Didactic Unit
Teacher in training: Esteban Sánchez Álvarez
Title of the Unit: Reuse, Recycle and Reduce.
Contextualization: Students are at a university level, they are all adults (18-24 years old approximately) and they are at a B2 level according to the Common European Framework. The institution is UNAD’s virtual community of languages.
Justification: The Reuse, Recycle and Reduce topic is a suitable one for working with the students, as it is expected for them to be able to proficiently communicate in this or any other matters of interest that they can also apply out of the classroom, in their daily lives and in real communicative situations (MEN, 2006).
Organization of the Didactic Unit: There will be 4 lessons: one for students to learn Reuse, the second for them to learn about Recycle and the third one for learning about Reducing. The last session will integrate all of them to measure the student’s knowledge gained over the former sessions.
The reason to divide the sessions this way is to ensure the group of students have the opportunity to interiorize each definition and not to be overwhelmed by having to learn all the terms in just one session.
General Objective
To gain new vocabulary and expressions over ecological matters, to be able to criticize actions against the ecological cause and to be able to talk about actions to take from home to contribute to this respect.
Specific Objectives
Session 1: Students will gain knowledge over what “reuse” means. They’ll also gain knowledge over some basic ecology terms and tell apart good from bad practices in this aspect.
Subject Content
Session 2: Students will gain knowledge over what “recycle” means. They’ll be able to determine whether some products are recyclable or not.
Session 3: Students will gain knowledge over what “reduce” means. They’ll be able to describe ways in which they can reduce their footprint.
Session 4: Students will reinforce their knowledge over the 3 Rs by putting it into practice. They will be able to propose examples of how they will carry out each according to their specific home contexts/ setups.
Session 1: Modal verbs reinforcement (should, could, can, must) for expressing the best/ bad practices they will follow/ avoid depending on the case.
I could start recycling by…
Session 2: Practice over the use of connectors and linking arguments for sustaining their ideas over products recycling (I believe that, I consider that, the reason is that, because, due to, for instance, for example, etc).
I don’t think this product is recyclable because…
Session 3: Focus here is more related to objects vocabulary and adjectives for describing objects (eraser – fluffy, ruler – long, claymoldable) which help the students to highlight the properties of materials that compose the objects as a mean to later show how those
Vocabulary
objects can be reutilized to reduce unnecessary waste.
These watercolors are old and dry, but I can add some hot water and mix well to make them useful and colorful again
Session 4: Students will be able to better practice the future tense and tell apart “will” from “going to” usage when they start showing off their own solutions/ alternatives to be more eco-friendly.
I will be more ecological at home by… I’m going to start reducing waste because…
Ecology, eco-friendly, reduce, recycle, recycling bins, reuse, reutilize, waste, go green, material, clean up, throw away, dispose, disposable, trash, packaging, containers, footprint, BYOG (Bring Your Own Bag), donation, decomposition, sustainability.
Besides the structures mentioned in the “Subject content” section, there are other structures that may be practiced with students at some point during the lessons, as follows:
• Present tense
Structures
This is not only the most commonly used structure, but it also allows for students to answer questions for any icebreaker activities the teacher makes or any other activities.
“What do you do in order to become more eco-friendlier at home?”
“Teacher, at home, whenever I can I try to save water, energy and gas” .
• Use of conditionals (especially 1st and 2nd ones)
Conditionals are useful for students to find relations between events and causeconsequence effects, very useful for them to practice the language in their daily lives:
1st conditional:
“If I take action now, the planet will appreciate it”
2nd conditional “
If the greenhouse effect wasn’t a reality, the Earth’s poles wouldn’t be unfreezing”
•
Comparatives and superlatives
These forms are useful for students to find contrastive relations between concepts and be able to speak naturally about them when necessary.
“Paper doesn’t take as much time to degrade as glass bottles”
“Plastic bags take the longest time to degrade, compared to other materials”
•
Language in context
This includes all the corrections necessary to make to students in order to widen their vocabulary or for ensuring they are using the right words under determined scenarios.
