Carmen Serrano

Your task: Plan a cross-curricular mini-project. Your mini-project should incorporate some of the techniques you have seen on the course so far. Complete the table below.

Topic and project title	The topic we are going to work is the knowledge of our city. The title is? “Our city”.
Your subject area: How will the project fit with your subject?	In this project we want to let our students use their English in a natural way and context. We want them to explore our city, with the new technologies and walking around the city and then teach their conclusions to the rest of the students. All the subjects are included in this project, it is an open project,  our main aim is to give the pupils tools to let them know at their own pace and the issues they want to know.
Who are you doing the project with?	I will work with two colleagues; music teacher and the special needs teacher. Music is always important to make a project even more interesting. Burgos has lots of traditional music that is nice to have in mind. My colleague that works with children with special needs,  will help them to achieve their aims in the level they have. Inclusion is so important for us, we all need our own pace.
Learning objectives	Work in cooperative groups. Learn and respect our culture our background. Learn from each other. All the pupils will be active part in this project. They will search for information, they will explain it to the rest of the class and all the students will learn new things from themselves and from their partners.
Anticipated problems (and solutions)	Children who doesn´t like work with other partners. She is a very shy girl, but she is a clever and great student. I let her work by her own. She is able to show the result of her work.

Teach your mini-project. Reflect on how it went. Be prepared to give feedback.

Group and date taught	5th grade group. It will last for two weeks.
What did you do?	First, we had a brainstorming to decide what items they want to know about. They THINK together, we used INQUIRY-BASED LEARNING. Then, we divided the class into group or pairs. Some of them preferred to work in pair, some others in small groups. They SHARE ideas. We wrote a sheet of paper the dates to have the work done. PLANNING. Children worked in the class, deciding what will, each of the member of the group, do: they SEE, THINK AND SHARE. Once they have their work, the show to the rest of the class, SHARE, and they learn from each other.
What went well	English was the only way to communicate in a natural way, they used their English easily. They felt free to decide what to explain to the rest of the children. They helped to each other and feel part of a group. We created a Padlet with a trip to the Museum of Human Evolution to show the students new tools they can use.
Reflection for future practice
What needed improvement/changes and why	We really believe it was too short, it would have been better to have more time, the children had to study for tests, and sometimes they felt a bit stressful. Two more weeks maybe would have been better.
What would you change considering level,  age or other factors	Timing, definitely, more time was needed for the children to search and develop their works further. Next project will be longer for sure.

Links/materials here:

“OUR CITY”

PLANNING

1.      GEOGRAPHY: make a map of Europe and color in the countries members of the Project so our pupils learn geography at the same time.

2.      HOW IS OUR CITY?

·         Where it is.

·         Weather.

·         Photos and most important facts.

3.      OUR MAIN MONUMENTS: in order to show our cities to  the others.

4.      OUR CULTURE: so close and so far ...

5.      OUR FOOD: let´s see what are our typical delicious food and meals.

6.      OUR MUSIC: music is such an important and amazing thing.

7.      OUR FESTIVALS: have fun and our traditions are also a nice thing to show….

They also made power point presentations about; Arco de Santa María, El Cid, Clunia, Gastronomy, music.....