Bilingual biology lesson for the 7th grade

What’s better than one teacher? Well, two, of course!!

The 7^th Grade “Squirrels” were in for a surprise last week when they arrived to find Biology teacher Lidia Dyachkovskaya in their classroom along with their regular English teacher.

Lidia presented the topic of living organisms and elicited what animals can and can’t do. Students learnt about uni-cellular and multi-cellular organisms and how to describe the structure of a cell in English.

As usual, the “Squirrels” were very enthusiastic and active in English. They tried very hard to explain the concepts and were supported by the beautiful visual presentation.

Bilingual lessons are a great step in the path towards the International Baccalaureate program. The role of the subject teacher is to bring lesson content, while the English teacher elicits vocabulary and directs students to describe the content as best they can with whatever English resources they have at their disposal. The idea is not to forbid the use of Russian in these lessons – rather, to discuss the topics in both languages and to reflect on the learning in whichever language feels comfortable.

The “Squirrels” said that learning Biology in English was not very hard and was very interesting, and they are looking forward to the next bilingual lesson!