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Meeting Two Presentations (Toulouse June 2005)


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Teaching History (and geography) in english is a big challenge in France. Students are not used to talk in english and also not used to think by themselves.

The system is sometimes narrow minded.

I tried during the last six years to develop their ability to communicate in english through these two subjects: role plays of course

Look at these two activities

http://apella.ac-limoges.fr/lyc-perrier-tu...water/index.htm

http://apella.ac-limoges.fr/lyc-perrier-tu...rs/judging1.htm

Inspired by Richard's work on films this activity was a great challenge.

http://apella.ac-limoges.fr/lyc-perrier-tu.../barricades.htm

The most important thing is to make (sometimes not everytime) the students being the teacher (see John's presentation on that)

Another thing, I have been inspected in european section one month ago what is quite rare in France. I would like to present this lesson to you during our meeting and explain the specificity of teaching these subjects in France.

Hope to see you soon

Jean Philippe

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Second language acquisition is an important issue in CLIL.

A general overview en CLIL projects will be shown, especially through the Erupean Network EUROCLIC. Euroclicwww.euroclic.net

A clil unit structure will be also discussed with some proposals for a SLA Help module and unit structure

Edited by javier mendez
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La historia de las mujeres en España durante el siglo XX

(Women's history in Spain over the 20th century)

We have set up a web site that, apart from providing historical content on the subject, tries to display different sort of activities that can be useful to teach history on the internet. We are particularly enthusiastic about bringing the archive on the website (newspapers and other sort of primary sources) and using video as a way to motivate our students.

Presentation on our work

Women's history in Spain over the 20th century

The website La historia de las mujeres en España durante el siglo XX

(Women's history in Spain over the 20th century)

http://www.historiasiglo20.org/sufragespana/index.html

and

http://perso.wanadoo.es/principios/sufragismo_v1.html

Edited by Juan Carlos
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Guest Russel Tarr

I am a big fan of interactive decision making games on the web. These are like the old “choose your own adventure” books: students play in role as a historical character (e.g. King Harold) and are presented with a range of possible options or courses of action. The decision they make then has a bearing on the situation they then find themselves in and the new range of choices they then face.

Advantages:

1. They are infinitely flexible and varied.

a. Geographically based games - in the Virtual Time Machine Journey - Renaissance Florence Year 7 students explore a Medieval Town and Village collecting missing parts of their time machine.

b. Thematically based games – in What are your party politics? GCSE students are asked a series of simple questions and are then told at the end what political party most closely matches their views.

c. Finally, the adventure can be chronologically based: my favourite here is the “Civil Servant to the League of Nations” activity in which GCSE students have to tread carefully through the explosive events and situations which the league of nations had to deal with throughout the 1920’s.

2. They provide natural differentiation within the classroom. Similar games based in textbooks simply cannot work as well, because they need to be led by the teacher and therefore students have to progress through it at the same pace. When the game is run by a suite of computers, however, each student progresses through the game at a rate which suits them and chooses whether to take the option to “learn more about” particular key terms and words as the opportunity arises.

3. With the students working through the games at different speeds, it is of course important to have structure to the lessons, which is the third advantage of these games. One of the most practical techniques is to have students working in mixed ability pairs and making sure that the decisions they make have been discussed and agreed.

4. The final major advantage of decision making games is the fact that the students find them stimulating and pleasurable way of learning about topics which could otherwise come across as being rather dry, dusty and narrative. I started my year 8 “English Civil War” unit this year by getting students to play the 'Can you keep your Head?' game in which they take on the role of King Charles I and have to decide whether to react to historical situations in the same way that the real King did. This game ends by telling students how likely it would have been that they would have taken the country into a civil war. Rather than simply accept Charles’s actions as facts that had to be learned, they instead automatically questioned those actions and offered alternative courses of action which they think would have produced a better outcome.

Links:

Virtual Time Machine Journey - Renaissance Florence (ActiveHistory)

What are your party politics? (ActiveHistory)

Thomas Becket (School History)

A Journey Through Time (History on the Net)

Edited by Russel Tarr
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