Clil magazine

2015 CLIL MAGAZINE

Alberto Bello Universidad del Valle de Puebla 1-7-2015

UNIVERSIDAD DEL VALLE DE PUEBLA

MASTERS’ IN TEACHING ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

CONTENT and LANGUAGE INTEGRATED LEARNING

BY ALBERTO BELLO MEJIA

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CLIL Content and Language integrated learning refers to educational setting where the medium of instruction is in a second language. The mother tongue is still in the instruction of content but with a variety of percentage in use.

This type of education comes from Content Based Instruction, Bilingual teaching or Dual language programs.

CLIL became popular in Europe in the 90s. It started because of the big quantity of immigrants in European countries.

In this type of education English is the second language that is taught through content areas such as Geography, Chemistry, and biology among others. But in the past the same happened with Latin.

The governments have introduced this type of education for socio-political reasons, internationalization and globalization.

CLIL involves the use of the Communicative approach and the Task-based-learning because of its essence that is to make students use the language while they learn content.

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THE RELATIONSHIP OF LANGUAGE AND CONTENT According to Snow (1998), content and language are one of the main ongoing challenges in CLIL. There is a continue fight for primacy between the two areas.

Content teachers concerned about the consequences of foreign language use. The concern reflect two fears: Coverage: It means that language may slow down the proceedings so less content is learnt.

Depth: It means that lower language proficiency may result in reduced cognitive complexity.

Content and language in CLIL programs may be either content-driven or languagedriven. It depends on the type of program the learner is in. Then, the goals of the program must be considered to choose which one is better in absolute terms.

Content and language cannot be separated in CLIL because the relation they have. But the real issue is the lack of teachers who are qualified in language and content too.

APPPROACHES TO CLIL Constructivism - Bruner 1966-1990 The aim is to construct knowledge with a cognitive structure. It is throughout a cognitive process which implies previous knowledge in an active process to create new knowledge.

At the same time, creating a language system in which competences are developed.

Participatory understanding of learning Vygotsky

1978

stated

that

knowledge

is

developed through social interactions and the ZPD

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Comments I consider content to be the most important thing in CLIL, we learn language as we learnt our mother tongue so it has to be developed through time. Rules and norms can be learnt throughout the process. That is learning through acquisition.

Definition Bilingual Education involves teaching academic content in two languages, in a native and a secondary language with varying amounts of each language used in accordance with the program model.

The other language is one which is essential as a medium of schooling, or intercommunication, hence vital for national development, or for that reason, social and economic necessity.

The program is meant to help students for three or four years until is determined that he can successfully handle academic work entirely in English.

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Reasons Acquiring language of wider or official communication.

Global interdependence often requires the ability to function in more than one language.

Goals The goals of Bilingual Education are to teach English as soon as possible and integrate children into the mainstream of education and also to maintain the native language and culture while children learn English.

Transitional Bilingual Method Students receive some amount of native language instruction so that they do not fall behind in their literacy or content learning as they are acquiring English. The percentage of time they are taught content in their native language changes so that by the end of the grade, most of their content instruction is in English.

Immersion Instruction is total in English. The teacher uses ESL techniques to make students understand.

Late exit bilingual education Language learners usually stay throughout elementary school. Students learn literacy and content areas in their native language. However, their transition to instruction in English is more gradual than in the transitional Bilingual Education.

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Continued The amount of language is divided in 40% native 60% in English. Instruction begins with their native language throughout the elementary school.

Dual Two types of students are enrolled in same classroom or program: native English speakers and English language learners. The goal of this instructions is to become fluently bilingual. Instruction is given in 80% - 90% in their native language.

Benefits of Bilingual Education It preserves children’s’ sense of pride in the language, allowing them to move freely in an English-language dominant society while retaining an important link to their cultural and linguistic heritage.

Economic advantages in bilingual fluency and literacy, many jobs pay higher salaries to their bilingual employees.

It is necessary to effectively compete in job market.

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CLIL MIND MAP

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LESSON PLAN Lesson plans success are due to: know everything about the school and the district polices, also you have to create an organized group with rules in order to get a better environment. You need to be careful in choose the correct procedures, schedules and materials.

LESSON PLAN PHASES 1) Introduction

EXPLANATION Describe the reason of the lesson – create a warm up and make a significant and relevant learning.

Stablish objectives and goals, explain the things that they will learn at the end of the lesson, check previous knowledge and give key vocabulary.

Get the attention of the students; allow them to expand their thinking.

Present the body of the lesson, providing original materials, promote collaborative learning but always the teacher has to be a guide or a supervision.

Teacher has to verify if the students understand the lesson.

Students put in practice the new information, teacher and student work together.

2) Foundation

3) Brain activation

4) Body of new information

5) Clarification 6) Practice and review

The students work independently just in case that some students did not get it they have to work in a small group. As a result, they can prepare a successful homework or it can be useful for future learning.

Is the unification of the lesson phases an information. In this phases teacher can evaluate the learning that students can achieve from this class. It can be by using questions or problems.

