Scratch Language & Culture Exchange
Grade 6 CLIL English Unit: Spring 2020
Context
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Goals
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Practical, content-based language usage
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Cultural awareness
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Online intercultural connection
In this four-week unit, students produced culturally-related Scratch projects in tandem with a class in the US, swapped links, and then created reaction remixes in reply to each other.
Details
Considering the relatively fluid constraints of our school's CLIL English program, I'm always motivated to create opportunities for our students to interact with others abroad using their English skills. I learned some basic Scratch skills in a grad class and realized this is an excellent platform for my sixth graders to reach out. Experience from the previous two years' video exchanges informed me on how to anticipate and approach roadblocks such as locating participating classes abroad, access to tech, designing support materials, and how to best help students less practiced in Scratch and/or English.
Insights
Implementing this unit proved to me that projects like this are far more beneficial than ones educators are often pressured to do (i.e. integrate tech simply for the sake of integrating tech). My students truly accomplished intercultural communication in a way that would not have been possible without personal computers, Scratch, and a stable internet connection. Through the course of this project we also endured the spread of Covid-19 - first here in Taiwan, then in the US. In spite of unforeseen roadblocks, we were still able to successfully complete amazing projects and exchange feedback across the globe. You can read about our journey here!