How to teach Natural Science: CLIL solutions. Today: "Animals I. Vertebrates"

My CLIL unit "Animals I. Vertebrates" is included in the subject "Natural Science" and is bound to 1º E.S.O students. The aims of this unit are:

• To distinguish between vertebrates and invertebrates.
• To know the types of vertebrates (fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals).
• To know the characteristics of vertebrates (environment in which they live, type of skin, organ used to breath, body temperature, type and number of limbs, type of nutrition and reproduction).

I divide the unit into five sessions. In the first one, I introduce the topic and review the differences between vertebrates and invertebrates. To this aim, I use the first two activities of the CLIL Unit "Animals. Invertebrates and vertebrates", and the exercise 3 of "Science Antillas" of "e-learning for kids". In these three activities the students have to write ten names of animals and think if they are vertebrates or invertebrates, classify the animals that they see in the slideshow into vertebrates or invertebrates, do a word search and spot the vertebrates. I also use the slideshow to introduce the five types of vertebrates that we are going to study along the unit. In this session the students learn new key words such us backbone or endoskeleton, and I check it they have problems with the animals vocabulary. All students have to write a list with the new vocabulary and the translation in the case that they don´t know the words. They will include in this list the new words that they will learn along the unit.

In the second session I explain the main characteristics of fish, amphibians and reptiles. To this aim, I use three activities of educaplay.com (fish, amphibians and reptiles) to work with the big group, and activities 1 and 2 of the section FISH, activity 2 of the section AMPHIBIANS and REPTILES of the CLIL Unit Vertebrates. These are individual activities. In this season, the students learn the parts and characteristics of these vertebrates by filling the gaps or marching the sentences. Finally, I introduce the amphibians metamorphosis with a YouTube video.

The aim of the third session is to learn the parts and characteristics of birds and mammals. To this end, I use five activities of educaplay.com (birds parts, birds characteristics, mammals parts,  mammals characteristics, mammals vocabulary) to work with the big group, and activities 1 to 5 of the section MAMMALS and 1 of the section BIRDS of CLIL Unit Vertebrates. These are individual activities. The activities are also designed to increase the mammals vocabulary. In this session I explain the final tasks of the units, that they will have to solve next day:

Final tasks

1. Look for information about a vertebrate that you like and explain to your partner its body characteristics, where it lives and something curious about it. (Work in pairs)

2. Do you know that there are some mammals that lay eggs? Look for an example and explain it to the rest of the class. (optional activity)

I have recently learned the importance of the scaffolding strategies, so I decided to include the elaboration of a table as one of the main activities of the fourth session.

Vertebrate	Skin	Breathing	Body temperature	Limbs	Nutrition	Reproduction
Fish		through gills	cold-blooded	fins
Reptiles

After completing the table, the students work in pairs trying to elaborate short sentences to connect the concepts that appear. I have realized that this really helps students to memorize all we have learnt. In addition, they have to solve the final tasks working in pairs.

For the last session I decided to organize a "computer games session" in which the students work in pairs using activities of e-learning for kids to classify the vertebrates into the different groups; to review the characteristics of birds and amphibians; to review the characteristics of mammals; to classify animals into fish, reptiles and invertebrates; to review the characteristics of vertebrates and learn their habitats; to learn about adaptation; to review the animals nutrition; and to be conscious about the necessity of protecting animals and conserving the environment. Finally they do an activity that I designed using LearningApps to review the characteristics of birds, amphibians and reptiles, which I show now.

In some of the CLIL Units that can be found on line, the study of the vertebrates is approached in a different manner. This means that students have to identify the parts and the characteristics of the different types of vertebrates from the first session. However, I considered that my students didn´t have enough level in L2 to approach the unit in this way. In my case, I decided to introduce the characteristics of the different types of vertebrates little by little and do some scaffolding strategies later to  be sure that they achieve the objectives of the unit.

If you want to download my CLIL Unit "Animals I. Vertebrates" go to my skydrive.