7) Independent practice

8) Closure

ELEMENTSTS OF A UNIT PLAN:

Purpose, main topics,skills academic goals, academic standarts...

cross- curricular conections, methods to make a relevant learning...

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past learnig- new learningfuture learning, vocabulary, assessment, clear expectations.

What is CLIL instruction?

CLIL instruction is based on: Content and Language

Develop cognitive and social skills Understand and value both cultures

Learn and communicate

advantages Acquire necessary skills in the mother tongue

CLIL Acquire knowledge using target language Acquire necessary skills in the target language

For Content provides: ___Knowledge_____________________________________ For Language provides: ______Development of language skills__________________

Unit design considerations: 4 Cs a) ___Content_____________ it means __progress in knowledge________________ b) ___Communication_______ it means _____using language to learn____________ c) ___Cognition____________ it means ____develop thinking skills______________ d) __Culture______________ it means ____exposure to alternative perspectives ___

Philosophical match: For both English and content, the focus is on ___acquiring the subject knowledge through English Language___________________________

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Planning a CLIL Program Institution Information:

Play-Dooh Bilingual School

Course information:

Computer Lab I 3 Hours a week

General purpose of the course:

The study of Technology is one of the components of the core formation of general Elementary School. It has been divided in three subjects Computer Lab I, Computer Lab II and Computer Lab III. These subjects have a close relationship with other disciplines because of the use of vocabulary, numbers, draws and more.

This program corresponds to the course of Computer Lab I taught in first grade, that together with the subject of Computer Lab II and Computer Lab III, they form the subject of Computer Lab. The present program has an informative character, since it relates theory with practice and the scientific research activity.

First grade students concentrate on acquiring beginning technology skills with a strong focus on developing mouse, typing, and word processing skills. Students will learn to change font sizes, styles and colors as well as Insert, size and position clipart, add page borders and print documents. Students will also explore their creativity with the art programs on computers and tablets.

Moreover, students will utilize the foundation in typing and writing to expand into more diverse skillsets including Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint slide shows and continue their development of word processing and typing proficiency.

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General planning:

Unit I: Word Unit II: Excel Unit III: Power Point

Evaluation system :

40% Practices 20% Lab Report 30% Class Work 10% Attitude

Module planning:

Unit I: Word Objective: Students will gain word processing skills through informative writing, narrative writing, and opinion writing.

Competences to be develop: Knowledge: Identify animals Abilities: Students use copy and paste to classify insects, amphibians, mammals, reptiles, fish and birds.

Attitudes & Values: Value the importance of animals on Earth Activities: Students use the copy and paste template to copy and paste the animals into the correct classification column.

Students can right click copy and right click paste or use keyboard shortcuts "Ctrl C" and "Ctrl V".

Students can use the "undo" button or "Ctrl Z" to fix mistakes.

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CLIL LESSON PLANING THE 4CS FRAMEWORK (COYLE)

Content

Cognition

Communication

Culture

Content matter is not only about acquiring knowledge and skills, it is about the learners creating their own knowledge and understanding and developing skills (personalized learning).

Content is related to learning and thinking (cognition). To enable the learners to create their own interpretation of content, it must be analyzed for its linguistic demands; thinking processes (cognition) need to be analyzed in terms of their linguistic demands.

Language needs to be learned which is related to the learning context, learning through that language, reconstructing the content and its related cognitive processes. This language needs to be transparent and accessible; interaction in the learning context is fundamental to learning. This has implications when the learning context operates through the medium of a foreign language.

The relationship between cultures and languages is complex. Intercultural awareness is fundamental to CLIL. Its rightful place is at the core of CLIL

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Meyer’s CLIL-Pyramid suggests a systematic sequence for planning CLIL units and materials, starting with:

1.- Topic Selection

2.-Choice of Media

3.- Input-scaffolding

4.-Task Design

5.-CLIL workout

Planning a CLIL unit starts with content selection.

The specific needs of the content subject are at the heart of every CLIL lesson and the starting point for material construction.

Providing multimodal input and distributing it evenly across the new CLIL unit produces highly differentiated materials which accommodate different learning styles and activate various language skills. Multimodal input also facilitates the development of new literacies.

The nature of the selected input (i.e. texts, charts, maps, video clips, etc.) determines how much and what kind of input-scaffolding is needed. It also indicates which subject specific study skills need to be practiced with the students so they can successfully cope with that input.

Tasks need to be designed to trigger both higher order thinking skills and lead to authentic communication/interaction in different interactive formats (individual work, pair work, group work, etc.).

The nature of the desired output (poster, interview, presentation, map, etc.) determines how much and what kind of output-scaffolding is necessary.

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What is the 3As tool?

