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##  Thematic, Communicative Language Teaching in the K-8 Classroom. ERIC            Digest.                                                                      

Foreign language instruction for children can be enriched when                  teachers use thematic units that focus on content-area information,             engage students in activities in which they must think critically,              and provide opportunities for students to use the target language in            meaningful contexts and in new and complex ways. The national                   standards for foreign language teaching and learning support this               approach to language instruction (National Standards in Foreign                 Language Education Project, 1996). 
According to the standards,                when teachers plan lessons they should focus on the five Cs of                  Communication, Culture, Connections with other disciplines,                     Comparisons with students' native languages and cultures, and use of            the foreign language in Communities outside the classroom.                      Increasingly, foreign language educators are integrating the five Cs            of the standards into "content-related" (Curtain & Pesola, 1994)                or "theme-based" (Scarcella & Oxford, 1992) curricula. These                    curricula reinforce or extend the content of the regular classroom              curriculum to give coherence to the language lessons. A unit on the             solar system, for example, might include vocabulary that describes              the attributes of the planets, which students are also learning                 about in English. Students might also listen to and recite a poem               about the moon and the stars, compare the view of the "rabbit in the            moon" found in Aztec and Asian cultures to the North American view              of the "man in the moon," observe the night sky (phases of the moon             and star constellations) in their area at different times of the                year, and compare their observations with those of students in other            parts of the world through email exchanges in the target                        language. PLANNING THEMATIC UNITSThemes for curriculum units              can be derived from many sources. Planning thematic units allows the            teacher to incorporate a variety of language concepts into a topic              area that is interesting and worthy of study and that gives students            a reason to use the language. Teachers should choose themes that                lend themselves to teaching language that will be useful for their              students. Themes and lessons should integrate language, content, and            culture into activities that allow students to practice the foreign             language and that prepare them to use it in a variety of contexts. A            focus on communication, including the interactions present in all               uses of the language (for speaking, listening, reading, and writing)            is essential. Students need to be able to interpret the language,               express themselves in the language, and negotiate meaning in the                language (Savignon, 1997). 
In beginning communicative language                classes, the teacher's role includes introducing vocabulary and                 phrases and providing comprehensible language input for the                     students. Visuals and manipulatives, gestures, sounds, and actions              all help students understand the new vocabulary and structures.                 Students need opportunities to be active participants in tasks that             require them to negotiate meaning and practice language in                      communication with their teacher, their peers, and                              others. 
Pesola (1995) developed the Framework for Curriculum                  Development for FLES programs, which begins with a thematic center              and creates a dynamic relationship among the factors that teachers              must take into account: language in use, subject content, and                   culture. (See also Curtain & Pesola, 1994, for a detailed                       description of the framework.) The framework highlights a set of                questions to guide curriculum planning: 
* Who are the students in             terms of learner characteristics, such as developmental level,                  learning style, and experiential background? 
* What are the                   planned activities, and how will teachers assess students'                      performance? 
* How will the classroom setting affect the planned              activities? 
* What materials do teachers need to support the                  activities? 
* What language functions, vocabulary, and grammatical            structures will students practice through the activities? 
* What              knowledge about subject content and culture will the students                   gain? EXAMPLES OF THEMATIC UNITSThree thematic                            units--"Visiting the Farm," A German Fairy Tale, and The South                  American Rainforest--are described below. They were developed by                teachers who used Pesola's framework to guide their planning                    process. In each of these units, the teachers created language                  immersion settings in their classrooms, planned lessons around                  themes that were interesting to the students, asked the students to             think critically, reinforced concepts and skills from the regular               classroom, integrated culture, and gave students many opportunities             to use the target language in a variety of situations (Haas,                    1999). 
"Visiting the Farm"  Martine's second-grade French class               focused on the farm for 4 weeks. The class began each day with an               activity that reviewed previously learned language. For example, one            student would make an animal sound and call on another student to               say the name of the animal. As the students moved from activity to              activity, Martine gave them short time limits for specific tasks to             be completed on their own or in pairs or small groups. The students             used French as they manipulated pictures and completed assigned                 tasks. Activities included brainstorming a list of names of farm                animals in French that students already knew, learning new animal               names in French, and drawing a farm mural on butcher paper; singing             a song about animals in the barnyard (Dans la basse cour); comparing            barns in France and the United States; planting two types of                    vegetables chosen from seed packets of common French vegetables;                measuring and charting the plants' growth; tasting radishes with                butter (as they are served in France); creating a labeled farm page             for their book of all of the places they "visited" in class that                year; sorting food by plant or animal and completing and describing             a food pyramid; making baguette sandwiches; comparing with a partner            pictures of vocabulary words (e.g., the animals on their farm pages,            their favorite foods, the ingredients in their baguette sandwiches)             with a partner; listening to the story of the three pigs in French              and creating their own versions of the tale (e.g., the three horses             and the big, bad, hungry cow), which they acted out; and taking                 their baguette sandwiches with them to a fantasy picnic on the                  farm. 
"A German Fairy Tale"  In this 3-week unit, Frederike                   introduced her third-grade German students to a story based on a                Grimm's fairy tale about a pancake ("Pfannkuchen") by singing the               song "Ich Habe Hunger" ("I Am Hungry") with them, then preparing                batter (measuring in grams) and cooking a pancake in class. Next,               pairs of students compared the sentences they had cut apart from                mixed-up copies of the recipe and resequenced them in the                       appropriate order. Throughout the unit, Frederike began each class              by telling or retelling part of the pancake story. "The Thick, Fat              Pancake" ("Der Dicke Fette Pfannkuchen") is the story of an old                 woman who bakes a pancake that does not want to be eaten. It jumps              out of the pan and rolls through the forest. The pancake's delicious            smell attracts one forest animal after another. The names of the                animals describe their characteristics, such as Wolf                            Sharptooth ("Wolf Scharfzahn") and Rabbit Longears ("Haselongohr").             As the animals tell the pancake to stand still so that they can eat             it, each one adds another adjective to describe the pancake: "Thick,            fat, dear, sweet, yummy, wonderful, golden, delicious, marvelous                pancake, stand still! I want to eat you up!" At this request, the               pancake laughs and waves and continues rolling down the hill.                   Finally, the pancake meets two hungry orphans, jumps into their laps            and begs, "Eat me, I will give you strength." The orphans then eat              the pancake. 