“it is fundamental to delete waste” “it is fundamental to eliminate waste”
Language skills / Discourse type
The abilities that are focused on during each session are as follows:
Session 1: Speaking/ listening for understanding the new concepts, making questions and supporting their positions when necessary. This is the “tell apart good from bad practices” activity which is all done in group and orally.
Session 2: Speaking/ listening for understanding the new concepts, making questions and supporting their positions when necessary. This is the “recyclable vs. nonrecyclable products” activity which is all done in group and orally.
Session 3: Speaking/ listening for understanding the new concepts, making questions and supporting their positions when necessary. Writing is optional, depending whether the teacher wants to do the “uses of different objects” activity with the group orally or ask the students to write them down individually and then do group socialization/ feedback.
Session 4: Speaking/ listening for understanding the new concepts, making questions and supporting their positions when necessary. Writing is optional, depending on whether the teacher wants to do the activity of student’s proposals/ alternatives/ solutions of how to be more eco-friendly at their homes with the group orally or ask the students to write them down individually and then do group socialization/ feedback.
Activities
Discourse type: Argumentation is going to be used the most during the unit as it is expected from students to be able to sustain their positions with arguments and generate as much conversation and output from their side to give them accurate and complete feedback and for them to be immersed and active as much as possible.
Session 1
Warm up: The teacher shares a photograph with the students of a damaged ecosystem vs. a healthy one, for promoting conversation and generate brainstorming.
Presentation: The teacher then proceeds to present the topic of reusing by showing definitions and examples, then asks questions to the students to make sure they understood the topics properly and asks them if they have any doubts about the topic.
Practice: The teacher shows to the class some hypothetical situations in which there is a description and an image, and the students need to determine whether what is being shown is a good or a bad practice for ecology.
Production: The teacher then asks students to do a little play for their partners, the teacher forms pairs of students (or any number the teacher may consider necessary) and assigns them an action. As each group does the play in front of the class in turns, their partners try to guess what they are representing and whether it is a good or a bad practice.
Assessment: To close up the activity, the teacher has a roulette (if this resource is not available, then just says the name of a random
student) which is spined and as the name of the students show, the selected one when the wheel stops spinning needs to say one recommended reusing action.
Session 2
Warm up: The teacher starts off the session by telling the students he/ she has some unknown words that students need to figure out and the only hint they have is that they are related to ecology. The teacher plays hangman with the students to make the class fun and interesting.
As soon as students discover the new word, the teacher explains the word by giving its definition and examples of use.
Presentation: During this stage, it is presented the topic of recycling by showing definitions and examples, then the teacher asks questions to the students to make sure they understood the topic properly and asks them if they have any doubts about it.
Practice: Based on the previous information, students are presented with some pictures of products and are asked whether they are recyclable or not; the teacher prompts the students constantly to always say the reasons behind their choice.
Production: The teacher then plays a video on YouTube platform named “What really happens to the plastic you throw away” and then asks the students some questions to ensure they comprehended its content. Then, the teacher plays the video again and then asks the students to do a timeline about the plastic cycle.
Assessment: For homework, the teacher asks the students to investigate about the recycling bins colors and their meaning, and how to classify the disposes correctly and accordingly.
Session 3
Warm up: Resuming the previous class progress, the teacher has an infographic with the 3 recycling bins and some objects for students to classify them based on what they learned during the homework investigation.
Presentation: During this stage, it is presented the topic of reducing by showing definitions and examples, then the teacher asks questions to the students to make sure they understood the topic properly and asks them if they have any doubts about it.
Practice: Once the topic is fully introduced and students confirm they don’t have any further questions, the teacher starts showing definitions one by one for which the students have to indicate the right term that matches them. This can be done in group or, for a more personalized tracking of student’s results, it can be done individually, by asking each student to send the response internally.
Production: Students afterwards do an individual activity in which they need to freely choose one object they have at their homes and fill out a chart with its main characteristics plus show the different uses that can be given to the object once it doesn’t work anymore for developing its original task.
Assessment: After the former step is complete, the teacher asks the students to do a short
summary of what they learned throughout the lesson and share it.