Analyze • Analyze content for the language of learning

Add • Add to content language for learning

Apply • Apply to content language through learning

Oliver Meyer (2010) considers six quality criteria for successful and sustainable CLIL teaching process: 1.- Rich Input 2.- Scaffolding learning 3.- Rich interaction and pushed output 4.- Adding the (inter-)cultural dimension 5.- Make it H.O.T. (Higher Order Thinking skills) 6.- Sustainable learning

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To make learning more sustainable in the CLIL classroom, teachers should: Create connections with students’ attitudes, experience and knowledge.

Make the learning process transparent and provide clear structuring (e.g. by using advance organizers).

Make sure that results of group work are shared with all students of the class (through posters, blogs, learning diaries, websites etc.).

Promote autonomous learning and introduce (digital) portfolio work Adopt a translanguaging approach (Creese and Blackledge 2010) to multilingualism by making strategic use of the mother tongue to support the learning process Embrace a lexical approach to teaching and move away from isolated words and word lists and focus on collocations and chunks instead.

Promote spiral learning and put great emphasis on learning and study skills.

Conclusion

CLIL lesson planning is a process that involves many aspects that have to be carry out under specific circumstances. First, the four pillars for CLIL which are content, cognition, communication and culture have to be identify and clarify in the lesson. Then, we need to consider systematic system of planning for materials, tasks, activities, etc. in the development of CLIL. Finally, with all these get a successful and sustainable CLIL teaching process.

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Different methods and approaches in primary and secondary bilingual education

Requirements for Primary Education In a primary bilingual classroom it is necessary to encourage the development of attitudes and transversal issues, in order to improve those related to languages and other subjects. The objective of the activities proposed should be the development of their motor, emotional, social and intellectual capacities. Students will be helped to understand and to express themselves via different means of communication and they will gradually be able to adapt their language to the interlocutor and the context in which they are. For this reason, it is crucial to start learning the first foreign language at early stages.

Requirements for Secondary Education In secondary education Nowadays, it is vital to have a curriculum that integrates all of the languages taught at secondary schools with the subjects directly linked to the Bilingual Schools Programs.

They will have to overcome the demarcation of learning, programmed separately by subject, in order to develop an integrated curriculum.

This will contribute to the development of critical awareness, rejection of stereotypes and, consequently, to the creation of democratic European citizenship. Teachers involved in the Bilingual Section will insist on use and reformulation to teach the subjects involved and to construct language skills. We must bear in mind that Bilingual Education, on the one hand, aspires objectively to perfect linguistic skills, and, on the other, reflects on the idea of communication.

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Strategies for bilingual teaching a) Types of curricular adaptation Before adjusting curricula, teachers must take into account the type of methodology they will apply in their lessons. It is interesting to use the ‘natural’ language immersion method, especially at earlier stages, based on communication and interaction that prioritizes the oral aspects of the language.

Primary

education

–environment,

motivation,

affective involvement and context are the most important factors to consider.

The teacher role in such methodology should be that of organizer and tasks facilitator, being children the center of the whole teaching and learning process.

Secondary Education - culture and language, facts, authors or events related to the neighboring country’s culture b) Integration of cross-curricular topics The integration of cross-curricular topics has a vital importance. It will lead to students to relativize their beliefs, to reflect on the topics acquired and to expand their cultural horizons. c) Multicultural issues It need to be considered as they acquire multilingual and intercultural capabilities at the same time. The linguistic and cultural skills for each language are modified by the knowledge of the other language and help create awareness, new skills and intercultural abilities. d) Materials collection and/or design Now, teachers are using real materials and adapting subject books from countries where the foreign language is spoken, downloading resources form the internet, etc.

However, teachers have at their disposal plenty of useful resources that could be incorporated to their resources bank.

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e) Class development Activities should meet a series of standard characteristics. For example: they should be varied, contextualized and appropriate to the level of maturity and personal development. They should be valid for the learning to be achieved, according to the students' prior knowledge. Activities should respond to their interests, enabling reflection on the contents already acquired, and should be aimed at promoting values such as tolerance, respect, self-esteem, etc.

f) Motivation In all bilingual stages, it is important to try to make students speak in the foreign language from the beginning. Students should get used to expressing themselves in the FL as much as possible. g) Assessment Non-linguistic content areas should have priority over linguistic results. - Linguistic competence in language is an added value that must be rewarded. - Lack of fluency in foreign language should not be penalized.

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CLIL MOODELS 5 types 1. Subject topic/ syllabus: adapted for teaching in the target language 2. Cross curricular: involves both languages. Two teacher plan the class

3. Language teachers developing a more content type approach to a theme: taking a typical topic and make comparisons 4. Re-conceptualize the curriculum in an integrated way: historical investigation in the target language linking to space and place.

5. A global project such those organized by science across the world: topics are studied by learners in different countries and different languages

KEY ISSUES English teacher & specialist are involved in planning, teaching.

The desired learning outcomes are content and language

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Planning CLIL classrooms Guiding principles looking at learning Ethos. Decide, discuss, and define.

Analyzing the teaching curriculum, Overview planning for the topic/theme/module. 4 Cs

Preparing the learning context: 3As, Matrix

Monitoring

Evaluating

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