THE CIRCUS Didactic Unit Estefania Escobar Anna Pujol Anna Roura Isabel Ramos

Cycle/Age group: eight to ten years. Subject: Knowledge of natural, social and cultural environment.

OBJECTIVES - To learn the vocabulary related to the circus. - To create a link between the school and the environment. - To encourage students to learn the use of the new technologies. - To improve the students linguistics skills: they must speak and write in English and listen native people talk in that language.

The day before starting the didactic unit The teacher makes groups of 3-4 pupils. The teacher asks the students to look for information about the circus.

Session 1: Let’s do theatre Pre-task: The teacher and the students make a debate about the circus. After that, the teacher shows the pupils a circus poster and tells them different things about it. That way she introduces new vocabulary. Task preparation: The class is divided in groups of 3-4 pupils. Each group has to do a small research of a topic related with the circus: jobs, people or animals.

Task realization: each group has to do a short representation of the topic they have chosen so the rest of the class can guess what they are pretending to be. Post-task: the teacher could make the pupils fill in activities like these: What do the acrobats do? a) Take care of the elephants. b) Play the guitar. c) Walk on the tightrope. How do the clowns paint their faces?

What do the elephants eat? NUTS BANANAS FISH

Session 2: Create a poster! Pre-task: The teacher increases the interest of pupils asking them: “How do the people who work in the circus make the other people go there?”. He can also show different posters to the students. Task preparation: In groups, pupils do a sketch of the poster that they have to do. They have to search photos and some information about the circus. Task realization: The students have to use the information that they have found and ICT to make their own poster. Post-task: The pupils have to show their work to the classmates. For this, they have to use ICT. The best voted poster will be printed and hung up in the classroom

An example…

excursion

Session 3: THINK ABOUT IT Pre-task: the teacher and the students do a follow-up of all they have learned about the circus. Task preparation: they watch some fragments of videos in which you can see the day to day of the different people that are involved in the circus.

Task realization: children do a debate about how circus people and animals live. They talk about the Animals Rights, about if they like the circus live if they were animals, etc. they write a few lines of their final conclusions Post-task: everybody writes on a big mural anything they want related to the experience or what they have enjoyed the most or the less. It can also be filled with photos of the circus they went to!

Thank you!