Learning task 1
Expected time frame: 1-2 lessons
These learning activities are designed to activate the prior lexical knowledge of students and to build knowledge of the key vocabulary. See activating prior knowledge for more information. A number of vocabulary activities are included to give students many opportunities to use key vocabulary in different ways. Teachers should choose from these activities to suit different learner needs.
Ensuring learners know the content and language learning outcomes
Ask students to complete the ‘start of the unit’ column in the
learning grid (Word 2007 17KB)
. This will also help you identify students who may need increased challenge.
Finding out about learners’ prior knowledge
1. Pre-teaching key vocabulary
- Read the Keyword List (Word 21KB) through aloud as a class.
- Ask students to use the
Before and After Vocab Grid (RTF 57KB)
to write down the meanings of any words that they know and guess the meanings of the others. Dictionaries are not to be used.
- Ask students to match the keywords and their definitions (Word 37KB). Dictionaries can be used, if needed.
- Ask students to match words and pictures (Word 59KB) . Students write down the number of each picture and beside it write the matching word or words from the keywords list.
- Ask students to write down the keywords in their science books using a separate line for each. They choose five of the keywords to learn so that they are ready to test a partner in the next lesson.
- Find out how students learn new words and discuss this in class in order to raise awareness about vocabulary learning strategies.
- Explain that one way of learning vocabulary is "look, say and spell, cover, write and check". This means look at the word, say and spell it to yourself, cover the word so you can't see it, write it down and check the spelling to see if you have spelt it correctly. The value of using word cards should be explained in this context.
Ask students to put these words into the
Eat or be Eaten - Structured Overview (Word 133KB)
:
- a consumer
- a herbivore
- to decompose
- living things
- an omnivore
- a producer
- a carnivore.
See structured overviews for more information.
Published on: 09 Jan 2018
