THE SCIENCE OF VIRUSES

Why not visit the Exploratorium Museum in San Francisco? It is a good chance to travel virtually and use the resources from their amazing website   to help your learners explore Coronavirus and the science of viruses, see how they affect us all and also celebrate International Museum Day (18 May). The resources vary from videos, activities and articles.  There are even activities provided by science teachers.  You will be impressed by how much  your learners can discover about viruses. 

“BLOOM Stories of implementation” competition

Since 2018, the BLOOM project enhances knowledge about bioeconomy by providing teachers with ready-to-use material, to engage young people. This year, in collaboration with the STEM Discovery Campaign 2020, BLOOM is organising the “BLOOM Stories of implementation” competition to reward the most innovative classroom implementations of these materials. Join the competition and share your story!

How can your sctudents take part in this competition?

The ‘BLOOM Stories of Implementation’ competition will reward the most innovative classroom implementations of bioeconomy using the materials included in the BLOOM School Box, in four different categories of submission:

[1] Teaching bioeconomy in primary schools (individual work);

[2] Teaching with bioeconomy in secondary schools' STEM classes (individual work);

[3] Integrating STEM teaching with bioeconomy (teams of two STEM teachers of different subjects);

[4] Integrating STEAM teaching with bioeconomy (teams of up to three teachers of different subjects, including at least one STEM teacher and at least one non-STEM teacher)

When?

Teachers can start organising their lessons starting from November 2019 and prepare their stories to be submitted between 1 February and 30 April 2020 at 23:59 Central European Time (CET)!

The winners of each category will be invited to a teacher training workshop in Brussels, with travel, accommodation and meals covered, and the 20 finalist entries will be published on the School Network page of the BLOOM project!

Steps to participate:

1) Choose which BLOOM School Box resource works well in your classroom from the BLOOM School Box collection

2) Think of how you will implement bioeconomy in your classroom and if you will work collaboratively with other colleagues or on your own.

3) Run at least one bioeconomy lesson with your students and think about what evidence you have of your students’ engagement following your lesson(s).

4) Choose the appropriate submission category, double check the competition’s terms and conditions and fill in the submission forms (available since 1 February 2020).

Whether your school decides to take part in the competition or not, the resources this project offers in several languages , English and Spanish included, are really powerful to work on Bioeconomy topics. 

abpi resources for Science/Biology/Chemistry/PSHE, Citizenship and Physics

 This site  is supported by the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry. It provides teachers and students with high quality, free, curriculum-related, interactive resources containing animations and diagrams which can be downloaded as long as you accept their terms and conditions, which involve using the resources for educational purposes in the original form they are downloaded. Fair enough, I reckon.  

In order to see the topics you may find, you should visit the  list you can access from here . As you can notice, there are resources for all age ranges, from 5-year-olds  till 16+.  

The resources also include  diagrams and animations you can use in your lesson plans  by downloading them. Some topics  have additional worksheets both for teachers and students. These can all be accessed through the Download library. 

In the International Year of the Periodic table, may I suggest that you should try out  this great lesson plan ? 

The  resource above  includes an interactive game and so do many other topics. For instance, you can ask your students to find out about the properties of various materials by carrying out this interactive activity. 

Do you need any diagrams, posters  or animations to embed in your unit? Enter the download-library and filter the type of resource, age range and topic you are searching for. 

I am sure you will agree with me that this is a superb site so on behalf of all CLIL teachers I work with,  I would like to express our gratitude to the  Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry  for  the high-quality resources they provide for free and, above all, for their fight against disease.

Teaching the Periodic table of elements through Poetry and Music

Can you think of a better way to  focus  on the Periodic table of elements than through Poetry and Music?  Let me explain what I mean:

- Make your students go to this link  where they will find Mary Soon Lee's original Periodic Table, which will enable them to review the elements  by enjoying Kaiku poems. How? Just by clicking over an element to read the Haiku.

I suggest that you should exploit Lee's idea as follows: 

You can  start by explaining that a Haiku is a Japanese poem consisting of three lines that do not rhyme. You should add that traditional Haikus follow this structure: the first line is 5 syllables. The second line is 7 syllables. The third line is 5 syllables. That's why they are called the 5-7-5 structure.

Then, you can proceed to ask students to work in pairs, choose one  element, read and understand the meaning of the Haiku and create a new Haiku of their own for the chosen element. Encourage the use of on-line dictionaries while students are reading the Haikus and creating their own ones. 

Finally, students would share their elements and the Haikus they have created with their peers. 


- Students will probably have difficulties to pronounce the names of the elements properly . How can you help them? Make them  listen to the Periodic Table song AsapScience offers us on its YouTube channel.




You can find the lyrics here. (No fill in the gaps this time because students will have to make a huge effort  to follow the lines, so just ask them to sing along after they have listened to it twice.)

Please, share your views on the activities above with me. I will be eager to know if they are  useful for you. 

International Women's Day

In July 2010, the United Nations General Assembly created UN Women, the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women. In doing so, UN Member States took a historic step in accelerating the Organization’s goals on gender equality and the empowerment of women. Over many decades, the UN has made significant progress in advancing gender equality and on every March 8th they focus on a theme to keep on advancing towards achieving gender equality. 

The theme for International Women’s Day, 8 March, 2017, focuses on “Women in the Changing World of Work: Planet 50-50 by 2030”. The website is, as usual, a superb source for educators but I would like to recommend the section called "From where I stand", a collection of stories of women around the world who are bringing real change regarding gender equality.

I wanted to contribute to the celebration of March 8th in our classrooms through a lesson plan based on a film. Why? I would say that sometimes the names and deeds of the heroes in  films are known to all. However,  there are those films that shine the spotlight on those whose names were known to only a few, but whose stories deserve to be told. This is the case with "Hidden figures", which tells the story of a team of African-American women mathematicians who served a vital role in NASA during the early years of the US space program.

One of these women,  98-year-old Katherine Johnson,  is a true hero who was totally hidden until this film was released and I would like to pay my humble tribute to her and to all hidden women whose deeds should be known to all. The starting point of the lesson I have developed is Katherine's biography  but let me suggest using the uplifting Gospel song from the film as a warm-up:

If you wish, you can ask students to carry out a  fill in the gaps activity while they listen to the song. The complete version of the lyrics can be downloaded from here.

After listening to the song you will have created the environment to start this lesson plan on "Empowering Women in the changing world of work".

I hope my proposal will help your students to reflect on the need for gender equality regarding acknowledgement of work achievement. 


Downloadable resources for the lesson plan:

Handout for the student: Katherine's biography

Handout for the teacher: Katherine Johnson's biography

Handout for the student: biography writing frame

Handout for the student: feedback on peers'  presentations

Handout for the teacher: oral presentation rubrics for a biography

Handout for the student: listening activity

Breakthrough to CLIL for Chemistry and Physics

Cambridge University Press has just released a couple of books aimed at helping EFL students who are learning Physics and Chemistry through English to undertand the content of their subject courses and build the necessary English language skills for those contexts. The book is made up of several units, each of which covers an area of Physics or Chemistry. As for the areas of English language covered in these books, they have been selected for their relevance to understanding and discussing the content areas of Physics and Chemistry.

I  am sure the publications above will be of great help for  those of you teaching Physics and Chemistry through English. Therefore, I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate the Breakthrough to CLIL team on their great work.