CLIL Tips & Materials

Online Resources

2012-01-26T10:18:00.001-08:00

Previously I had a list of links here but this post has been updated to reflect the vast number of resources (lessons, lesson plans and activities) that I have now collated on my ScoopIt CLIL materials pages.

There are approximately 25 links on each page and 8 pages as I write (in early 2013). Every subject is covered, most in multiple places. You move between pages by clicking on the numbers at the bottom of the page.

Some of the materials are designed for CLIL, some for bilingual classes, but the majority are content lessons designed for native English speakers. CLIL teachers will need to adapt the materials and offer language support.

Click here to go to the first page.

Boardwork

2011-12-08T04:26:00.001-08:00

On the first day of the CLIL teacher-training course I ask teachers to define what CLIL is and what their role is and then I assert that whatever else they are, they are also language teachers. I support my claim with reference to the fact that even in their first language, they are teaching language when they define "photosynthesis" or explain what the difference between "lava" and "magma" is. The penny normally drops.

I don't do a session on boardwork on the CLIL course but I do on another teacher-training course I lead and do throw the subject in as an aside to CLIL teachers. My own boards look quite regimented but I hope that at the end of the lesson they stand as a useful learning tool in themselves (i.e. that someone who had not been in the lesson could come in, see the board, and learn something) especially as regards lexis.

My pet hate is seeing vocabulary written up badly: verbs, adjectives, articles and normal nouns written with an initial capital letter are a particular bugbear. To most eyes, I am sure the picture below looks fine but I am a pedant.

For me colours are put to specific use in the main sections of the board. The basics are simple: words and sentences in black; phonetic symbols and part-of-speech information in red; examples, answers and errors to be corrected in blue. Other colours can be used for things like aims & objectives, interesting asides, etc.

I use a little stick figure to indicate when subjects or objects are animate and also to show agent nouns. Other information is whether the verb is transitive or intranisitive and regular or not. This support enables learners to use the vocabulary correctly. You can see that example objects for the verb "scrub" are given in blue. Eliciting and providing common collocates also helps learners.

Although the boardwork featured here is from a typical EFL lesson, the principles can be applied to CLIL when teachers are concerned with providing better language support than texts usually offer.

Of course, interactive whiteboards are my favourite but I don't have them where I am working now...

How's your boardwork?

Have you used an IWB? What do you think of them?

What type of board set-up do you usually have?

How do you use colours on your board?

Do you organise areas of the board in specific ways?

Science Links

2011-11-03T03:05:00.000-07:00

For a good site on the challenges facing and cooperation between CLIL science (and maths) teachers, why not have a look at this site?

However, if you are looking for materials to take into the classrom, there are plenty of materials on the web relating to science, though many will need adaptation by CLIL teachers.

I am always a big fan of the BBC, so its Bitesize series is the first I would recommend (GCSE is the exam British children take at 16 after 2 years of targetted study). There are also pages on higher level science (from 16-18). These pages generally include diagrams and videos and therefore cater for different learning approaches.

Like the BBC, the s-cool website has well-presented materials on all school subjects that can be used for free.

On the other hand, some sites have thorough explanations with good links between pages but lack diagrams.

What are your recommendations for good science sites?

A different CLIL Matrix

2011-10-31T05:21:00.000-07:00

CLIL teachers may well be aware of Cummins' matrix which can be used to judge the difficulty levels of cognitive and language elements of any particular lesson. The simple matrix is shown below with a couple of examples of activities inserted in appropriate places.

However, this post is about an awareness-raising tool created by an international team of CLIL experts, which cross-combines content, language, integration and learning with culture, communication, cognition and community. The ensuing 16 indicators lead to examples and a number of questions for CLIL teachers to answer about their own teaching.

Adapting authentic texts: the discourse cloze

2011-10-13T16:04:00.000-07:00

Finding English materials that match your CLIL syllabus is rarely easy. There are plenty of authentic texts available (newspapers and magazines, video lectures, numerous websites, podcasts, etc) but your students need language support that the creators of those resources did not take into account.You can buy textbooks for English-speaking pupils but face the same problem (though the visuals are often very helpful).

Adapting authentic texts is an excellent way to tailor resources to your needs. At first it uses much of a precious commodity you have little of as a teacher: time. In the long run, however, you will create a stock of lessons that you know are very good at helping you achieve the aims and objectives you have for the lesson and - ultimately - the entire course. There is an additional piece of really good news: adapting materials gets easier and takes less and less time as you develop the eye required to focus on the language that your pupils will need support with.

What is that language? Well, it depends on the aims of your lesson. If you want your students to be able to write a description of a process, for example, it might be a grammatical point like the passive or an academic vocabulary focus such as the use of linking words. If you are more concerned with having them grasp the fundamentals of the subject, you may have a focus on content-specific vocabulary.

One good way to focus on content-specific vocabulary in a written text is the discourse cloze. This is especially appropriate where the text has collocations that you want the learners to produce later. For a business studies lesson on marketing, I started with this BBC article, related to a new TV programme they were running in the UK.

My lesson was aimed at learners with a high level of linguistic ability so I did not simplify the text in this case, but merely removed some words and replaced them with numbered blanks. Under the text I offered three alternatives for each space (four would also be OK). One was the missing word, and the other two were words which did not collocate with the words around it in the text. (If you are unsure about your "wrong" collocation choices, use this tool or google them and see if they come up together.) The target collocations were then reused later in the lesson when learners had a chance to discuss marketing strategies.