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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