With this post, I continue with the discussion about the different types of language that arouse in a CLIL Unit (http://clilingmaria.blogspot.com.es/2017/11/dissecting-clil-unit-focusing-on.html) through the dissection of one of the Units of my book (http://www.e-ducalia.com/libros-texto-educacion-secundaria.php, Biology & Geology 1º ESO CLIL, just by clicking on "Descargar muestra" below the image of the book).
As an example of how to engage content compatible and content obligatory language, let´s have a look at page 15 of my book´s free Unit. Here, the goal is learn the difference between the verbs "Rotate" and "Revolve", both content obligatory vocabulary of this unit. A synonyme is used for each of them and a description in english, too: Rotate=Spin= Turn around itself Revolve=Orbit=Turn around the Sun Besides, I always support the learning of these verbs with mimic: turning myself, or making students turn either around themselves or around other students).
To foster the learning of these confusing verbs, students are asked to translate some English sentences into Spanish. It could be done the other way round. What is more, asking students to draw or represent graphically what the sentences say after the translation, could be another way to make sure that students have understood and now know how to use these content obligatory words.
With this post, I continue discussing different ideas to consider while designing a CLIL Unit. They are based on the example of one of the CLIL Units of my book, which you can download from the following webpage: http://www.e-ducalia.com/libros-texto-educacion-secundaria.php, Biology & Geology 1º ESO CLIL, just by clicking on "Descargar muestra" below the image of the book.
When teaching CLIL, we will deal with three different types of language in the classroom: - Everyday language (language through learning)- All the language that pops up during the lessons, mostly connected to routines, instructions: open your books on pag......; be quiet; lower the blind.... - Content compatible language (language for learning)- The language we use to teach our subject. For example, with small kids you will only use the present tense, but as they get older we will use more complex grammatical structures and vocabulary. This type of language is often common to every subject, and it is also used in daily life as everday language is. See the example below. - Content obligatory language (language of learning)- the specific language of the subject we teach. For example: Satellite, Galaxy, Milky Way, Revolve, Orbit....
In this post, I want to talk you about how compatible content language can help us to teach content. Have a look at page 18 of the CLIL Unit. In some of this activities comparatives and superlatives are used to make students reflect on what they have learnt about the planets. At the same time, they are revising the grammatical structure of comparatives and superlatives and revising knowledge about the Solar System planets. As a content teacher, I will focus more on the content learning, but, as you can see I support this learning on content compatible language.
With this post, I continue discussing different ideas to consider while designing a CLIL Unit. They are based on the example of one of the CLIL Units of my book, which you can download from the following webpage, http://www.e-ducalia.com/libros-texto-educacion-secundaria.php, Biology & Geology 1º ESO CLIL, just by clicking on "Descargar muestra" below the image of the book.
When we teach content in English, students feel a bit worried about how to memorize all that content. Learning by heart, does not make sense, especially because they will memorize word by word without understanding. We need to use other strategies to show them how to organize the main information in a more visual way. This helps in many different ways:
- Activates cognition: they read the text and reflect on what they have learnt and organize that information in a different way
- Boosts the learning of new vocabulary: reading, reflecting and writing makes them to pay more attention to how words are written
- Promotes significant learning: students have all the main information organized in a more visual way, understand how the different elements relate to each other and may even be able to explain everything with their own words, making the knowledge of their own.
In the Unit you have downloaded, we can find to good examples of how to use GRAPHS.
- Life of a Star (pages 10,11). Students read quite a difficult text, and organize the information in a Tree Diagram. The graph helps students to realize that there are two different paths stars can follow in their life cycle and to organize the different phases they are passing through. If your students are motivated, you can ask them to look for pictures and make the same sequence, but instead of using words, using drawings and colouring them.
- Inner and outer planets (page 19). Students use all they have learnt about the Solar System planets to compare them and write down their main similarities and differences. The best type of graph to do this is a Venn Diagram. In this activity I provide students with some topics to think about differences between inner and outer planets, but no topics about things they have in common, as I consider to think of similarities will be easier for them.
Sometimes, instead of using graphs, we can use drawing to promote learning and activate cognition. On page 13, asking studens to look for information about the Solar System to later make a drawing including all the different elements mention above, makes them to focus more on the task and to pay more attention to where each element is located and must appear on the drawing. Labelling the different elements of the drawing will foster the learning of the Solar System components and their name in English, making again paying attention to their location.
Last clue: use this drawing to play a game ......where is....? Write some prepositions and adjetives on the board: NEXT TO, BETWEEN, FAR FROM, CLOSE TO, etc.
Every activity sets an opportunity to create a new activity from it. Do not miss this opportunity.
With this entry, I continue discussing different ideas to consider while designing a CLIL Unit.
