Co-funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA).
Co-funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA).
Table of Contents
Cross-Curricular approaches rely on teaching practices and strategies that centre on the instruction of thematic units, which are approached from a variety of school subjects. Cross-curricular instruction also offers students the chance to acquire skills in a variety of contexts.
In Appendix 3, we designed a cultural cross curricular learning scenario that is extremely appealing to Romanian students. Modern children tend to forget about traditions, and therefore, a CLIL lesson that can appeal to both their interests in digital and English learning and arts and crafts, combined with legends and environmental education, can boost their motivation.
The topic of the lesson is strongly related to the national and school curricula in terms of traditions, crafts, and green education.
The materials used in the lesson are diverse. Since we could not find appropriate video material for the second legend of Martisor (all being available only in Romanian), we created a video in Genially: https://view.genial.ly/642c5d6ff359060018981e0c - The Legend of Martisor 2. The first legend, https://youtu.be/0hXq4wx7O5M - The legend of Martisor, 1, was narrated by an Irish native speaker, which exposed students to a different English accent. In this way, the use of authentic material can help increase students' motivation, maintain their interest in the topic, and improve their listening comprehension more effectively than traditional listening teaching methods.
In addition to teaching students the subject matter and cultivating their cognitive or reasoning skills, teachers should also make students aware of their global and local citizenship responsibilities. The connection between tradition and environmental education was established by avoiding excessive cognitive load through the incorporation of enhanced scaffolding, so that students could develop a sense of security when experimenting with language, content, and their own learning management. The previous knowledge was activated through questions (e.g., What kinds of things do you throw away that could be reused or recycled? Could you stop using some things altogether?), the key vocabulary about recycling was introduced through a video, and, if time permits, more comprehensive understanding can be enhanced in a multimedia presentation, https://view.genial.ly/6368b76a420cd70013bad128 - The 3 R’s and waste management.
Additionally, cross-curricular instruction is conducive to project-based learning. This authentic learning experience and strategy provides students with additional opportunities to apply the skills they've acquired in their schoolwork. Students are able to make meaningful connections between each subject area and the overall learning experience. In the arts and crafts part of the lesson, the instructions are also given in English, and the teacher encourages the students to communicate in this language as well. The focus is not on language accuracy but on the fluency.