This section contains further resources focusing on practical issues when implementing a CLIL approach. These resources will help you to incorporate relevant elements more easily into your own teaching, in addition to what you have already learned. They also aim to pre-empt common issues which occur at the beginning of the planning sequence.
You can do the proposed tasks in turn or select the tasks which seem most relevant to your individual teaching context.
The following video montages are selected snippets from interviews with CLIL experts who comment on various issues related to the practical implementation of CLIL. Watch the videos and write down your thoughts in your learning log. Write down two things you liked and one thing you wish the expert would have discussed in more detail.
As we’ve seen in the video in Section 1 presenting the 4Cs, Cognition is about challenging learners to create new knowledge and develop new skills. Content and Cognition should therefore be closely connected.
The resources below will help you to explore and reflect on the Content/Cognition dimension of a CLIL lesson. Use the questions provided to evaluate this lesson plan with regard to its content. What’s your verdict?
Now compare your answers with the model answers provided. How much do you agree/disagree? Record your thoughts in your learning log.
Jane Driver of Queen Katharine Academy teaches in (by background a Language teacher) works at a school in Peterborough UK with a very multicultural and multilingual community. Here she talks about breaking down language into comprehensible steps supported by other strategies.
The new language and special terminology required for the content and processes of the lesson have an impact on the kinds of scaffolding necessary, over and above the support needed for the foreign language itself. These typically involve considerations concerning lesson planning, teacher-learner interaction as well as task design. It is therefore indispensable for teachers to be fully aware of the language required for the topic they are teaching.
Based on the content of the CLIL lesson below, devise three mindmaps focusing on
(1) the language of learning
(2) the language for learning
(3) the language through learning
Now compare your ideas with the mindmaps provided below.
The following video shows you part of an assessment phase including the teacher’s commentary on student and teacher behaviour. Study the resource below and record your thoughts in your learning log.
In Jane Driver’s school Language has moved to the centre of whole school curriculum planning because of the number of students who have English as an Additional Language. Here she considers different aspects, and purposes of assessment.
Study the slides on how culture can be addressed in CLIL and record your thoughts in your learning log.
Expert voices – full responses
Should you wish to find out more about our experts’ vision of what best practice CLIL looks like, feel free to watch their full responses below.
Shawn Redwood
Mandy McLoughlin
Sara Pampin
Donna Fields
Laura Pons
Mary Marsell
Jane Driver (UK) explores the importance of acknowledging students’ cultural background and knowledge and building on these purposefully.
Russell Cross