This blog is created by four teachers of
English who spent three weeks in Chichester University in 2017 and took part in
a course about CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) methodology.
This blog was born due to the reflection during and after the course and it has
the aim of implement what we had learnt.
This blog has as a main objective to propose
CLIL material that could be used by teachers of science. We would like to
justify starting with a tale saying that it is an engaging tool for students
and it is commonly known that tales boost children’s imagination, a crucial
faculty in terms of inventions.
ICARUS
Minos, the cruel king of Crete, had imprisoned an inventor named Daedalus, and his son, Icarus. The inventor had designed an amazing labyrinth for the king,
and he did not want that nobody could find his/her way out. Minos put the Minotaur, a beast,
a horrible thing, in the centre of the maze, and fed it
on young women and men.
The king put Daedalus and Icarus in a castle with high walls so that they could not escape. But
Daedalus had an idea by which they could escape.
He got the idea
by looking at the birds while he was feeding them. So, he begged each of them
to spare him one feather, until he got many of them. Then, he made a pair of
wings, which he stuck on his shoulders with wax. Then he made another pair for
his son. Daedalus advised Icarus that he should not fly too close to the sun. Father and son moved
their arms up and down and flapped their wings. Soon they took off and rose
above the walls. On reaching Greece, Daedalus landed on the ground and asked Icarus to come down
too. But he was enjoying himself up in the air, playing with the winds, and he
was very proud that he could fly like a bird.
His father kept
calling out to Icarus to come down but he was having fun and kept flying higher
and higher until the heat from the sun melted the wax that joined the wings to
his shoulders.
The wings fell
down and poor Icarus could not fly anymore, fell down and died.
Myth adapted by C.B