A Journey to the centre of

A Journey to the centre of Learning:

Storytelling and CLIL

There are many adventures in puttingstorytelling at the centre of what we do, and in organizing our teaching around it.

Nick Bilbrough

Stories as a tool for teaching and learning in CLIL

• Stories teach us about life, about ourselves and about each other.

• Storytelling is a distinctive way for students to develop an understanding.

• Storytelling is a method for sharing and interpreting experiences.

• Stories provide many opportunities for important factors central to CLIL.

• Content and Language Integrated Learning refers to teaching subjects such asScience, History, Geography and Maths through a foreign language.

• CLIL exposes students to purposeful, innovative, and meaningful learning experiences.

• CLIL seeks to support second-language learning while favouring first-languagedevelopment.

Stories connecting to CLILStories can prove to be effective tools for children to develop essential concepts that encompass a CLIL approach:Language and Content

Communication

Cognition and Culture

Coyle’s 4Cs curriculum

to make any CLIL learning successful.Content of a story is the information and experienceschildren can connect to, and therefore elicit a response . Stories are «containers» that carryideas and knowledge.

Cognition of a story with vibrant illustations can help develop understanding of howwe make sense of the world.Prediction, guessing or searching for meaning and linking it to prior knowledge on a topic.

Culture and knowledge passedon from storytelling can be a combination of differentelements like History, Science, Geography, Art and Religion to instruct, entertain and preserve traditional ways of life.

Communication is experiencingthe information, enhancingimagination and emotionalresponse (happiness, sadness, hope and fear) to help visualize spoken words, and improve vocabulary.

Stories can also contain the key 4Cs content, cognigtion, communication and culture

In a CLIL lesson, all four language skills should be combined

Vital for languagelearning.

Using purposefulmaterials.

Focus on fluency.

Lexical activities through whichgrammar is recycled.

Points to considerfor an effectivestory-based CLIL teaching:

Which topics could I use through CLIL for a particular subjectarea, for example Science, Geography, Art…?

What vocabulary/expressions do my students need to know?

Which activities will stimulate their cognitive skills?

Are there culture aspects of the lesson?

Can I identify the target language in English?

What will help students use the target language?

Can I find/create materials (worksheets, videos, presentations) in English to use in the class?

Making links from story to CLIL

Language:

Maths:

Science:

Geography:

Art & Craft:

History:

Location, using a map/atlas, climate, physicalappearence like landforms and geographicaltechniques, for example map making

Awareness of time and understanding chronologyand human development

Life-cycles of insects and animals, habitats of animals, the food they eat, ecology, outerspace, materials etc…

Pictures, books, designs, making masks, puppetsetc…

Number & place value, counting & quantity telling the time, measurment, shapes, statistics, pictorgrams

A range of writing genres, poerty, fiction and non fiction texts, using new vocabulary in comprehensionexercises, chronological order with time conjunctions

What is the focus?

Storytelling tasks…• Big Books & Pictures• Word Banks & Story Mats• Questions & Predictions• Identifying new vocabulary, using synonyms

• Actions• Voice Emphasis• Choursing, Chanting & Singing• Cloze Technique

• Sequencing• Story Maps• Lapbooks• Five Finger Retell• Storytelling Jar• Drama & Role Play

Pre Storytelling tasks

Storytelling tasks

Post Storytelling tasks

• Linguistically, children’s stories present grammar and vocabulary within a meaningful and structured context.• This context supports the comprehension of the story world and the content the story is related to.• They are often about interesting topics/themes which can consolidate or be extended to a related school subject.

Let’s take a look at how you can do this…..

The Journey to the centre of the Earth can provide opportunitiesfor CLIL content:

• Science• Art & design• Maths• Geography• History

A discovery into the heart of our planet that starts in Iceland and ends in Italy!

It is a journey through time that provides many History lessons. The children are introduced to types of plants and animals thatexsist in the secondary, tertiary periods. There are ancient seacreatures and they can imagine what early man looked like. There are Science and Geography lessons to learn aboutlandforms/geographical environments, volcanoes and fossils.

tratto da STORY LANE cl. 1-5 Per saperne di più www.celticpublishing.com

http://www.celticpublishing.com/


Talk about the title and the characters on the cover and ask simple questions about theseimages.

Pick out some words which are essential to the story on your board/screen to encourage the children to elicit answers and create an interest.

Here are some tips…..



Characters

Professor Lindenbrock

Hans

Axel

Character adjectives

strong

intelligent

scared

Jobs

student

geologist

guide

Who is… ?

What does he do?

Who is…?



Look at the title and point out the word JOURNEY (you maywant to write it up in BIG letterson the board). Ask them whatthey think this word means… giveother synonyms like travel, expedition or voyage.

1Invite children to think of Journeys they have been on(they can say these in theirmother tongue).

2Point to the title and askchildren to say what type of story they think it is. Select words on the board like ACTION, ADVENTURE, FANTASY.

3



Look through the pictures together so they can see what the story is aboutand encourage them to continue making predictions from the illustrations.


