Implementation of ‘My Best Friend – Cats vs Dogs in Life and Art’ (SOI-PL-204)
I realized the learning scenario in class 7 as it suited my material distribution.
Introduction
I used the author’s idea for an initial interview with my students about their pets, and then the students filled in a survey about their animals, which I had prepared in the following form.
My students really liked the opportunity to participate in the survey. The questions were formulated by students from grade 8 and were connected with the inquiry whether the students had a dog or a cat, how old the pets were, what they ate, whether they spent their free time with the pet, if they took them on trips and whether they were purebred ones or mongrels.
Activities
Each student chose one pet from the dog and cat galleries suggested by the author and pasted their selected photo into Skype chatting because the lesson was run there.
As for the choice of animals, differently, some photos were fun but also a catch for some students.
In turn, the students described their pets according to the table I had prepared for them in German.
1. Beschreibe das Haustier im Bild – Aussehen / appearance
| Klein/mały | groß/ duży | dunkel/ ciemny | hell/ jasny | braun/ brązowy | lang/ długi mittellang/ średniej długości | kurz/ krótki | dick/ gruby | gepflegt/ zadbany | Schwarz/ czarny | |
| Größe- wielkość | ||||||||||
| Fell/ sierść | ||||||||||
| Pfoten/ łapy | ||||||||||
| Farbe/ kolor | ||||||||||
| Schwanz/ ogon |
- I asked them to build sentences according to the pattern:
Meine Katze ist …
Sein / Ihr Fell ist … …
Seine / Ihre Pfoten sind ……
Er / Sie ist ……
Sein / Ihr Schwanz ist ……
2. Wie denkst du, ist dieses Tier – wild / wild, freundlich / friendly, süß / sweet, gefährlich / dangerous?
3. Was macht das Tier? (Liegt, steht, …
Assesment
I think the lesson scheme proposed by the author was interesting for the students due to the selection of materials.
I didn’t use Kahoot, I thought the survey would be better.
Teaching outcomes and final thoughts
The author predicted 90 mins to implement the topic and it seems sensible. We did not take notes, 10 students commented; however, if the class / group had been larger, it would have taken more time.
In general, I liked this LS very much, I think the author knows what she wants to achieve in the lesson. It’s important that students have a lot of freedom in choosing the material, they can talk about the topic that is close to them – in the end some pupils put some photos of their dogs in the chat! In addition, during a large part of the lessons the students simply used a foreign language, and that’s what it is about! Moreover, in this case, the fact that it was a remote lesson turned out to be a plus, because all students were in front of the computer, and so they were not ashamed of speaking in front of the others.
Did you find this story of implementation interesting? Why don’t you read about the related learning scenario?
My Best Friend – Cats vs Dogs in Life and Art by Malgorzata Filip
Did you find this stoy of implementation interesting? You might also like:
- Monstrous Creatures implemented by Angela Capezzuto
- Black Cats, Broken Mirrors and Others – Let’s Talk About Superstitions implemented by Maria Marrone
- Dragon Tales in Europe implemented by Karagiannis Iraklis
CC BY 4.0: the featured image used to illustrate this article has been found on Europeana Collections and provided by the Wellcome Collection.