myself and the topic, it was a little bit challenging for me because, although I have been teaching white kids online, it was the first time to teach them in a classroom context. So, I just thought of putting 0ne ripe banana in my bag to use for this purpose, and to be as natural as possible, just be myself as if I were in one of my classrooms in front of my students back in Cameroon.

I went very early so that I would have time to print the materials and settle before the student started coming. I was too early, and my Mentor was still on her way, but I met a teacher there who asked me to send the files to her email to print. I couldn’t because of connection problems, but later, my Mentor could print them. This wasted some time before I could effectively start teaching. Before the lesson, I sought the help of the teacher to take some pictures with my phone. I began by introducing myself and I wrote my name on the board, and I asked each student to introduce him or herself in turn. Then I removed my banana from my bag had a bite of it, and asked the class to also take anything from their snack, say what they have got before eating or drinking too. Everyone did so, except one student who said he had nothing. I didn’t predict this! It was surprising to see that a student didn’t have anything to eat as a snack. I had to improvise a response, I went close to him and confirmed this fact, and he said yes, then I say, fine, it’s quite ok, and I smiled back at him. But I think I should have added something like “it depends on each person’s metabolism/system” so that he wouldn’t sound strange to the class. I asked the class to guess the topic of the day. Some said fruits, but the right answer soon came: food, and I asked what do they take after, to push down the food? They said water and juice, and I asked how do they call those? After some hesitations from the students, I just had to say “drinks”, because I was worried about time.

The lesson began with the game in the video at the end of which I asked the students what types of food were they (fast food)? The students performed so well, and I felt it was too easy for them. Anyway, it was just a warm-up, and I was very happy with their focus and participation. The next activity was group work which consisted of reading some concepts and words connected to food for the students to tell me what they understood about it, with the help of the printed materials that I shared with them. A student asked about the meaning of slow food, but I wanted her to guess from the meaning of fast food which they already understood. Gradually, we went down the list and the students were so amazing!

The CLIL part of the lesson was some topics in Mathematics Science and Health Education. They had to identify 1 million from 1 billion, and a student called it “1 milliard” like in French and as I learned from them, also in Polish. But the right answer still came from the students, “1 billion”. When we reached the diseases caused by fast food, like obesity and hypertension, I had to explain the blood flow in the system and the pulse. I got the student who got the right answer about the pulse to go in from of the class to show the others how to check the heartbeats through the pulse. Furthermore, we touched on overweight, and some students had an idea about calculating the Body Mass Index (BMI), so I provided them with the formula and asked them to calculate theirs. I didn’t ask any particular student to say if he or she was healthy from their results so that they shouldn’t feel embarrassed with the request, but I could see some dissatisfaction on their faces because they were either above or below the normal figure. One said she was underweight. So, I just concluded now you all know if you need to eat more food or not, and also the quality and type of food. My Mentor also intervened here and there to give a helping hand with more information concerning Polish local food, and some vocabulary the students already know, like “to loathe” (to dislike) which I used as a model to get the students to talk about what food they liked or disliked. The discussion was interesting, and due to the interruptions from technical faults, my Mentor had to discuss with her colleague who was to take the next period to allow me to use her time to finish the lesson. I was very happy about this consideration.

In the course of the lesson, I noticed this student, who would always go back to his seat from the group work, maybe because he was the only boy left in class. At first, I would go to him to remind him gently and smile, that it was a group discussion, and he would join the other students. Then I stopped asking him to do so, and instead go to him and made sure he also shared his opinion with the class. And I was impressed he had good points to raise. I felt he was this quiet genius who liked to isolate himself. He was the one the teacher called when I had an issue with projecting the slides before she called the technician.

In a nutshell, all went on well, in spite of the few interruptions because later, I couldn’t see my slides on the projector and the other teacher had to call the technician who came to configure my laptop. This caused me to skip some parts I wanted to teach, like the conversion table from kilogram to gram, or the sugar content in a bottle of Coka Kola, and we couldn’t watch the third video on how fast food affects our health. The students were responsive, very smart, and really interesting. Although I didn’t give them all the material I planned to give, I would say it was a success because from the elicitations, and the new vocabulary I introduced, with the videos they watched, they had all the vocabulary needed to understand the reading proper later with the Mentor teacher and to do the tasks attached to the passage. At the end of the lesson, I got one student to give me her impression, and she said it was interesting, they learned a lot and it was easy. I got more satisfaction from my mentor who remarked that the rapport was created between the students and me because that was her apprehension. Next time, I would send the materials to be printed a day before, so that we don’t struggle with them on that same day and get everyone stressed up, especially me. I am very thankful for the support of all the teachers and the technician involved

References

 (12) Food Vocabulary ESL Game | English Vocabulary Games - YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zn-b93v0X00&t=3s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TB5rjcYTPAg&t=109s