CLIL. What is not a CLIL?

After reading Do Coyle’s article, I want to talk about two topics that appear in the article and that I found interesting.

 

- CLIL is not teaching what students already know but in a foreign language.

The idea of CLIL goes beyond learning new vocabulary in a foreign language. It is learning some contents and skills that are from a particular subject (that is not language) through a language that is not the students’ first language.

- CLIL is not a “backdoor” language teaching or additional subject teaching.

If as teachers think that CLIL is an additional activity or subject, then students will think the same. Children that consider that a subject or a lesson is not so important lose their interest on that learning. As teachers we can evaluate differently each activity or lesson (depending on the objectives and the evaluation criteria) but that doesn’t mean that what has been taught is only complementary. Everything that is included in a lesson plan or in a project has been previously considered and accepted. We should skip that fact because that can affect on the teaching and learning process.

Little things matter!

The affective side of learning is also interesting and that is a topic that we are not used to talk about. The use of the words is as meaningful (or even more in some occasions) as the use of gestures or actions. When I think about this, what come to my head are images of a film: Les Choristes. In that film, children are used to be punished. I still remember the classic moment when the responsible of the school says that every action must have a reaction. We must understand that every child has an individual situation, background, family context, self-concept and self-esteem. Then the action and the way every kid behaves are a consequence of all those items.

 

As teachers, we can’t change their lives outside school but what we can do is that the time he/she is at school, he/she feels as good, comfortable and safe as we can. This is not an easy task because we will have lots of students (and if there’s only one English teacher for the whole school, then the number of pupils are multiplied). But we must make an effort and this effort starts from caring about how they feel and how they learn. A negative word from a teacher can hurt more than a low mark. And sticking the student favorite color sticker in his/her forehead so they can tell his/her parents he/she has done a good job it’s better than just writing a good comment in the agenda or in our block.

There are so many details that we must take into account so we make children feel encouraged to learn and to go to school.

How deep will I teach instead of how many things will I teach.

The title of this entry sums up what the main idea that I take in consideration after talking about classroom management and planning activities. It is taken (not literally) from the article we read “Rethinking Classroom Management”, written by Natàlia Maldonado and Pilar Olivares. Sometimes we are more worried about teaching contents and more contents but we don’t pay attention to the way we’re doing it. It can be easy to see from the outside but when you’re in the school and class dynamic, things become more confusing. 

I remember planning some activities while I was in trainee. 
It was difficult to create activities that include everything because the contents were difficult to assimilate for children because sometimes there were too many items. That’s why I had to rethink the activities to make them simpler but more effective. It is not how many things (even though the more they learn the best they progress), it is how they learn (in a significant way, with hands-on activities, trying to answer question they feel are important to be answered, etc.).

Learning and sharing from the very beginning

A few weeks ago, I stayed a couple of days in Lyon, France. It was a tourist visit so it was really short but I saw something that really impressed me. When I was on my way to Lyon’s airport, I had a woman and her daughter sitting near to where I was. I wouldn’t have noticed that they were there if they hadn’t started speaking Spanish. It was like: “Oh, they are Spanish people”. But then, I heard that their accent was quite different and that they were mixing both languages: French and Spanish. The little girl was speaking perfectly both languages. I couldn’t say which one was her first language. That situation made me feel like: “Come on, look at her! She’s very young and she is able to use French and Spanish!”

It reminded me what we had talk in class about taking into account what a child knows and use it as a benefit issue for the rest of the class. Sometimes teacher act not good enough when they’re not valuing other languages that can be known in a group of children. The reality is that there are children out there that know different things that others don’t. So we must feel lucky when having this variety and try to plan lessons and activities that let students explain the others but also learn from the others because every child (no matter who he/she is or if he/she can speak this or that language) has something to share and to learn from their classmates.

Effort and teaching "recipes"!

What Peter Westwood and Wendy Arnold summarize in the report “Meeting Individual Needs” is the idea of how a teacher should act when knowing the differences and particularities of all of his/her students. It can sound like a simple issue but if we look at it carefully, difficulties easily appear. Should we adapt each activity or should students try to do the tasks even when the teacher knows that they are not prepared? Personally, I consider that we can’t hide obvious lacks of knowledge or aptitudes. As a teacher, I think that I have the responsibility of taking care of those children that are in my class and that involves teaching contents but also trying to understand how they feel and why they act the way they do.  It’s not like making students do tasks that are ready to do and that are easy for them. It’s taking into account all of the learning styles, backgrounds and knowledge so that when the teacher plans his/her methodology for that year he/she has enough information, resources and strategies to do his/her job as a teacher properly.

It starts from changing the view that we’re used to have about the roles in class. Students don’t need to be afraid of if they are going to understand the way teacher explains or evaluate. Now, our task is to make it become more bidirectional: students must do an effort to get to what their teacher expects from them but also the teacher needs to be professional enough so he/she creates his/her own “recipe” that works in class.