Practice: Reflection on planning and preparing the whole CLIL unit

 Practice: Reflection on planning and preparing the whole CLIL unit

It's not easy to plan one lesson. When I have heard for the first time that I have a task to plan a unit of 5- 8 lessons I didn't believe in myself. Despite that I somehow managed to complete all lesson plans and here is how I perceive the process.

Choosing the topic was one of the most time consuming task. On my practice I could create a math unit for 5th ar 6th grade. My mentor teacher helped me by describing what subject the students are working on now and what is she planning to do with them next. It narrowed down my searching process but I still couldn't decide on one topic. Finally I came to conclusion that I should pick something easy for me, that's how I can lower the difficulty of creating the unit. I thank myself for that thought till today, it for sure made my life easier.

I chose the topic of 3D figures. Next step was to choose specific information I want to present for the students. There are plenty of 3D figures and on starters I was devastated because I imagined that all of them need to be included in my unit. It took me some time to realize that even during my school years, grade after grade the difficulty of each subject grew. Jus as same as mathematics, it is a big process from the first geometry lesson to 3D figures. The same thing happens for the topic of 3D figures themselves. I took a deep breath and chose to focus on prism and cube. 

Because of the pandemic times we were told to write 5 lesson plans, not more, because the shorter the unit the bigger chance is to conduct it in a school. Next challange appeared: what those 5 lessons should include to create a CLIL unit? I wondered what other school subjects than math could concern the topic of 3D figures? At first I had an idea to include music education by presenting different instruments and calculating their volume. Little did I know that there are not mant musical instruments in a shape of a prism or a cube, which made my idea pointless.

I was devastated because few more ideas after long time of searching for the materials and writing the lesson plans turned out to be a cul-de-sac. What I have learnt after those hours of unsuccessful searching is:

The simpler, the better!

I've stopped to expect wonders from my work. I've realized that I plan the unit for students, for children! They want to learn math, not rocket science. Finally, I focused on the basic vocabulary (3d figure, prism, cube, volume, cubic centimeter), calculating the volume and I added a historical accent to the unit, a lesson about the Stonehenge. I tried to make it as easy as I can and add fun elements everywhere.

Here is an example of my worksheet. On the lesson we talked a lot not only about "Is it a prism or a cube?" but also about the aquarium, ice cubes and presents. After this lesson my students' homework was to write down in their notebooks 3 more examples of prisms and cubes they can find at home or in school. They enjoyed this activity and I am happy to focus on simplifying the message.

Whenever you get stuck on anything, no matter if it is teaching or studying or any other activity, I recommend taking deep breath and trying to switch your thinking on an easier truck.