Session 4
Warm up: The teacher starts the class with an activity in which all 3 concepts seen in previous sessions are showing. The idea of the activity is to gather all ideas around them to refresh student’s minds and cement the path for the development of the upcoming overall lesson.
Presentation: During this stage, the teacher takes the most relevant concepts out of the brainstorming activity done on the previous step and asks students to prepare a short presentation of the topic that the instructor assigned to each one of them. After each presentation the teacher provides the necessary feedback regarding either the presentation content as it is or regarding communicative matters in the L2 (content & form) without interrupting the student while he/ she is in the middle of the presentation.
Practice: Students are presented with different situations, and they need to classify them based on whether they are reutilization, recycling or reusing ones and, as always, give arguments to sustain their choice.
Production: Students are then divided in groups, and they are asked to expose in front of the class the ways in which they will become more eco-friendly overall in their lives and how they can inspire others to do so.
Assessment: In order to verify all the knowledge gained by the students, the teacher can do an exam which includes all 3 topics to
evaluate the appropriation of concepts and its use under different situations.
Methodology
Organization and class distribution / timing
Session 1
Warm up: Whole-class activity (5 minutes)
Presentation: Whole-class activity (15 minutes)
Practice: Whole-class activity (10 minutes)
Production: Pairs (or the # of students per group that the teacher considers necessary) for activity preparation and development. Wholeclass for further socialization of the activity to the rest of the class, staging and subsequent feedback given by the teacher (20 minutes)
Assessment: Whole-class activity (10 minutes)
Total time: 1 hour
Session 2
Warm up: Whole-class activity (10 minutes)
Presentation: Whole-class activity (15 minutes)
Practice: Whole-class activity (10 minutes)
Production: Whole-class for video playing and asking of questions. Individual or pair group (depending on how the teacher decides is best) for timeline activity (20 minutes)
Assessment: Whole-class activity (5 minutes)
Total time: 1 hour
Session 3
Warm up: Whole-class activity (10 minutes)
Presentation: Whole-class activity (15 minutes)
Practice: Group or individual activity depending on if the teacher wants to track the results for each student or not (10 minutes)
Production: Individual for activity development and group for socialization to the class (15 minutes)
Assessment: Individual for activity development and group for socialization to the class (10 minutes)
Total time: 1 hour
Session 4
Warm up: Whole-class activity (10 minutes)
Presentation: Individual for activity development and group for socialization to the class (15 minutes)
Practice: Whole-class activity (10 minutes)
Production: Pairs (or any other # of students per group that the teacher considers necessary) for activity development and group for the
Resources / Materials
exposition part (15 minutes)
Assessment: Individual (10 minutes)
Total time: 1 hour
Session 1
- Microsoft Teams for holding the meetings or any other reunion software
- Microsoft Whiteboard for brainstorming or any other whiteboard software
- Google Slides for slides and presentations or any other slides software
- Google Images for images lookup and showing or any other search engine (i.e. Bing, Yahoo)
“La Ruleta Aleatoria” page for random students pick when necessary
es.piliapp.com/random/wheel/
Session 2
- Microsoft Teams for holding the meetings or any other reunion software
- Google Slides for slides and presentations or any other slides software
- Google Images for images lookup and showing or any other search engine (i.e. Bing, Yahoo)
- Online hangman game software for realizing this game when necessary with the students
hangmanwords.com/create
- YouTube platform for playing videos such as “What really happens to the plastic you throw away” youtube.com/watch?v=_6xlNyWPpB8
- Timelines software such as TimeWebs, Creately, LucidChart for developing this activity. If none of them are available, students can simply use any graphic design software such as Canva, PowerPoint, etc. that they have handy.
Session 3 - Microsoft Teams for holding the meetings or any other reunion software
- Google Slides for slides and presentations or any other slides software
- Google Images for images lookup and showing or any other search engine (i.e. Bing, Yahoo)
- Canva infographic for initial warm up activity https://bit.ly/3hgZ5Ne
- Google Docs or Microsoft Word for students to fill out the required chart in the production phase and do the summary on the assessment one
Evaluation(criteria and instruments)
Session 4
- Microsoft Teams for holding the meetings or any other reunion software
- Microsoft Whiteboard for brainstorming or any other whiteboard software
- Google Slides for slides and presentations or any other slides software
- Google Images for images lookup and showing or any other search engine (i.e. Bing, Yahoo)
- Google Forms or Microsoft Forms for conducting the test in the assessment phase
Student’s evaluation is holistic, this means that the grading is not limited to just one activity or event but to the compilation of all of them, allowing to evaluate the multitude of abilities and attitudes that students demonstrated during the development of the lesson.
