Jobs

In the previous post I started talking about  CLIL methodology. Today we will see how we can work CLILwith a topic so familiar to children such as jobs. Let’s begin!

How can we start?
If we do a project about jobs one of the first things we have to do is ask children for their previous knowledge. We can ask them about the profession of their parents, the place where they work or if they have to wear uniforms and so on. Here we can begin to introduce some language structures such as: What do you want to be when you grow up?, What color is the uniform of …? and What’s your dad’s/mum’s job?

However, in my opinion, I think if we ask children for their parents’ professions we need to be careful. I say this due to the fact that there can be children without a parent and we do not want them to feel sad or uncomfortable with questions. In addition, as far as I’m concerned, it is important to teach children that all jobs are relevant because it is likely that not all parents of our students have studied careers and that doesn’t mean they are less intelligent. Therefore,  we need to teach children to respect and value the different jobs.

What can we study about jobs?

We can work on many issues associated with professions. For example, which are the highest paid, if on this job we can work  individually or in groups or what are the most popular, among others. In Addition, as we will be working on CLIL, we can relate the topic to the subject of Social Science and introduce primary, secondary and tertiary activities. One of the ideas we can use is to let children choose a product from the supermarket and we can study the life-cycle of this product. I mean we can follow the production process, but starting at the end because it is how kids can see the product. And then, we can classify the different activities we have seen in the procedure in primary, secondary or tertiary.

What kind of activities can we do?

We can plan a lot of tasks to work different learning styles and topics from different subjects. For example, an oral activity by asking each child: “What do you want to be when you grow up?”  and they have to complete a grid. In this way, then we can analyze and ranking the results and think which of the jobs are the most popular in the class. In this way, we will be working Maths when analyzing the results and we can also classify the jobs they have said  in primary, secondary and tertiary activities.

In addition, students can also prepare an interview about a particular job and they would be working Language. For example, they could prepare it for a potter and we could even organize a small pottery class where children could make their own creations with clay and then write the steps followed. In this way, we would be working both, Language and Art&Crafts. In my opinion, I would have loved to do an activity like this when I was a child to learn professions as I believe it can be very dynamic and fun at the same time. However, the way I learned was through repetition. I remember my English teacher had some big cards and she used to start saying the names of every card and we had to repeat the name. It was extremely boring and at the end It is true that I learnt it, but  of course I would have preferred not to do it through that method.

What have we learnt in this project? and self-assessment.

Last but not least, it is highly recommended that children can reflect on what they have learned because this way we will make learning more meaningful. Also, my advice is to think of some approach that children can also assess how they have worked, for example through a grid because nobody knows how one has worked better than oneself. In conclusion, as you have seen, talking about jobs go further than teaching structures. And related to CLIL, it is not so difficult, we just need to feel confident and comfortable in what we are doing because the fact that kids  will learn meaningful it is guaranteed.

I encourage you to do it! See you in my next post!