Implementation of ‘From the World of Those Who Do Not Speak’ (SoI-ES-195)
Context for the implementation
The implementation was developed in a pre-primary class with nineteen students from four to five years old. The class presents great diversity with a refugee boy who arrived in Spain last year. In addition, we have a group of four students who need more individualised attention and whose level of maturity is lower, another group also of five children with a high cognitive level and the rest of the group who follow schooling in a standardised way.
This implementation is related to all the curriculum areas (based on Decreto 67/2007 Castilla la Mancha); self-knowledge and personal autonomy, knowledge of the environment and languages, communication and representation. Before the implementation, we were working on the cultural and architectural characteristics of our city (Toledo). This LS helped us to be aware of the fauna and flora of our city, focusing on endangered animals.
Implementing the Learning Scenario
The Learning Scenario is focused on knowing animals according to living environment, habitat, feeding, breeding; recognising the parts of the skeleton and its roles. With this implementation we wanted to bring our students closer to the fauna and flora of their environment, knowing how they should take care of it and how they can help protect animals in danger of extinction. The original LS was adapted to our environment, taking into account the flora and fauna of our city. What is more, we wanted to approach endangered animals.
We planned different activities to implement the Learning Scenario.
- Brainstorming about the importance of animals in the environment and in our lives.
- Assembly with contributions from the students about what an endangered animal is and how we can help it.
- Creation of a story about the Iberian lynx, its importance and situation.
- Preparation of a panel with photoshop with the different animals on which we have worked: otter, lynx, eagle, black stork …
- Creation of puzzles of the different animals and separation into groups to find out their habitat, food and composition.
- Observation of the environment. We went out to the patio to listen, smell, observe, and use the different senses.
The implementation was carried out successfully. It began in the last week of November and continued until mid-December. Three weeks were necessary to develop the implementation, taking into account that each day two sessions were dedicated to this. The students were motivated and their level of attention was adequate. This has improved a lot in comparison to the beginning of the course when there were great attention deficiencies due to the long period of not attending school due to the COVID-19 lockdown.
This SoI was very interesting for my students and it has allowed us to generate new types of globalized activities that are linked to our curriculum.
Afterthoughts:
We had to adapt the timing described in the original LS as the ages of our students (4-5 years old) require longer periods for the development of the activities. At the same time, in our case, we dedicated different moments to deepen and expand the knowledge in aspects that really caught the students’ attention. This caused our implementation period to extend in time, as three more days than those of the original LS were needed.
On Europeana Resources:
Europeana’s resources were critical to getting the most out of the implementation. The joint search allowed us to learn about other forms of work among students from other countries and, in addition, we were able to delve into basic aspects of the lives of the animals studied. The families were also part of the process and their participation was fundamental, being able to work from home with their children as well.
Did you find this story of implementation interesting? Why don’t you read about the related learning scenario?
From the World of Those Who Do Not Speak (EN-CUR-410) by Tănase Anica-Maria
Did you find this story of implementation interesting? You might also like:
- Forests and Meadows: Invertebrates (LS-FI-445)
- Geometric Animals (LS-MT-255)
- Biodiversity (EN-CUR-162)
Do you want to discover more stories of implementation? Click here.
CC BY-SA 4.0: the featured image used to illustrate this article has been found on Europeana Collections and provided by the Litografiska Museet.