Body Language All Over the World

CLIL Project 3.Jahrgang

(Content and Language Integrated Learning)

Two teachers of our school and our class decided to make a project which links two subjects with each other. This project, called CLIL, was really successful because the students learned a lot and had fun nevertheless. In fact, there is a CLIL-project every year now and every year different subjects are intertwined to look at and investigate an interesting topic.

This year the third grade´s topic in CLIL was body language. Every student had to choose a country somewhere over the globe and had to find at least three gestures which did not have the similar meaning as the correspondent ones in Austria.  Of course lots of research on the web was necessary to find exciting examples.

In the third grade there are 20 students and every student chose three gestures, so altogether we had about 60 gestures to describe. To keep an overview, and to link the subject “Communication and Presentation” with the language English, we decided to make a photo-story to describe all situations and to use all photos where these gestures were shown.

Finally we described all our examples in our English lessons and produced a photo-story on the computer in our “Communication and Presentation” classes. We used special adapting-programs for the work on the photos and the texts. Finally we provided our photo-stories with the specific national anthems to make them more attractive and appealing.

We all liked this project really much, as we learned e.g. that in India people nod their heads to express “NO” but in Austria this is a sign for “Yes.” Or in Egypt men and women greet each other with hugs and kisses even though they have never met before. In Austria we rather shake hands in such a situation.  

The outcome of our four week project was a CD with the collections of our examples of body language.

CLIL-Project 2013/2014

Everybody knows it still, we made a project whose name was CLIL.

Gestures all over the world were our matter, now we know some cultures better.

We made research on the web, for body gestures, as a first step.

Gestures which are not everywhere the same, we chose and started then to explain.

Special programs on the PC, were used, great fun we had - we were really amused.

The result: a picture story with all kinds of gestures

and a suitable photo with it, now let`s admit,

that was a real hit.

We even used national anthems

 to make the matter appealing

and to ensure a special feeling.

That was our project`s matter,

one`s for sure, CLIL had never been better.

Lisa Egger 3.Jahrgang