They are based on the example of one of the CLIL Units of my book, which you can download from the following webpage, http://www.e-ducalia.com/libros-texto-educacion-secundaria.php, Biology & Geology 1º ESO CLIL, just by clicking on "Descargar muestra" below the image of the book.
Sometimes it is a bit difficult to motivate students towards the learning of new vocabulary. Indeed, I have always found a bit tedious learning new words. So, how could we motivate students towards learning vocabulary? At the beginning of this Unit (page 9), that deals with the topic of the Universe, I decided to include a Word Cloud that I made myself using the web page http://www.wordle.net/ Students look for words related to the Universe into the Cloud and the copy them down and translate them into Spanish. Later on they use the very same words to make sentences with a given structure, in this case: - there is/ there are (hepls to revise singular and plural forms) - to be made up of (a grammatical structure quite frequently used in Natural Science) There are others ways to introduce vocabulary in funnier ways for pupils: - what about writing many words on the board or paste them on the walls and ask students deduce what the topic of next Unit will be? Then have a look at the words and analyze them and discuss how they relate to the topic - what about a wordsearch or a cross-words? Give them words or definitions and encourage them to find the words. Not only helps with learning vocab, but also with word spelling. - what about a gap- filling activity? Give students the words and bet them to see if they can find the right place for each one. - what about creating a story with a group of different words? or playing taboo?
Once students have learnt the words and know about their spelling you can play a running dictation with them. Make teams, say a word to one student from each team, and make them to run to the board and write them on. Being the fastest is not enough to get points for their group, but they also must be sure their spelling is the right one. As you can see, vocabulary learning does not have to be boring, just find and try new ways to make the most of it!!!!
Some of you have asked me to show or comment on a whole CLIL Didactic Unit. I will try to make my best to make you understand what all this is about.
On the following webpage, http://www.e-ducalia.com/libros-texto-educacion-secundaria.php, you can download the first unit of the book Biology & Geology 1º ESO CLIL that I published last year. Just click on "Descargar muestra" below the image of the book.
The title of the unit is "The Universe" and as you can see, in the cover page of the Unit 1 (page 7), every unit includes not only Content, but also some grammar revision, being the focus of this unit on the structure There is/are....and the construction of comparatives and superlatives.
Every unit begins with a KWL activity. What do you know (K)?; What do you want to learn (W)?; and once we have finished the unit, What have you learnt (L)? The point of this activity is knowing how much students already know about the topic of the unit and what their mains sources of interest are. Please, keep in mind that at least you will have to prepare some activities dealing with some of the things they want to learn about, and are not included in the unit. They can answer the questions on their own, in pairs or in groups.
In the following Blog entries I will be dealing with the dissection of the rest of this Unit. I will discuss the following topics: - Strategies to introduce and learn vocabulary in English - Graphics to help learn content - Activities to activate cognition - How to include the 4 skills of language - Focusing on obligatory-content language - Focusing on compatible-content language - How group projects can make things more challenging - Using TICs to motivate students towards learning - Never forget creativity in your CLIL classroom - Should we make room for some Spanish?
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A successful CLIL lesson should combine the called 4 Cs, that are the following:
Content – Specific knowledge,
skills and understanding related to the subject
Communication – Use of the foreign language to learn and to communicate the subject’s
content
Cognition - Thinking
skills which link concept formation (abstract and concrete), understanding and
language
Culture – Connect
to learning of both content and language with the student’s culture and the
foreign language culture.
Una lección AICLE existosa debería combinar las llamadas como 4 Cs, que son las siguientes:
Contenido–el conocimiento, habilidades y comprensión específico de la asignatura
Comunicación- el uso de la lengua extranjera para aprender y comunicar el contenido de la asignatura
Cognición- las habilidades de pensamiento la formación de conceptos (abstractos y concretos), la compresión y el lenguaje
Cultura- la conexión entre el aprendizaje de ambos, contenido y lengua con las culturas del estudiante y de la lengua extranjera.
Example (primary and secondary education)
Students learn about some plants grown in the School Garden
Content- Depending on their age, students will learn about their forms and colours, when to plant or sow, germination or their content in nutrients.
Communication-Depending on their age, students will just learn some words to describe them in a very simple way (colour and shape), or they will learn more specific vocabulary and grammar structures that will allow them to describe the main steps of the plant cycle.
Cognition- Depending on their age, students will just associate different colour or shapes to different vegetables and will be able to distinguish ones from others. Older students may be able to reason why some vegetables are planted while others require seeds to reproduce, and will understand and will be able to explain the sequence of plant reproduction, being able to reason why the flower is produced before the fruit.
Culture- Younger students can use vegetables to prepare Spanish and British dishes, and compare main differences between them. Older students can relate the kind of vegetables more frequently grown and eaten in each country to the weather, soil, amount of rainfall, etc.
