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ENITROES

Module 2 - Motivation of teachers and elementary schools in using CLIL and mainstreaming CLIL methodology

Table of Contents

Current Teaching Strategies In CLIL Examples and Applications

The following provides examples of activities in which the Current Teaching Strategies described in the previous section can be applied to CLIL classes:

  1. Direct Instruction
    Level: 4th grade

    Subject: Music
    Theme: Musical Instruments
    Prior knowledge: The students are familiar with the concepts of sounds, timber, instruments
    New Knowledge: classification of the musical instruments
    CLIL vocabulary: wind instruments, string instruments, percussion instruments, strings, blow, touch, stick, pinch
    Grammar structure: Present simple
    Activity: The teacher explains to the class how the musical instruments are classified and what each category implies

  1. Note Taking

    Level: 4th grade
    Subject: Music
    Theme: Musical Instruments
    Prior knowledge: The students are familiar with the concepts of sounds, timber, instruments
    New Knowledge: classification of the musical instruments
    CLIL vocabulary: wind instruments, string instruments, percussion instruments, strings, blow, touch, stick, pinch
    Grammar structure: Present simple
    Activity: The students watch a YouTube video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5v7PG9rygA
    about how musical instruments are classified. Using the Cornell method (which had been previously taught) they need to take notes while watching/listening.

    Note taking-The Cornell Method

  1. Spaced Practice
    • Level: 4th grade
    • Subject: Any
    • Theme: Any
    • Prior knowledge: The students are familiar with the Spaced Practice study strategy
    • New Knowledge: Study of the new vocabulary and grammar structures acquired in the previous month/week/days
    • CLIL vocabulary: all the vocabulary introduced: the language of/for/through
    • Activity: Although this is a study strategy so the students should practice at home, for a better monitorization and guidance from the teacher, especially at the beginning, when the students start to get familiarized with the method, it can be done in class, after previous planning from the part of the teacher. Depending how much time it is available, the teacher may plan a 15-minute study time at the beginning/end of a class two or three times a week, or even introduce a study class once a week in which the whole class is dedicated to students revising.
  1. Feedback
    • Level: Any
    • Subject: Any
    • Theme: Any
    • Activity: Giving corrective feedback

    Corrective feedback is a very important part of the instructional process in CLIL classes as it involved attention to the language used (L2) and helps the students improve and evolve in their L2 learning process. One way to give corrective feedback is through elicitation: When the student makes a mistake, the teacher repeats the student’s statement, excluding the error: St: My father work in a hospital. T: Sorry, your father….in a hospital? (The student should become aware of the mistake they made and correct themselves.) St: Oh, right! My father works in a hospital.

    This kind of corrective feedback can be by through repetition instead of elicitation. The teacher repeats the student’s sentence, keeping the mistake, but stressing the incorrect word so that the student realizes the error and corrects it themselves.

    St: My father work in a hospital.
    T: Sorry, your father work in a hospital?
    St: Oh, my father works in a hospital.

