Earth Day Plates

It's Earth Day on Sunday 22nd April. Here is a great opportunity with your KS2 classes to make links between themselves and the rest of the World and think about a common purpose- looking after our Earth. Steph P and her classes took a simple idea,often seen in classrooms. The children created these paper plate displays in the picture above to consider their position in the Universe and explore key nouns and two simple sentences "I am called.." and "I live in ..."in the target language. These can easily be adapted to focus on Earth as if we are looking down on Earth from Space.

Earth plates

Let's  create "Earth" plates.

Simply use the noun for Earth , the continent , the country , the name of the city , name of the  town and finally the sentence "I live in.." (in the target language) which the children need to complete with own address.On the reverse, writng in the target language the name phrase and a greeting add a cartoon drawing of the child.Make the class flip chart the "Ground control Chart".

Play "Astronauts to Ground control " games first. Divide your class in to small groups or pairs of word astronauts. Set up simple word sorting games on desks and tables .Give out packs of cards with nouns for Earth / continents/ a country in each continent including own country/ names of local towns and villages.

1. Can the children identify what the words may mean and can they see links between target language nouns and nouns in English or home languages? Take feedback and gather information on the flip chart which you have named as "Ground Control Chart". 
2. Can the children organise the nouns in different groups - alphabetically, from the smallest land mass (i.e. home / street where they live) to the largest space (Earth). Again take feedback and make a note of these investigations on the"Ground Control" chart. 
3. Sentence building challenge. On your "Ground Control Chart"  write the target language phrase for "I live in ...".In pairs or individually challenge the children to write in draft (or organise cards as prompts for speaking) and create the longest "I live in ..." statement they can ( so I live in + street/ village/ town/ county/ country / continent/ Earth). Take feedback and write up several examples on your "Ground Control Chart".
4. Set up an "astronaut" memory challenge - how much of one of the sentences can the children remember? Give the children thinking , remembering and repeating with partners time. Invite volunteers to come to the front and say as much of the sentence as they can .
5. Time to create those Earth plates!