Interdisciplinary approach to English language teaching through creative students’ presentations

One of the aims of English language teaching is to engage students to the learning process by exposing them to how they can use the language they are learning to real life experiences, thus fostering the idea to try harder and acquire those life-long skills. This year I had decided to give my students more freedom to choose the topics of their team presentations in the English course. Additionally, I advised them to opt for topics that pertain to different disciplines, in our case different school courses. The result was incredibly creative and authentic, as the students were engaged in topics of biology and history. They presented their collaborative work to their classmates and to both me (the English teacher) and their history and biology teachers and in this way gained positive evaluation in their overall assessment at the end of the school term (of four months duration). The most representative examples of this educational practice are the following: 1) “Down Syndrome” by students of second grade of Lyceum, combining biology and English and evaluated by their biology teacher Mr George Marakis and me. This particular group had also made a chromosomes replica to exemplify in a more tangible way Down Syndrome.  2) “The Gallipolli Campaign” by students of second grade of Lyceum, combining history and English and supported in their research by their history teacher, Mr Manolis Kouroumalis and evaluated by both teachers 3) “Medicine in the Byzantine Years” combining history and English and evaluated by their history teacher, Mr Manolis Kouroumalis and me. The last group of students enriched their presentation with a small role-play at the end which was both creative and unusual, giving a theatrical touch.

Overall, the attempt to encourage team work, interdisciplinary study, freedom of choice and practice of presentation skills was a very successful one, helping students to become more involved in their learning process while being creative and having fun at the same time.

 

By Maria Pitsaki (English Language Teacher)