Australia: the Land down under and Aborigines (EN-CUR-606)

Students will learn about Australia, History, and Geography in a CLIL lesson (Content Language Integrated Learning). They are ESL students. The activity will be organized by using Situated Learning Episode approach with collaborative activities and Flipped learning. The results of the activity will be the presentation of a digital product by groups of students to the teacher and the class. There will be an improvement of competences in English as a Second language, in digital skills, in cultural heritage about a country in which English is the official language, in social skills.

This learning scenario has been developed during the “Digital Education with Cultural Heritage” online course. The course aimed to improve teachers’ understanding of cultural heritage in order to efficiently integrate it into their lessons and practices. The courses can be accessed here.

Author: Emiliana Rufo

Age of students: 12-13

Subject and topic: English as a Second language, History, Geography, Social studies/Australia: history and geography of the country which was part of the British Empire

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Europeana-DSI-4-cur-2021-EN-Rufo-edited.pdf Download

CC BY 3.0: the featured image used to illustrate this article has been found on Europeana and has been provided by the Norsk Teknisk Museum.

Anonymous says:

January 29, 2022 at 9:11 am

As a teacher of English as a foreign language, I found this scenario particularly interesting, since it provides a complete and accurate approach to the teaching of civilization, i.e., the history and culture of Australia and the Aborigines. Given that in my country students in the highest grades of secondary school have to deepen their knowledge of the English language with insights into the cultures of English-speaking countries, Australia is certainly one of the countries whose history and culture is less known. For this reason I found this scenario appealing and useful, as it allows students to investigate into the past history and culture of a country they often know little about. Dealing with another country’s cultural heritage students familiarize with the concept of difference, therefore they learn how to accept diversity as part of human experience.
I particularly appreciated the insight this scenario offers into the lives of the Aborigines, a people whose past and culture have often been silenced by the official, Euro-centred version of history. Moreover, the use of digital technology and the latest apps for education makes this scenario also well-suited for distance learning.

donatafedericimonesi says:

February 16, 2022 at 8:23 pm

I forgot to put my name under this post (Donata Federici Monesi)

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