The students practiced new vocabulary by drawing                 pictures on the board as Frederike recited the scene and by                     sequencing sentences about the story using sentence strips and a                pocket chart. The retellings were never boring and always included              student input and probing questions that elicited information about             the animals in the fairy tale. With each storytelling, Frederike                emphasized different vocabulary or introduced a new animal. She also            engaged the students in activities that provided practice in using              German: 
* copying sentences from the story and illustrating them              to create personal storybooks 
* listing characteristics of the                animals, such as the large, sharp teeth of the wolf 
* creating                surnames for the animals, like Wolf Sharptooth 
* playing "inside              outside circles" (Kagan, 1986), with one circle of students asking              questions about the story and their partners in the other circle                answering 
* pretending to become animals and pancakes when the                teacher waved her magic wand, then role playing their actions in the            story 
* singing and dancing the "duck dance" and learning the                 parts of the animals' bodies 
* listing what the animals ate and               learning the German words for carnivore, herbivore, and omnivore 
*            practicing reading the fairy tale to a partner 
* selecting roles              for a play based on the fairy tale and presenting the play for their            parents and the first-grade German students 
* reading their                   illustrated storybooks to the first graders. 
"The South American              Rainforest"  "?Necesitamos los portafolios de espanol?" (Do we need             our Spanish notebooks?) is one of the questions students ask as they            prepare for Soledad's fifth-grade Spanish class. Soledad begins the             first class of this 6-week unit on the rainforest with a song about             the weather and questions about the weather outside. Soon the class             is working with maps, first with Soledad asking questions about the             location of various rain forests in the world, then with the                    students in the role of teacher, asking other students                          questions. 
The activities that follow lead students to communicate            with each other, practice their Spanish, and focus on vocabulary and            structure: locating rainforests on the map using their background               knowledge from social studies class; contributing to a written                  description of rainforests on the overhead projector; reading                   chorally what they have written; and playing games and singing songs            that practice the names of animals and their movements. They also               work in small groups to tell each other how to color the different              animals, to create sentences about animal pictures, to introduce                themselves as an animal to their neighbors, to create a dialog                  between two animals, to write their animal dialogs on chart paper               and to read and role-play them, and to edit the dialogs that they               have written. They learn about the layers of the rainforest and                 where each animal lives, what they eat, and what their body                     coverings are. They write and record conversations between two                  animals that incorporate all of the information covered in class.               They create the sounds of the rain in the rainforest through claps,             snaps, and pounding feet. They write a paragraph about the                      rainforest and, finally, they make batidos de mango (mango                      shakes). CONCLUSIONAlthough each class is different from the              others in content and specific activities, all of the teachers                  planned interesting thematic units that included daily review of                language; rich, comprehensible input in an immersion setting; and               opportunities to think critically and to process language and                   negotiate meaning. They also involved students as active and                    interactive participants in a variety of activities that reflect the            goals of the national standards. Although creating thematic units               takes time and effort on the part of the teacher, this way of                   teaching engages students and provides them with a meaningful and               exciting context in which to learn a new                                        language. REFERENCESCurtain, H., & Pesola,                                C.A. (1994). "Languages and children, making the match: (2nd ed.).              New York: Longman. 
Haas, M. (1999). "Thematic, communicative                  language teaching and learning: Case studies of FLES teachers and               their classes." Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Teachers College,            Columbia University. 
Kagan, S. (1989). "Cooperative learning                  resources for teachers." San Juan Capistrano, CA: Resources for                 Teachers. 
National Standards in Foreign Language Education                    Project. (1996). "Standards for foreign language learning: Preparing            for the 21st century." Yonkers, NY: Author. 
Pesola,                           C.A.D. (1995). "Background, design, and evaluation of a conceptual              framework for FLES curriculum." Unpublished doctoral dissertation,              University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. 
Savignon,                               S.J. (1997). "Communicative competence: Theory and classroom                    practice" (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. 
Scarcella, R.C., &                Oxford, R.L. (1992). "The tapestry of language learning." Boston:               Heinle & Heinle. 
This publication was prepared with funding from              the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, U.S. Department             of Education. The ideas and opinions expressed in the Digest do not             necessarily reflect the positions or policies of OERI, ED, or the               Clearinghouse.  This Digest is in the public domain and may be                  freely reproduced.                                                           **Title:** Thematic, Communicative Language Teaching in the K-8 Classroom. ERIC            Digest.                                                                      **Document Type:** Information Analyses---ERIC Information Analysis Products (IAPs) (071); Information Analyses---ERIC Digests (Selected) in Full Text (073); **Available From:** ERIC/CLL, 4646 40th Street NW, Washington, DC 20016-1859. Tel:                  800-276-9834 (Toll Free); Web site: http://www.cal.org/ericcll.              **Descriptors:**  Communicative Competence (Languages), Elementary Education, French,            German,  Second Language Instruction, Second Language Learning,                 Spanish,  Teaching Methods,  Thematic Approach, Units of Study               **Identifiers:**  Content Area Teaching, ERIC Digests                                         
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