SWBAT: Carry out research using authentic materials in the TL to obtain the data necessary to complete their portion of the class project, express themselves appropriately in the TL when presenting their research to the class, understand TL input sufficiently to comprehend other students' information presentations, make connections with other disciplines to add to their data and thus enhance their knowledge of what a climbing expedition to Aconcagua requires.
Standards targeted: 1.1, 1.2, 1.3; 2.1, 2.2; 3.1, 3.2; 4.1, 4.2; 5.1, 5.2
Description of activity: The Aconcagua Project calls for students to "climb" this famous peak in South America. The project originates in the language class (here, obviously, Spanish) but spills over into several other disciplines with careful planning and collaboration on the part of the instructors involved. In order to complete this assignment, the students need to plan the entire expedition from start to finish in order to ensure its success. They will work in groups and individually, sharing their information at designated intervals. Each group can have responsibility for a certain portion of the trip and expedition. (The jigsaw designation refers to putting it all together at the end. Every piece of the "puzzle" or project is vital to its eventual succesful conclusion.) They will collect data from a variety of sources, both traditional and technology-based. The Aconcagua Official Home Page (http://www.aconcagua.org/ ) will be very helpful for securing much information on the Internet.
Planning the trip will entail everything from getting to the country (airfares, routes) and meals and lodging before the climb, to the entrance fee to the park and mountain, conditions for the climb (both geophysical and physiological), costs incurred by the expedition on-site, selection of the optimal ascent route, and so forth. Much of this information can be found at the Aconcagua site on the WWW. The travel information can be found at numerous web sites, using search engines (remember we learned about them before?).
While much of the discussion and planning will take place in the language class, much of the data collection and planning can be reinforced by studying parallel concepts in other disciplines. Below are some examples of activities that can be implemented in other subject area classes.
Several other examples of on-line lessons and activities that are Standards-based, use authentic materials, and the WWW can be found at the following sites:
Civilisation française
- a terrific
site put together by Marie
Ponterio and loaded with activities that enable language learners to
discover just what the title indicates.
Taller
hispano - a series of Spanish language culture modules tangentially
following the themes in "Destinos" but applicable to any Spanish language
course; oh, BTW, "I
made this."
Netspiegel - focused Internet exercises with common cultural themes, to be used to "Lernexpress" and similar textbooks; this site was created by Andreas Lixl-Purcell.