A journey to Scotland - A project day
The journey to Scotland is designed as a project day, mainly for 5th or 6th graders. The main part of the project day is set up as station work. There are 8 different stations. Four big stations, which all have to be supervised by a teacher and four stations that all together have to be supervised by one teacher. Two classrooms are needed for the day.
The project day starts with a flight simulation to Edinburgh. The students can get in the right mood for the day and are divided into goups. Furthermore, they get their map of Edinburgh, which shows the order of the stations, the group has to work on.
After this the station work starts. The stations are:
- the hotel station
- the supermarket station
- the pub station
- the museum station
- four transport stations (taxi, bus, tram and by foot)
During the station work there is always one group at every station. They get different worksheets handed out, so that they have a personal folder at the end of they day. These worksheets contain the different tasks and vocabulary sheets, where the pupils can note unknown vocabularies. The taks at the station are for example writing and speaking tasks (mainly dialogues), finding the way on a map or grammatic tasks (using prepositions)
You can find the material for all stations here.
The station work ends with the train station, which is the last station for all groups.
The Highland Games
After the station work the students travel to the Highland Games. The Highland Games are designed as a game training the new vocabulary learned at the project day. Therefore, the students need the new vocabulary they have noted down at their vocabulary sheets. The pitch has been drawn on the school playground by groups which finished their stations early. It looks like the Scottish flag. The groups play against each other and have to guess the words learned in the hours before. To explain them the pupils have either to draw, explain, pantomime or translate them. The cross on the flag is a joker field, where the students can choose between the four options. The four fields of the flag stand for one of the options. To select what to do, the students have to throw wellingtons.
Evaluation
At the end of the day the students have to write a postcard to the teachers supervising the day. This postcard helps the students to reflect the day. They can write about what they liked or didn't like, how difficult it was or whatever they want to tell the teachers about the day. The pupils can either write in English or German, to make sure they can express what they want to say.
To sum up the day, we evaluated the day together at the blackboard, using the bulls eye method and asked the students questions about the day.
Aim of the day
- creating authentic learning and speaking situations: give a meaning to learning English
- getting the students to talk in English
- positiv sense of achievement in English
- still the frear of using English
- combining English and fun
- improfing different competences: speaking, writing, social competences
- revise syllabus
To sum it up: A succesful day
Our project day worked out quite well. The feedback of the students was good and they enjoyed learning English, even those who were afraid of the day before. Some of them even were quite suprised that this is possible.
Most students did not have a problem working at the different station and the assistance we gave them was enough. Nevertheless, some planning of the day needs adjustment. The time we thought that would be needed for the stations (especially hotel, pub...) was not enough. This has to be taken into consideration when organizing the day. Thirty minutes are the absolute minimum for the big stations. As we did not schedule enough time, we had to postpone the Highland Games.
Janine Belz, Christina Hartmann, Paula Heitz und Luisa Nolka, A Journey to Scotland, in: USE: Universität Studieren / Studieren Erforschen, 27.01.2015, URL: http://use.uni-frankfurt.de/pbl/scotland/.
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