Planning a clil lesson

What we should  consider when we approach a CLIL lesson depends very much on a number of factors: context we operate in, level of English, material and resources available as well as length of time.  One thing is however true and that is successful Content and Language Integrated Learning requires teachers to engage in alternative ways of planning their teaching for effective learning. It involves changes in curricular development.   What we should bear in mind is the fact that CLIL is definitely not  content teaching translated into a different language. There will instead be elements of both language and subject teaching and learning. Language and subject area content here have complementary value. 

 Personally I would suggest considering the following  planning steps:

Duration: max 15 minutes : How much time is available a) for work in the classroom; b) as homework? 

Content Objective(s) : What do learners need to know by the end of this “learning moment” ? By the end of this unit learners should be able to ….

Language Objective(s) : What language have you  considered to include

Materials: What material were you thinking of using?

Anticipated problems:  What problems do you envisage in the classroom? E.g. are you afraid a) there may be too much technical vocabulary; b) the learners may not be interested in the topic; c) you may run out of time before the unit is really completed?

Lesson Sequence :First, second, finally

Will the lesson be entirely in English?

Warm-up exercises:  In English or in Italian?

Reading passages: completely authentic? Simplified and adapted by you but still essentially authentic? Written entirely by you? Question and answer format?

Comprehension questions, but what sort? Easily doable to give learners confidence? Or more complex requiring learners also to express their opinions (‘How’ and ‘Why’ questions)?

References
Bloom's taxonomy writing questions
Observation tool for measuring CLIL classrooms
Planning tools for teachers 
LOCIT tool

First attempt to create a "glog"

Breaking News in English

Today, I would like to share with you a tool which I have been using from time to time, called Breaking New English.

Breaking News in English is maybe one  the largest site of learning content in English  for learning English. 

It basically takes contemporary news items, simplifies them and builds a whole range of activities around them, including listening, reading comprehension, quizzes, gap-filling, spelling activities with lots of grammar and vocabulary exercises. They are all based on the same article.

Once you have chosen the article you want to work on with your students, you need to choose the level which you think is more appropriate for your students. You will soon notise that not each level has got the same amount of activities. The higher is the level the more activities it has.

Since there are lots and lots of activities you will have to select the once you want your students to complete.

Some interesting activities worth pointing out:

Listening

• We can decide whether we want to listen to American or British accent;
• Discussion questions, where students will only hear the questions. They can then work either in pairs or on their own to answer those questions;
• Listen & Spell you will only hear words in isolation
• Dictation: You are asked to write the whole sentence
• They have just added 5 listening speeds for each level which is particularly suitable for beginner students

Reading

• 4 reading speeds  Again this could be also done in pairs: one student looks at the text the other reads;
• Jumble: the text has been broken up and placed into different order.  We need to track the words into the correct order. You can even make it easier or more difficult.
• Text Jumble: the whole text has to be rewritten. Listen to text a couple of times .. You could work in pairs or do a competition.
• no space: All of the spaces and punctuation have been removed from the text. We have to put back the spaces and punctuation.

Spelling

• no-letters: you will have to write the whole text. We now try to rebuild the text trying to remember all the information. This will definitely generate lots of vocabularay
• Hangman for a bit of fun

Vocabulary

• Matching: you will have to look it through
• gap-fill
• word pairs
• crosswords

Grammar

• Grammar exercises will be different from article to article and they will also depend very much on the level selected.

You will notise that the website is actually full of advertisments, which explains the reason why the platform is free. However, that is not really a problem because you can actually print out or dowload the PDF files containing the the same amount of activities with their answer keys but with no adverts. 

There is also a mini lesson being offered for each article which is basically the same lesson but with far less activities and exercises.

One last feature to mention. If you have the necessity to work on particular topics related to your subjct area you can always look through the research themes as shown below. 

How I met Clil

It must have been soon after 2009 IATEFL conference when I first heard about clil approach. That particular year I didn't take part to the conference, something which I instead normally do, but I remember watching the clil debate on line. The one with David Graddol, Peter Mehisto,Hugo Baetens-Beardsmore, Mina Patel and Sue Hughes . A very interesting and thought-provoking talk!

At that time I had very little to do with clil approach in my own teaching although I now firmly believe that all elt teachers, in one way or the other, we all  promote some kind of clil approach or at least soft clil.

It wasn't until the beginning of this year that I began  to get fully involved with clil teaching and clil methodology.  My interest surely sparked when Chris Williams from the University of Foggia asked me  to join his clil teacher trainer team to deliver some lessons to a group of secondary school teachers. 

I must admit that initially, I was quite reluctant to take on such a burden. I needed to convince myself whether there was a  connection between an elt teacher and a clil teacher.

Let's start by looking at my profile: