Cross-Curricular Activities in ESO

Simon Andrewes

Simon Andrewes is currently president of GRETA, the Granada English Teachers' Association. He has had articles published in English Teaching Professional (on team teaching and project work). Previous talks at TESOL-SPAIN conferences include the use of translation in language teaching and the relationship between progress and affective factors.

Every day kilos of back-deforming course books are lugged unwillingly to and from school in bulging schoolbags. The purpose of this article is to suggest how some of them can be made a source of interest-engaging activities in the English classroom.

What is the value of cross-curricular activities in general?

• They break down the compartmentalisation of knowledge, that syndrome where the student learns to wipe the mental slate clean of all previous knowledge in order to concentrate on the next particular intake of information.

• They often engage students’ interest highly, especially if, for example, the students have had a voice in choosing the topic of the activity.

• They involve the students in the use of English to communicate something about themselves, something which they consider meaningful. They are oriented towards content rather than towards form.

• They may allow students to contribute something and participate actively even though they are not particularly good at English as a school subject.

• They reinforce and/or revise knowledge about the real world which they have studied in other subjects.

What is the value of this kind of cross-curricular activity in particular?

• These activities are likely to be appropriate for the age of the students as they are taken from the course books from other school subjects that they are studying at the moment.

• They promote learner independence as well as peer co-operation. The students have to learn to work as a group and take control over their own joint learning process.

• The activities allow for the fact that our students have a perfectly efficient means of communication in their mother tongue and aim at bridging the gap between it and the foreign language, developing competence in both languages.

• The use of L1 sources has the advantage that students have to work with the language and cannot simply "copy and paste" from the internet, a CD-ROM, or other reference material.

• Students get the chance to activate language that they have learnt, but at the same time they are likely to be stretched and encouraged to go beyond what they already know.

Suggested procedure for tackling cross-curricular activities

• Students form groups according to the subject they are going to research and teach. Groups will probably be formed according to the interest the student has in the subject chosen.

• The group consults the text book for the subject they have chosen.

• The group decides what they are going to teach in English. They must specifically decide how they are going to organise the teaching strategically (who does what) and linguistically (what vocabulary and structure they need for the task).

• As well as preparing the teaching, they must also prepare a test on the main items that they are going to teach.

• The test is handed in to the teacher. The group teaches their material to the rest of the class.

• The teacher gives out the tests, probably with some minor revisions or editing, to be done by the whole class in some subsequent period. (The group who set the exam may or may not be exempt from doing their own test.)

However, there are several ways of going about setting up such a cross-curricular activity using the course books from other school subjects. The teacher may begin by asking a series of questions related to a theme in one of their course books; Lengua (Lázaro Carreter & Marín Martínez, 1996), for example:

• What world languages have a greater number of speakers than Spanish?

• Put these four countries in order, according to the number of Spanish speakers there are in each: Spain, Mexico, Cuba, the United States.

• There are as many Spanish speakers in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas as there are in Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala. - True or False?

• Which are the four biggest Spanish speaking countries in order of population?

The teacher can then refer to the course book where the students can check and maybe consolidate or extend their knowledge about this theme. This could be followed up with an internet activity in which students up-date or verify the information that their course book contains, and present new and relevant interesting information to the class. Alternatively, the students, in groups, can present to the English class other information about the position of Spanish in the world that strikes them as interesting or unexpected.

(The answers to the four questions are: 1. Mandarin Chinese, English, and Hindi; 2. Mexico, Spain, USA, Cuba; 3. True; 4. Mexico, Spain, Columbia, and Argentina.)

How do we set up a Cross-Curricular Activity?

• An opportunity for a cross-curricular activity may arise out of class work, perhaps from an item in the English course textbook. For example, the textbook may deal with school subjects and individual preferences. Groups would then be formed to work on a particular task of their own choosing according to the preferences expressed.

• Many textbooks now propose projects; for example, compare your city with any other. Information about another city is likely to be available in the geography or current events textbook.

• An activity may arise from a discussion on that day’s classes. "What subject have you just done? What did you learn? What interested you in particular about it? What textbooks have you got in your satchel? What are you doing in the science class?"

• It may arise out of a topical news item, whether social or political, serious or trivial. It may emerge from a calendar event, like International Human Rights Day, or the anniversary of a historical event, or of the birth or death of a famous person.

Problems that tend to arise in this kind of activity

Cross-curricular activities present the teacher with certain problems. Firstly, we cannot prepare much, because we have no way of knowing what is going to come up. Secondly, and consequently, there is the problem of unfamiliar vocabulary; that is, unfamiliar to the teacher. It may be technical or it may be new vocabulary developed to deal with a new situation or phenomenon. If the unfamiliar vocabulary is essential to the task, ask the students to look it up, in a dictionary, in an encyclopaedia, or on the internet. If it is not absolutely essential, the teacher can help the students with paraphrasing or finding a suitable synonym. The idea of any kind of pre-project work on vocabulary is rejected. The desire to communicate focuses the students’ attention on the vocabulary they need to do this and makes it more memorable than if it has been "pre-fed". The more freedom the students are given in choosing their topic, the less likely it is that the teacher will be able to predict content. Finally, the ideas may be in themselves difficult to express. In this case, suggest simplifying. If this problem arises or seems likely to, the teacher could ask the students to prepare a quiz or a test for a younger class.

How a cross-curricular activity works in practice

This is a fairly random selection of topics for cross-curricular activities of this nature that I have worked with:

• the Earth’s crust and tectonic plates;

• astronomy and the universe;

• mammals, including human beings;

• the position of Spanish in the world today;

• waterwheels, hydraulic wheels, and turbines;

• the USA;

• mathematics.

The material was mostly taken directly from First Cycle ESO textbooks (see the bibliographic references below).

For example, let’s say a group of students has formed around their common choice of doing a project related to geography. They look through their geography textbook to choose the topic they are going to research and teach to the rest of the class. They agree to prepare a mini-lesson on the geography, demographic data and economics of the United States which is a theme they have dealt with recently in the Social Science class.

Apart from the text, the chapter of the book on the U.S. (Benejam, et al., 1994) contains several maps, charts, diagrams, tables and photographs which all provide information in a more striking and digestible way than in the denser written form. It is to these sources of information that the students turn. One map shows the states and the major cities. Another displays the major physical features such as mountain ranges, rivers, and lakes. A third gives information about the types of climate in different regions, while yet another marks the various agricultural zones across the continent. A table lists the diverse racial and religious origins of the American population and indicates the social impact of this diversity. Finally, another map displays the population density according to states and identifies the major metropolitan areas. These six sources make up the basis of the content of this group’s lesson.

One pair of students takes on the responsibility of teaching (or re-teaching) the class the names and locations of the states and the major U.S. cities, including information on the least and most heavily populated regions and the major metropolitan areas. Another pair talks about the major physical features such as mountain ranges, rivers, and lakes. A third gives information about the types of climate in different regions and the consequences for agricultural production. Finally, the racial, ethnic and religious make-up of the population is discussed.

On the basis of this content, the following test or quiz was devised by the group:

America quiz

1. Which state of the USA is not connected with the others?

2. Where is Miami?

3. Say the names of three major cities near the east coast.

4. What does "D.C." mean?

5. Say four names of NBA teams.

6. Say the name of one US university.

7. Where is the grand canyon?

8. Tell me the name of one of the great lakes.

9. Which state is furthest east?

10. Where is the Missouri river born?

11. Where is Yellowstone park?

12. Which state has a Mediterranean climate?

The test was given out to the class in a subsequent lesson as part of a general knowledge quiz. The class had quite a lot of fun with it, catching out the testers in, for example, the fact that Alaska was not the only state separated from the rest, or that the three major population centres, New York, Philadelphia and Washington, each with more than 3,000,000 inhabitants, were not the only three "major" cities "near" the East Coast. The editing done by the teacher was minimal; thus the somewhat Spanglish structure of "four names of NBA teams" was not corrected to the more orthodox "the names of four NBA teams", even though the difference had been pointed out more than once by the teacher during the preparation period. Nor did the teacher insist on the more matter-of-fact "the source of the Missouri", preferring the students’ more poetic Spanish-influenced version which views a river as being eternally born.

Another example of a cross-curricular activity

The following is the adaptation of a popular class guessing game in which clues are given to identify a person or an object. The clues are general to start with, but then become more and more specific. The first clue is worth 5 points, then each subsequent clue is worth one point less. So if you guess the person/object after the first clue you or your team win 5 points. To prevent wild guessing, if a team or an individual make a wrong guess, they lose the number of points that clue is worth.

Identify this historical character:

(For 5 points) This King probably never existed.

Before you answer, remember you lose 5 points if you’re wrong!

(For 4 points) The Legends about him became popular in the 12th Century in the literary genre known as Tales of Chivalry.

(For 3 points) He is supposed to have lived in the 6th Century in the South West of England.

(For 2 points) Many of the Tales of Chivalry were not about this King but about the Knights who served at his Court, democratically seated at a round table.

(For 1 point) The Court was situated in Camelot and his most highly favoured knight was Lancelot of the Lake.

The answer is of course King Arthur.

This is a game that can be played as a class competition between small groups. Apart from King Arthur, the history text book (González Gallego et al., 1997) consulted gave a sort of personal profile on the following historical characters: Alexander the Great, Hannibal, Spartacus, Julius Caesar, Charlemagne, the Cid, St. Francis of Assisi, and Joan of Arc. The important thing is to insist on keeping it as simple as possible and avoiding unnecessarily complicated language.

Afterword

In my experience, these activities generate a lot of work in the groups and free the teacher to make observations and evaluate. There will, of course, be occasions when the teacher has to intervene for questions of motivation or discipline. Groups are also likely to need support in matters of organising their work, especially at first. And then questions about language sometimes get quite difficult.

The classroom situation can be quite demanding for the teacher, having to think on her feet, not only helping with language but also giving guidance on selecting and organising the material for presentation to the class. In terms of cost-effectiveness, however, cross-curricula activities are worthwhile, as they involve a high degree of student participation over a lengthy period of time, producing "a unique classroom" (Littlejohn, 1997) to which each student can contribute something of value. (Please see further reading for more inspiration).

References

Benejam, P., Roig, J. & Vegara, J.M. 1994. Los países del bienestar: Los Estados Unidos, Geografía humana y económica del mundo actual. Intercambio. 2ºBUP. Barcelona: Vicens Vives, 200-213. (the USA)

Bits. It’s Magazine, 77, 7.

Carrión F., Gil, C. Satoca, J. & Visquert, J.J. 1996.El universo que conocemos: Una mirada al cielo Ciencias de la Naturaleza. ESO 1. Barcelona: Anaya, 8-9. (astronomy and the universe)

Carrión F., Gil, C. Satoca, J. & Visquert, J.J. 1996. Un éxito adaptivo: Los mamíferos, Ciencias de la Naturaleza. ESO 1. Barcelona: Anaya, 134-5. (mammals, including human beings)

González Gallego I., Mañero Monedo, M.. Sánchez Zurro, D., Valdeón Baruque, J. & Romero Ruiz, J.M. 1997. Como es la tierra? Geografía. Eso Primer Ciclo. Barcelona: Anaya, 18-19. (the Earth’s crust and tectonic plates)

González Gallego I., Mañero Monedo, M.. Sánchez Zurro, D., Valdeón Baruque, J. & Romero Ruiz, J.M. 1997. Perspectivas: Mitos, Leyendas, Monumentos y Personajes. Historia. Eso Primer Ciclo. Barcelona: Anaya, 244-257. (King Arthur)

Gonzalo Fernández R., Borja Alises, G., López Rábade, A. & Rodrigo Vigil, E. 1997. Norias, ruedas hidráulicas y turbinas, Tecnología II. Eso Primer Ciclo. Andalucía. Madrid: Anaya, 28-9. (waterwheels, hydraulic wheels, and turbines)

Lázaro Carreter F., & Marín Martínez, J.M. 1996. Curiosidades: El español en el mundo, Lengua Castellana y Literatura. ESO 1. Barcelona: Anaya, 232. (the position of Spanish in the world today)

Littlejohn, A. 1997. Making Good Tasks Better. ETp Magazine, 3, 28-30.

Math Test. It’s Magazine, 77, 19.

Further Reading

Hill, D. A. 1999. Projects. ETp Magazine, 13, 46-49 .

Littlejohn, A. 1996. What Is a Good Task? ETp Magazine, 1, 3-5.

Phillips, D, Burwood, S & Dunford, H. 1999. Projects with Young Learners. Oxford: OUP.

Roldán Tapia, A. R.. 1998. El trabajo por proyectos (project work): Un ejemplo de traducción en el aula de lengua extranjera. GRETA Revista para profesores de inglés, 6/2, 110-113,

Roldán Tapia, A. R. 1997. La integración de un "process syllabus" en un curso de secundaria: input, interacción, destrezas, L1 y L2 en la realización de "project work". Granada: Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad (edición en microfichas).

Torre Balboa, M. de la & Rodríguez Higueras, S. L.. 1993. Esquema y desarrollo de un MiniProject. GRETA Revista para profesores de inglés, 1/1, 46-48.

Willis, J. 1996. A Framework for Task-based Learning. London: Longman.

Willis, J. 1997. Task-based Learning: Designing and Using Tasks. GRETA Revista para profesores de inglés, 5/2, 13-18.

Willis, J. 1998. Task-based Learning. ETp Magazine. 9, 3-6.