La révolution industrielle: Cal Vidal
Teaching History in French with CLIL
Cristina Puigdollers, Cristina Royo, Tània Ruiz and Carolina Serna
We have chosen la Colònia Vidal as a real example of an industrial colony in Catalonia. This topic is framed within the Industrial Revolution in the History subject. The activity designed for this topic would be carried out in the fourth year of secondary education.
Content and Language objectives of a possible teaching unit:
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Content objectives:
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To be able to identify and label the different parts of a colony.
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To be able to list the most important characteristics of the different parts of the colony.
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Language objectives:
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To be able to understand the teacher’s explanation
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To be able to briefly describe pictures in the target language by using the language items provided
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Combine both content and language objectives:
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By the end of this project, students will be able to identify and describe the different parts of an industrial colony
The activity
Students will get in small groups and they will be given different pictures. Each picture will show one of the different parts of the settlement (the church, the school, the office, the factory, etc.). Students will have to explain to their members of the group what they have on their picture and what the space was used for in L2. Meanwhile, the teacher will go around the class to help them and give them some guidelines if necessary.
Communicative goals
We expect our students to be able to understand the teacher and to interact with her by answering her questions, following her explanations, doing facial gestures that will be an answer to the stimulus given by the teacher, etc.
We also want students to interact with each other in groups, this is why the main activity will be carried out in groups, where we expect from students to talk to each other and describe the elements they can see in the pictures. We also expect from them to help each other to create their sentences, to interact and to build meaning with each other’s contributions.
Strategies to help students understand:
Some strategies we will use to help students understand:
- Repetition drills.
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Visual support: PowerPoint with pictures to understand concepts plus a worksheet with specific terms and their definitions, which the students will have the possibility to match in order to better retain the names and characteristics of each part of the settlement (attached in the teaching materials section).
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Doing clear and expressive gestures and mimics.
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Emphasizing key vocabulary.
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Speaking appropriately to accommodate students’ proficiency level.
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Scaffolding techniques such as paraphrasing.
Strategies to help students produce:
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Grouping students to support language and content objectives.
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Allowing wait time for students to formulate answers.
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Providing sentence starters.
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Restating students’ response to model correct French.
Language needs of the activity:
They will NEED the following sentence starters:
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Sur ma photo, je vois…
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Ici, je vois…
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Ça c’est...
They will need the following specific terminology:
Grammar structures: relative connectors
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Où il y a…
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Où les gens font…
Phrases to ask for help
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Comment on dit en Français … ?
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Qu’est-ce que c’est …?
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Pardon?
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Est-ce que tu pourrais répéter s’il te plait?
Église
Bibliothèque
Appartements
Théâtre
Parc
Chaudière à vapeur
École
Café
Usine
Dépôt
Maison du propriétaire
Canal d'eau
Turbine
REFLECTION AFTER IMPLEMENTATION
We are really satisfied with the results obtained from the implementation of our activity. At first, we were afraid about the possibility that the students may not interact with the teacher, or that they would not follow the explanations due to their low level of French. The fact that the topic is a little bit complex has also been a matter of concern before the implementation. Anyway, we decided to make it as simple and visual as possible and go for it.
After the implementation, we believe that our activity worked out well and we are positively surprised about our students’ participation: they managed to understand the teacher explanations, to react to her instructions and identify the parts of the colony during the first part of the activity that we could consider the “comprehension part”. The techniques that helped us the most in this part of the activity were mainly those related to body language: mimics, gestures, facial expressions, pointing at things, repetition…
As we know, production is always more difficult than comprehension, and our students have had to briefly describe the the different parts of the colony with the support of some specific language items that we have given them. And they did a great job! They interacted and they surprisingly spoke French to each other.
All in all, and taking into account the limitations of the context, the activity reached its main goals. Students really surprised us: one of them even volunteered to report her description to the rest of the class!
Although we felt a bit insecure, it was a very nice first CLIL experience. Our classmates were receptive and the activity was positive for all of us.
OTHER IMPORTANT INFORMATION
In a real context, students would visit La Colònia Vidal during a day trip organized by the History department, in order for them to see the reality of the industrial colony, the different parts of it and the weaving process. It would also help them to understand how life conditions were at that time and end up assimilating all the information explained in class.
TEACHING MATERIALS
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We have designed a PowerPoint presentation and a worksheet to support the teacher’s explanation so that the students can follow the lesson easily.
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1zwgtvQ4zCHFWIyBQwn3i_yPoLMKdJE4TjZmmrKJZDFs/edit?usp=sharing
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Worksheet with words and definitions
ET VOILI VOILU... OUR VIDEO HERE:
