Grade 2 - Urban Environment Vs. Rural Environment

Maly, Visal and Samir exchanged their ideas during the discussion
and easily created a poster. Great team work!

My Grade 2 EAL students began to work on their new unit about understanding urban environment and ways to improve it. I decided to start by supporting my students in constructing their own understanding of the new vocabulary. To introduce the concept of URBAN and RURAL in a fun way we watched a cartoon about the City Mouse and the Country Mouse and then had a "contrast and compare" group discussion. We also watched a video Urban Vs. Rural and once again discussed the differences of the city and the country lifestyles. After exposing my students to the new vocabulary and concepts I engaged them in their first practice of the new words. My grade 2 EAL students had to work with preselected images of urban and rural environments and cards with words. In small groups of three or four students they had to sort out the images and the words, create posters and collectively present their new understandings.

Most of my students completed all the tasks successfully and shared their presentations with the rest of the class. However, some of my kids were still not confident in their knowledge and failed to explain the difference between URBAN and RURAL.  My plan is to play language games and memory games during my EFL classes next week. Hopefully the games will give the students that were confused one more opportunity to listen to their peers explaining the meaning of the new words and have yet another chance to practice explaining it on their own.

Alicia, Jennifer and KimVeng are discussing and sorting out the images and cards with words for the poster.

Jennifer, Alicia and Kim Veng are sharing their understanding of the new words with the rest of the class.

Mollymoon, Sorriaj and Sak presenting their poster.