The 4 main aspects that the teacher evaluates (25% out of the final note each) are shown in the rubric of evaluation attached next as well as the range of possible scores that students could get depending on each parameter stablished.
Rubric of evaluation
Criterion High score Medium score Low score Score assigned
Student’s participation and attitudes towards the class.
This criterion represents 25% (or 25 points) out of the 100% (or 100 points) of the final score
The student actively participated in class and showed a good attitude overall.
If the student’s demonstrated attitude is at this level, he/ she can get between 20 and 25 points
The student participated sporadically in class and/ or the attitude demonstrated was little leaned towards collaboration.
If the student’s demonstrated attitude is at this level, he/ she can get between 10 and 20 points
Final exam score
This criterion represents 25% (or 25 points) out of the 100% (or 100 points) of the final score
The student got 20% or less of wrong questions in the final exam’s score.
If the student’s final exam score is at this level, he/ she can get between 20 and 25 points
The student got between 20% and 40% of wrong questions in the final exam’s score.
If the student’s final exam score is at this level, he/ she can get between 10 and 20 points
The student participated seldomly or didn’t do it at all in class and showed a negative attitude towards the topics and/ or towards his/ her peers.
If the student’s demonstrated attitude is at this level, he/ she can get between 0 and 10 points
The student got 40% or more of wrong questions in the final exam’s score.
If the student’s final exam score is at this level, he/ she can get between 0 and 10 points
Communicative performance during expositions and other oral activities
This criterion represents 25% (or 25 points) out of the 100% (or 100 points) of the final score
The student demonstrated outstanding communicative abilities and was able to convey the meaning in a clear way.
If the student’s communicative performance is at this level, he/ she can get between 20 and 25 points
The student demonstrated average communicative abilities and sometimes it was hard to understand what he/ she said in the target language.
If the student’s communicative performance is at this level, he/ she can get between 10 and 20 points
The student communicated poorly the ideas most of the time and the majority of the speech was unintelligible or hard to understand.
If the student’s communicative performance is at this level, he/ she can get between 0 and 10 points
Written exercises and deliverables (summaries, charts, timelines, etc.)
This criterion represents 25% (or 25 points) out of the 100% (or 100 points) of the final score
The student delivered all the activities and exercises asked by the teacher.
If the student’s deliverables count is at this level, he/ she can get between 20 and 25 points
The student delivered some of the activities and exercises asked by the teacher.
If the student’s deliverables count is at this level, he/ she can get between 10 and 20 points
The student delivered nearly none or none of the activities and exercises asked by the teacher. If the student’s deliverables count is at this level, he/ she can get between 0 and 10 points
References
Pérez Torres, I. 2009. "Apuntes sobre los principios y características de la metodología CLIL" en V. Pavón, J. Ávila (eds.), Aplicaciones didácticas para la enseñanza integrada de lengua y contenidos. Sevilla: Consejería de Educación de la Junta de Andalucía-Universidad de Córdoba.171-180.
Saenz, S. (2012). Didactic Unit. Zaguan.unizar.es. https://zaguan.unizar.es/record/8066/files/TAZ-TFM-2012-175_ANE.pdf
Rogue Disposal & Recycling, Inc. (2018). Exploring the three Rs of waste management Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. https://bit.ly/3VNNtAw
MEN (2006). Formar en lenguas extranjeras: ¡el reto! Lo que necesitamos saber y saber hacer. https://bit.ly/2Ms3Wuk
TED-Ed. (21 de Abril de 2015). What really happens to the plastic you throw away - Emma Bryce. [Video]. YouTube. youtube.com/watch?v=_6xlNyWPpB8