Ask questions or give simple instructionsto check understanding;

• Point to/show me a fossil of a reptile Point to/show me a prehistoric crocodile

• Can you see a prehistoric elephant?• Where is it? etc.......

Making comments on the story;

• Axel is scared. • They are very scared…



One idea is to focus on the different settings in the story.Identify and/or introduce target words for a CLIL-based story.

Settings

mountainsvolcanocave

the seajunglebeach

an island

Ask questions like:

What can you see?

Where are the threeexplorers?



Choose words to relate to your CLIL focus.

As mentioned in my storytelling webinar you may want to create or print a Story Mat or a Word Bank used to familiarise students with key vocabulary words or phrases from the book.

Prehistoric

Jurassic

Dinosaurs

Primative man

Fossils

Trilobites

Geologist

Volcano

Volcanic island

Lava

Eruption

Iceland, Germany, Italy

History Science and Geography

In the student’s book of Story Lane 3 there is a double page dedicatedto the book and herethe Characters are presented togetherwith a song. There is a also a listening and predicting exercise.



Plan your story-based lesson for CLIL aims and goals:

Story Subject Goals for CLIL

Linguistic Goals

Journey to the Centre of the Earth

•Become familiar with the structure of a volcanoand types of landforms to link with geography.

The students should:

•Learn and label simplephysical characteristics of a volcano.

•Learn, identify and label the different landforms in English.


•Become familiar with vocabulary relating to a volcano (volcano, crater, eruption, explosion, volcanic Island)

•Be able to identify and label types of landforms

•Revise present simplestructures (they go, theymeet, they climb and 3rd

person singular)

Geography & Science

Plan your story-based lesson for CLIL aims and goals:

Story Subject Goals for CLIL

Linguistic Goals


Become familiar with Jurassic, Triassic eras with a timeline. Names of dinosaurs and vegetation from a prehistoricera.Primitive man.


• Learn about differentprehistoric animals, first forms of human life on earth.

• UnderstandChronology/the passing of time.


•Become familiar with vocabulary relating to prehistoric animals and time expressions (trilobites, dinosaurs, jurassic, tertiaryera)

• Be able to identify types of dinosaurs and plants.

•Revise present simplestructures from the story (they go, they meet, theyclimb and 3rd personsingular).

History

Read or tell the story with your class, looking carefully at the pictures. As you tell the story they will hear all the vocabulary and phrases from the pre storytelling tasks.

The children will identify the main characters, setting and events and target language in the story.

During your second retelling of the story you can encourageChildren to participate. For example:

• Complete the sentence (a cloze technique)Continue to read the story and invite children to complete the sentence or produce/create flashcards and use them at the appriopiate time.

Storytelling tasks

Axel is a_____It is a fantastic story of an incredible journeyto________________.

Professor Lindenbrock a famous____.

Listening activities during storytelling.

Storytelling tasks

When listening for details, children are interested in listening for a specific kind of information – a number, a name, a place or object.

During storytelling, the teacher can centre students’ attention on the target languageand work together with them.

This can create opportunities to review vocabulary or sentence structures. A simple activity where students listen to the story

tick the correct boxes.


Another fun activity: use images from the story. Read the text and the class decide if the statement is True or False.

1 - HANS’S RAFT BREAKSIN A VERY BAD STORM.

2 - AXEL FIGHTS A VERY BIG SEA MONSTER.

T F

T F

3 – THE PROFESSOR MEETS A BIG PRIMITIVE MAN.

4 – THE PROFESSOR AND AXEL FIND A SIGN FROM ARNE SAKNUSSEMM.

T F

T F



Post Storytelling tasks

Activities connected with the story and post-reading activities such as sequencingactivities mentioned in mylast webinar) can be used.


tratto da Page to Stage, guida storytelling e drama time


After you have successfully read the story to your class with all the input tasks, you may decide to use a CLIL focus lesson to provide further practice and consolidation of the language. An idea is to provide a simple glossary on your focal point.

Geography Glossary

mountains landforms hills

desert cave islands volcano

rivers lakes beach coast

History Glossary

dinosaurs fossils past

primitive man prehisoric

secondary/tertiary period

Story Lane 3



Create your own map. Insert different landformsand talk and compare it to your class.

Location on a grid(Maths & Geography)

Extension…

hill mountainWord Bank

smallbigeasy to climbhighPointed top

landformhigh above the landdifficult to climbround top

Create a venn diagram is a great way to talk aboutdifferences or what’s the same.

Here I have used a hill and a mountain but you can choose any comparison.

It could be a volcano and a mountain, a river and a lake.

Another idea is to look at types of dinosaurs to identify differencesbetween a carnivore and a herbivore.

Use the internet or watch short videosto find out more about• landforms/geographical

environments

• first life on Earth• volcanoes• the Earth’s layers

• famous Explorers

• Storytelling can be considered an excellent resource to teach contents and language.

• Using a specific CLIL framework permits learning through curricular subjects in the English language with different strategies, resources and materials.

• This can be a valuable experience for children, as they are encouraged to learn new language in a communitive and motivating way.

Stories are your best lesson plans

Documents

A Journey to the centre of