Ejemplo (Educación Primaria y Secundaria)
Los alumnos aprenden sobre algunas plantas que se crecen en el huerto escolar.
Contenido- Dependiendo de su edad, los alumos aprenderán sobre sus formas y colores, cuando plantar o sembrar, la germinación o su contenido en nutrientes.
Comunicación- Dependiendo de su edad, los alumnos aprenderán simplement algunas palabras para describirlos de un modo muy sencillo (colores y formas), o aprenderán vocabulario más específico y estructuras gramaticales que les permitirán describir las principales etapas del ciclo de las plantas.
Cognición- Dependiendo de su edad, los estudiantes asociarán diferentes colores y formas con diferentes verduras, y serán capaces de distinguir unos de otros. Los alumnos más mayores pueden ser capaces de razonar porqué algunos vegetales se plantan, mientras que otros requieren semillas para reproducirse, y comprenderán y podrán explicar la secuencia reproductiva de las plantas, siendo capaz de razonar porqué la flor se produce antes que el fruto.
Cultura- Los estudiantes más jóvenes pueden usar verduras para preparar platos españoles o ingleses, y comparar las principales diferencias entre ellos. Los más mayores pueden relacionar el tipo de vegetales que más frecuentemente se cultivan y/o comen en cada país con el clima, suelo, cantidad de lluvia, etc.
Here I bring you another great example of how ICT can help you and your students to make learning more engaging. If you want to teach them about the digestive system, it is always difficult for them to remember which nutrients begin to be digested in the mouth, which in the stomach, and which ones are exclusively digested in the intestine. It may be also difficult to understand that water is never digested, and is exclusively absorbed in the large intestine. With this interactive game (made by John Kitses, 2008), you can:
Aquí
os traigo otro gran ejemplo de como las TIC pueden ayudar a tí y a tus
estudiantes a hacer más interesante el aprendizaje. Si quieres que ellos
aprendan sobre el aparato digestivo, siempre es dificil para ellos
recordar que nutrientes comienzan la digestión en la boca, cuales en el
estómago, y cuales son exclusivamente digeridos en el intestino. También
puede ser dificil comprender que el agua nunca se digiere, y es
exclusivamente absorbida en el intestino grueso. Con este juego
interactivo (hecho por John Kitses, 2008), puedes:
- Test how much your students know about the digestive system
- Learn about the different organs that make part of the digestive system and the main processes that occur in each one
- Test if your students know which are the main nutrients found in a selection of foods
- Help your students understand and learn in a more significant way the process of digestion
- Comprobar cuanto saben tus alumnos del sistema digestivo
- Aprender sobre los diferentes órganos que forman parte del sistema digestivo
- Comprobar si tus alumnos conocen los principales nutrientes en una serie de alimentos
- Ayudar a tus alumnos a comprender y aprender de un modo más significativo el proceso de la digestión
You
can work this orally or make your students write about it. They may
work alone, in pairs or small groups. This depends on what skills you prefer them to practice. What is more, you can bring other
foods to the class, and ask them to draw or represent by using ITC the
digestive process of these new foods.
Puedes trabajar esto oralmente, o hacer que tus alumnos escriban sobre ello. Ellos pueden trabajar solos, en parejas o en pequeños grupos. Esto depende de las destrezas que prefieres que ellos practiquen. Además, puedes traer otras comidas a la clase, y pedirles que dibujen o representen mediante el uso de las TICs el proceso digestivo de estas nuevas comidas.
CLIL adds difficulty to content learning as we are teaching students in a foreign language in which they are not fully competent. This can bring boredom to classroom and the feeling that they will not be able to learn and memorize something. ITC can help us to do lessons more engaging and support them with visuals. Here I leave you a very simple example of how I used a prezi to explain students aged 15 years old what is cancer and how it develops in a body. Later, you can suggest them to research about another disease, or give them the steps (just text) all randomly mixed and ask them to order, to illustrate and create a similar prezi.
El
AICLE añade dificultad al aprendizaje de contenido al estar enseñando a
los alumnos en una lengua extranjera en la que no son completamente
competentes. Esto puede traer aburrimiento a la clase, y el sentimiento
de que no serán capaces de aprender y memorizar algo. Las TICs pueden
ayudarnos a hacer nuestras lecciones más motivadoras y apoyarlas con
imágenes.Aquí os dejo un ejemplo muy sencillo de como usé un prezi para
explicar a mis alumnos de 15 años qué es el cáncer y cómo se desarrolla
dentro del cuerpo. Después, puedes sugerirles investigar sobre otra enfermedad, o darles las etapas (solo el texto) y pedirles que las ordenen, ilustren y creen un prezi similar.