  1. Teaching Metacognitive Skills
    • Level: 4th grade
    • Subject: History (Note: this activity can be implemented in any school subject as its aim is to develop metacognitive skills)
    • Theme: Time Periods
    • Prior knowledge: The students are familiar with the concepts of time periods: prehistory, ancient history, medieval history and modern history
    • New Knowledge: Developing reflective thinking starting from description and moving to analysis and action.
    • CLIL vocabulary: food, clothes, houses, etc.
    • Grammar structure: Past simple
    • Activity: The students are divided into groups of 4, each student receives a picture representative for one of the four time periods. Each student must imagine that they lived in that period and they must think of everyday activities, what they eat, where they lived, how they dressed. Then the teacher asks questions like: Do you think it was hard to live in that period? How do you think the people felt? etc…
  1. Teaching Problem Solving Skills
    • Level: 4th grade
    • Subject: History (Note: this activity can be implemented in any school subject as its aim is to develop metacognitive skills)
    • Theme: Time Periods (Variant of metacognitive skills method)
    • Prior knowledge: The students are familiar with the concepts of time periods: prehistory, ancient history, medieval history and modern history
    • New Knowledge: Developing critical thinking
    • CLIL vocabulary: shapes/ colours/ prepositions of place: in the middle, to the right, upper left corner, lower down corner, round, rectangular, etc.
    • Grammar structure: imperatives: put, place, give me, hold this, etc.
    • Activity: The students are divided into groups; each group receives a box with pieces of a puzzle. The pictures that the teacher had previously cut into pieces of different shapes, represent images characteristic for the four time periods that the students studied in the previous lessons. The students must work together in their groups and put the pieces together so as to form the complete picture. They must say what time period it is.
  1. Reciprocal Teaching
    • Level: 4th grade
    • Subject: Arts
    • Theme: Colours
    • Prior knowledge: The students are familiar with the concepts primary and secondary colours, warm and cold colours and tertiary colours
    • New Knowledge: learn about Vincent Van Gogh’s life and art,
    • CLIL vocabulary: it depends on the text the teacher uses for this activity
    • Grammar structure: Past simple, Question words, I think…, I believe…, I don’t know…
    • Activity: The students are divided into groups of 4, each student is assigned with a role: the questioner, the predictor, the clarifier and the summarizer. Each group receives a text about Van Gogh’s life and work and the students start working on the text.

    Predictor: I think we learn from this text that…. / What do you think it is about…? /What happens in….? etc.
    Clarifier: I think the word means…. /I believe this is because/ I don’t think this is… etc.
    Questioner: What? when? Where? How? etc.
    Summarizer: The main idea of the text is…. / There are two main…. / First…then…after… etc.

  1. Mastery Learning
    • Level: 4th grade
    • Subject: Natural Science
    • Theme: Animals and their natural habitat
    • Prior knowledge: The students are familiar with the concepts of natural habitats, types of animals, environments, food chain
    • New Knowledge: developing reasoning
    • CLIL vocabulary: revision of all the vocabulary learned and used during this theme
    • Activity: This activity can be done as a revision exercise at the end of the Animals and Natural Habitats theme, it helps the teacher evaluate the level of knowledge the students reached and it develops critical thinking and reasoning in students. It can be done frontal or in groups. The students are shown a set of pictures representing animals and different natural habitats. The students have to say which animal/habitat is the odd one out and to explain why their choice. Ex: I think the…is the odd one out because it doesn’t eat…. /

    I believe this picture is the odd one out because the…can’t live underwater….

  1. Concept mapping
    • Level: 3rd grade
    • Subject: Natural Science
    • Theme: Seasons
    • Prior knowledge: The students are familiar with the concepts of seasons and weather phenomena like: rain, snow, wind, fog, storm, thunder, lightning
    • New Knowledge: introducing adjectives: Stormy, windy, rainy, foggy,
    • CLIL vocabulary: Students revise and use new structures: In …. (season) it is…. (adjective). It……. (verb), and: In …. (season) it is…. (adjective). It is……. (adjective)
    • Activity: Students work in groups to build a concept map in which they need to associate the weather phenomena with the seasons, then add the new concepts making associations with the meteorological phenomena.
  1. Worked examples
    • Level: 4th grade
    • Subject: Mathematics
    • Theme: Problem Solving/ Order of Operations
    • Prior knowledge: The students are familiar with the concepts of mathematical operations: addition/subtraction/multiplication/division
    • New Knowledge: the order of operations
    • CLIL vocabulary: parenthesis, add, subtract, multiply, divide, equals, product, calculation
    • Activity: The teacher introduces the notion of order of operations through worked examples method, by presenting a mathematical problem and showing step by step solutions. The next step, the students must solve a similar problem, with the terms a little modified in order to allow the students develop critical thinking and reasoning. The teacher helps with key questions during this process: What are the first steps that have been used in this example? Why is this important? etc.