Primary school subjects, part 1

If you read my CLIL post, you know that CLIL is the basis for the YL syllabus. That is why we had to go through the basics of all primary school subjects and their methodologies in ZGUČAN. In this post I'll cover whatever I found useful in these courses but I won't go through the syllabus since it's all available online.

• MATHEMATICS (MAT)
  We discussed the syllabus and the methodology. The first you can find online and the second is pretty much the same as with any other subject (motivation, attitude, lesson planning, Piaget etc.). What I will focus on are games and activities that could be used and adapted for English lessons, especially in terms of CLIL.
• GAMES: Kalah/Mancala, Nim (mathematical strategies), Hex, Tangram, Pentomino, Blokus (geometry), Salute (addition/multiplication)
• ACTIVITIES: Measuring length with non-standard units (HERE's my lesson plan - it's meant for a lesson in English but it's written in Slovenian), Number/Shape/Quantity booklets (HERE's my number booklet in English)
• SONGS AND CHANTS

• SCIENCE (SPO)
  Again, mostly syllabus (online) and methodology (same old). The one interesting thing we did do was science experiments for kids. A colleague of mine found this website that is a great source of science experiments. It's called Science Bob. There's also a list of water experiments for first graders available online (Slovene only) - I think we did most of these in our ZGUČAN classes.

• MUSIC (GUM)
  Syllabus, methodology, music history. Music notes and conducting (waste of time since I still can't do and don't use any of this even though I passed the exam). However, here are a few useful tips I remember from the top of my head:
• When singing with young learners, never sing off-key. They're at a critical age mucic-wise and very prone to repeating your mistakes. The damage you could cause by singing off-key to them is irreversible. If you can't sing, use a CD.
• When teaching a song, go by stages (rhythm, melody, lyrics, instruments, dancing). If you can conduct, do that as well.
• Since children can't read notes, some other visual support should be provided, or so they say. We had to make a kind of a visual aid for children to read music. HERE's mine; I made it for I'm a Little Pumpkin song (sung to the melody of I'm a Little Teapot). You be the judge.
• Orff instruments could be very useful for accompanying the song you're teaching.

In my next post: P. E. and Art reviews. :)