Science & Art in the FLES classroom - Arpillera Habitats

This year my goal has been to really hit the Connections C of the 5 Cs. I attended the World Language and Arts Integration Academy this past summer and saw how my colleague Mercedes Harn uses art in her Spanish classes and was inspired. And since we lost our STEM lab this year I also try to throw in some science where I can.

The end result is that my third graders have been talking about where they live and where animals live. This week we finished up the unit by making arpillera inspired collages and then wrote short descriptions. They turned out so great and the students enjoyed making them.

During the unit we did a variety of activities - I "read" them the story of Welcome Home Bear (it's only in English so I translated as I read. Then I told them the story again with props. It was a great way to spiral back to Me gusta/No me gusta and weather vocabulary as well as practice the new phrases. We also looked at the animal profiles from El Parque de las Leyendas, Each profile had a section labeled habitats and told us if they were endangered or not. And of course lots of Kagan structures like Rally Robin, Mix, Pair, Share and Quiz, Quiz, Trade.

We talked about Peru - where it was on the map, its flag, and its capital. Then we looked at arpilleras and practiced describing them - the colors they saw, the animals and people, and what habitat they thought it might be. I even had 2 different apilleras to show them - one I had bought in Chile and one I bought on Ebay.

When it was time to make our arpilleras students chose what habitat they wanted to represent and they had to include 2-3 animals that lived there. Before each class, we first generated a list of words we might need while we worked. I strictly enforced a No inglés policy. It made for pretty quiet classes because the students only talked when they needed something from a classmate and occasionally to compliment each other's work.

We used Rally Robin to come up with a list of words we might need when we made our apilleras.

I've done this sort of project before and have been frustrated when students struggle to write a description even when the sentence frames are provided but I've realized that it's because I haven't modeled enough for them what to do. So this time around, we did a group write to create a description of an arpillera collage I had made. Then I picked three students' collages and wrote the individual sentences for each on index cards. Students worked in pairs to decide which collage their card went with and what order made the most sense. When I finally let them loose on their own they had both the sentence frames and an example of what it should like.

The results this time was much better. I still had students who were confused but usually those were the kids who had been absent the classes where we did the group write and matching. We also did rough drafts this time by folding a piece of notebook paper in half. On the top they wrote their first draft. I corrected it and then they unfolded their paper and copied the corrected version on the bottom.

I'm so thankful to the KY Center for putting on the Arts Integration Academies. I've gone twice now and always come away inspired and full of ideas. This unit on arpilleras was definitely a hit! 

Do you incorporate art or science in your FLES classroom? How? Share in the comments below!