View Content #7733
| Contentid | 7733 |
|---|---|
| Content Type | 1 |
| Title | Ideas for Teaching a Thematic Unit on Monsters, Part 3 |
| Body | Ñandú listserv users responded to a recent request for ideas for a thematic unit on monsters for elementary students with the many suggestions. Here are more of them, continued from the last two weeks’ InterComs: --- You can add in adjectives to the mix and have kids create their own monsters. I often scaffold this by starting with a game of hangman, so that they hear me using the vocabulary first. Whenever there is a wrong letter, the child or team get to say whether the person (or monster, why not?) being "hung" has a big head or a small head, big ears or small ears, three eyes of four? a long torso or a short one? a fat arm or a skinny one? You can draw body parts of various shapes and sizes on a regular sheet of paper and photocopy, to let the kids then make their own monster as an art project. The kids can cut out the body parts themselves to save you time, each one getting one full page of body part options. As they work you can go around and have the kids practice the vocab as they plan and glue their monster together. i.e. Is your monster going to have a long arm or a short one? 2 short arms and a long one? The kids can even trade body parts with one another if they don't have enough parts, if you want to make the task more complex. You can include a fill in the blank like this, in your FL of course, at the bottom of the page on which they assemble the monster. "This is my monster. He has (number) (type) (body part). He also has ___ ___. He has no ___." They don't have to describe everything about the monster per se, just a few things he has and does not have. You can also have the kids stand up and show their monster once they are done, explaining it by using these phrases. I've used "Glad monster, Sad Monster" with the kids to talk about feelings. Though the book is in english I just kind of talk through the story in French and have the kits shout out different emotions as they see them. You can also describe each monster as you go, this also gets a nice color review as all the monsters are different colors. The film Monster, Inc., which is available on DVD where you can switch the language to Spanish, French, or other languages, might be a nice compliment to this unit. If I use a movie I don't just let it run. I pick a few scenes, watch a minute or two, and pause the film and ask questions in French. So you can ask: How many eyes does Mike have? is it a big eye or a small eye? How many legs does Mike have? The kids will activate knowledge they already have in English about the monsters and carry it over in to your FL. I have used the Melissa and Doug monster too and it is a ton of fun. I actually bought two monster kits but just used one body, with double the body parts in a bag. then we made a super weird monster with each kid able to choose one body part to add. We usually ended up with like 5 eyes, 3 tails, 7 arms, etc. Nees, J. [nandu] monsters. Ñandú listserv (nandu@caltalk.cal.org, 10 Apr 2008). --- Some other suggested resources include the following: -the Alien Language website at http://www.alienlanguage.co.uk/alienlanguage/index.htm has interactive activities for learning about body parts and is available in English, French, German, and Spanish -creating alebrijes for Spanish students. Information about these folk-art creatures is available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alebrije . Ideas for using/creating them are available at at www.ctcurriculum.org and www.anacleta.com . A book to accompany them is El tallador de sueños by Diana Cohn and illustrated by Amy Córdova. -some songs: Il y a un monster dans ma chambre by Don Pedro, Y'a un monster by Brigitte Sourisse, and Je veux un monster pour ami/Yo quiero un monstruo que sea mi amigo from Sesame Street -some games and printables featuring cuddly monsters from the NOGGIN educational channel are available at http://www.noggin.com . |
| Source | Ñandú |
| Inputdate | 2008-05-04 11:28:49 |
| Lastmodifieddate | 2008-05-04 11:28:49 |
| Expdate | Not set |
| Publishdate | 2008-05-05 00:00:00 |
| Displaydate | Not set |
| Active | 1 |
| Emailed | 1 |
| Isarchived | 1 |
