EMI Cross-curricular Teaching: When DNA Meets English

English as a Medium of Instruction

EMI Cross-curricular Teaching: When Lantern Meets English

Teaching heredity and traits and how to extract DNA from bananas through English

Backing up my lesson planning structure with a demonstration class

This demonstration class, aimed at demonstrating how the lesson planning structure would work in a real classroom, is a follow-up to a workshop on competency-based teaching in TTJH last September. Not only will I be teaching students I never met; to make it more challenging, I’ll also be teaching biology through English. The goal is for those students to both comprehend the content and perform each task collaboratively.

 

Are you sure about this?

I was warned against using only English to teach because of concerns over those 7 graders’ English level. To everybody’s surprise, they exceeded expectations and were able to not only answer my questions but complete all the tasks, including card matching, the Punnett Square, and DNA extraction. On top of that, their biology teacher has taught them well to clean up after the experiment and won accolades from the principal and teachers who signed up to observe the class.  

 

Took my EMI cross-curricular teaching to the next level

I decided to stick with the EMI approach but added more scaffolding measures to ensure the success of this class, and it paid off. When preparing for the lesson, I read up on lots of materials and looked for activity ideas on YouTube. Slowly I was able to decide what key concepts to present, such as the structure of a cell, Mendel’s pea experiment, and the dominant and recessive traits. To top it all off, the DNA extraction was very hands-on and immersive, too.

 

Received lots of positive feedback during class discussion

I alone could not make it happen. The project coordinator gave her full support with logistics and everything, complete with the biology teacher’s help with the experiment. With the positive feedback and questions I got asked, I’d say it was all worth the effort. Of course, those lovely students’ participation and engagement gave me so much confidence in more future demonstration classes.

 

Did I teach content or language more? Was it a legitimate CLIL or STEM class? Would the 2030 Bilingual Nation project ever be successful one day? How do we promote cross-curricular collaborations in the school? Well, I may not have any of the answers. But, there is one thing I do know: I’ll always keep on doing what I love to create as many more opportunities to USE the language.