CROSS-CURRICULAR TOPICS. CLIL benefits

         Abstract. My teachers from “Designing and Delivering Effective CLIL Lessons for the Primary Classroom” subject and “Exploring Children's Literature in English” subject proposed to my class to do two projects. The first one was to scaffold a text and the second one was a story telling based on gestures and simple stories. Why not to use these two resources like a complementary tool to teach the same topic? Let’s think about the good aspects of using cross-curricular topics analysing these two activities.

        In my case, my workgroup decided to use the butterfly cycle for the two activities, it wasn't required by the teacher, the rest of the class choose different topics for each activity. The first activity consisted on making a text more understandable for children who his/her native language is not English. We had to use different scaffolding techniques related with language. The other activity consisted on creating a storytelling using a template of a story already created and invent gestures and show illustrations we had drawn and to do it during we are telling the story. Finally all the class is involved.

        At the first activity we have work with some ways of scaffolding as:

> Text simplification. We did the text given easier, not removing any important information but changing language type closer to BICs.

> Division in paragraphs. Each paragraph is a section, like the chapters of a tale, and has a creative title, corresponding a different stage and in relation with the illustration.

> Visual synthesis. In a simple glance you can guess what the text talk about. The illustrations use some realia objects and different textures in the central part of the composition.

> Key words glossary. The key words are highlighted in the text and there is a glossary using drawings for explaining the meaning of these words. This glossary is in the same cardboard of the text. 
  

       
     In this manner, the original text is easier to understand due to simplified sentences, the different sections speed up searching concrete information, the illustration related with the text help you to learn easily what the text talk about because is very schematic and eye-catching and finally, the glossary near the text makes instantaneous the words seeking.  

         At the second activity, we use other scaffolding techniques:

> Visual support. The illustrations corresponding with the story in a imaginative and fantastic way, projected in big size.

> Gestures. For the most important words correspond a gesture, mostly in verbs and names that are repeated all along the story.

> Student output. The teacher is not the only one who produces the story, but all the class is involve and learn the gestures and the story.

> Simple structure. Short and not difficult structure, just introduction, climax and denouement.

      Using this resources, children can understand the story even they don't know some words, they are helped by the gestures and illustrations. Students' participation is positive in order to remember better what they have learned, and the simple structure helps to memorize faster and makes easily the performance.

      All this benefits, from the two activities, are applied to the same topic: The Butterfly Cycle. Use the same topic, in two different subject have a lot of benefits, for this reason I show why is important to take into account the cross curricular topics:

> Student doesn't perceive different subjects as isolated, there is a connexion between different knowledge areas. Modern sciences are all related, overlapping areas of studying, creating relations and making complementary investigations of the same things. You show to the student a realistic vision of the world of science.

> The related learning of knowledge is too much effective. Relates with something learned before, recent or not. We use this previous knowledge about the topic like foundation of the new knowledge related, or as a base to develop some specific skill. Also teacher can use a known topic to do an activity to develop some intelligence, students are more comfortable with topics they control.

> They can see the same topic from different perspectives. It benefits students, because not everybody are good in same intelligences, maybe if a student doesn't fully understand the topic in a subject he/she can do it in other one. In this way, activities in different subjects are learning complementary.

        In conclusion, doing this two activities at the university using the same thematic I have realized that not just an activity can offer the necessary to understand a topic, varied activities are necessary. For this reason, is a necessity do activities that embrace different areas, and different subjects in order to complement the learning process and meet all types of learning