Practical N° 14: CLIL

Natalia Evangelista

I)

1) The five dimensions of CLIL are scaffolding, chunking, critical thinking, learning styles and expanded comfort zone. No, they do not act in isolation; they act all together in order to expand learning opportunities for students. These five dimensions working jointly allow teachers and learners to take greater control over the learning process and to improve learning results.

2)

·         Building scaffolds: Scaffolding is used in education to access, improve and add to current knowledge. In education, scaffolding is akin to a temporary supporting structure that students learn to use and to rely on, in order to achieve outcomes. Many of our parents unknowingly used scaffolding as they taught us how to ride a bicycle. Meaning for the individual is created through social process. Scaffolding can be described as a partner-assisted, social rather than strictly individualistic learning process. According to Gibbons, what and how we learn depends very much on the company we keep and scaffolding leads learners to reach beyond what they are able to achieve alone, to participate in new situations and to tackle new tasks. Scaffolding helps students to access previously acquired language, to analyze it, to process new information, to create new relational links and to take their understanding several steps further. Moreover, it helps students to better understand the learning process, to build momentum, to save time and to enjoy short-term wins. It lowers frustration and builds success. In short, scaffolding is a sheltered learning technique that helps students feel emotionally secure, motivates them and provides the building blocks (such as language or background knowledge) needed to do complex work. Scaffolding is not a permanent crutch. As one set of scaffolding is slowly removed, another set is quickly built up to support the next topic at hand. Taking into account that the ultimate goal of scaffolding is to help students take yet another step further in their understanding, scaffolding is constantly in state of being rebuilt. Scaffolding can be built by teachers, other learners (groups, pairs, students who have mastered a topic, older students helping younger students), by materials, by structured tasks, by parents and by other member of the community.

·         Chunking and repackaging knowledge: For most of us, information is better absorbed when is packed into digestible bites. For example, telephone numbers are usually grouped into two, three or four numbers to facilitate reading and retention. Sometimes letters are used. It is commonly believed that the average person can hold no more than seven pieces of information in his or her short-term working memory. So there is little point in presenting large amounts of information quickly. Our minds unconsciously reject excess information. To move information into our long-term memory so it can be recalled at a later time, we need to anchor it to prior knowledge by defining relational links and contrasting new knowledge with old. We need to put the new knowledge to use, organize it, assess it and consider it relevant. When written material or oral information is presented in clear chunks that do not contain more than seven pieces of well organized information, the short-term memory can usually process it. A sense of confidence and emotional security can develop. As each small chunk of information is worked through, the student is likely to experience a feeling of successes. There is an almost immediate sense that the material is “doable”. This positive reinforcement makes it easier to stay on task. If the student’s mind wanders, it is easier to return to the material when chunks are clearly delineated.

·         Fostering creative and critical thinking: Creative thinking involves the creation/generation or further development of ideas, processes, objects, relational links, synergies and quality relationships. On a practical level, in the context of education, critical thinking can be described as mental processes that learners use to plan, describe and evaluate their thinking and learning according to Moseley. It is self-directed thinking and, thus, fundamental to learning. By working to improve the quality of our thinking, we improve learning. Yet creative thinking, as well, is an essential element in effective planning or, at the very least, has the potential to improve planning. As we try to analyze and solve problems in our everyday lives, we often imagine various solutions. Creativity can be used to better explain our ideas to others and even to evaluate our plans and results from unique perspectives. It is difficult to separate creative thinking from critical thinking. Both are inextricably intertwined. Moreover, our values, attitudes and feelings have an impact on our thinking. Thus we need to examine the influence of these elements on our thinking processes. For example, having a negative attitude about a topic will ultimately affect our capacity to learn. Our minds are more likely to reject information about which we have negative feelings. Our emotional state of mind can contribute to or hinder learning. Goleman affirms that positive emotions enhance the ability to think flexibly and with more complexity, thus making it easier to find solution to problems. Conversely, when a concept struggle with an emotion, the emotion almost always win according to Sousa. It is difficult to think rationally when one is emotionally overwhelmed by negative feelings or insecurities. Thus, Jensen says that learners in positive, joyful environment are likely to experience better learning, memory, and feeling of self-esteem. Since meaning is co-constructed through a social process, critical thinking is also tied to social processes. The understandings we reach and the solutions to problems we propose need to match on some level with the understanding of others. At the very last, others have to be prepared to accommodate our views. Most educators operate on the premise that quality of thinking can be improved with the support of others, be they teachers, mentors, peers or parents.

·         Learning styles: Individual preferences clearly exist regarding how we like to communicate and learn. When these learning style preferences are taken into account, they can act as bridges that enhance communication and learning. Numerous frameworks exist for classifying learning styles. Several of these distinguish between visual, auditory and kinesthetic preferences. No matter which framework one uses, awareness of different learning styles enables teachers and students to better identify the ways teachers teach and students learn. Using these frameworks can also facilitate dialogue about the overall learning process. Raised awareness of learning styles can help students take greater control of their own learning, and can serve as a first step in expanding a person’s learning styles repertoire. It can facilitate further matching of teaching styles to learning styles. An expanded repertoire of teaching and learning approaches improves learning. Students who approach the learning process with a wide range of strategies have more options available for meeting curriculum expectations. Moreover, increased student awareness of differing leaning styles builds multiple perspectives. These multiple perspectives not only develop one’s capacity to think critically, but help students to better understand others and to work within their learning community while also building communication and teamwork skills.

·         Stepping just outside the comfort zone: Scaffolding and critical thinking strategies are tools for extending learning, for helping students to step out of and expand their comfort zone. In so many ways, those strategies are about helping students to operate in what Lev Vigotsky has called the zone of proximal development (the zone which lies between current knowledge and that which can be accomplished with the assistance of teachers and peers). These strategies help students move from their current understanding of content and attitudes to a new level of understanding, and then to take another step forwards right back into the zone of proximal development.

3) The advantages for acquisition/learning in young children are many. The first one is that within CLIL, English is not taught in isolation so students can promptly see the usefulness of the object of learning as the foreign language builds on contents related to the rest of the school curriculum, and thus it is view as authentic, because it is learnt in real contexts as opposed to artificial situations. The second one is that CLIL follows basic insights into foreign language acquisition by young children, namely that children can develop the use of two languages simultaneously until the age when lateralization occurs. They have an enormous potential for cognitive and social development and they learn the language by talking about present objects and solving concrete problems. The third one is that with CLIL they learn how to use language by focusing on a topic that interests them; moreover, they will be able to enhance their thinking processes as they will be provided with situations in which the learning of another subject could even be more successful because of the effort of decoding it and thinking about it in a foreign language. Finally, this naturalness provided by similar contents will help YLE pick up the foreign language more easily, and thus will enhance the acquisition process.

4) All these key terms are interrelated in a CLIL lesson. The use of CLIL in a lesson gives the teacher the possibility of working with a broad variety of learning styles and learning strategies. The use of ICT or the presentation of a lesson based on intercultural knowledge and understanding of the world can be integrated in CLIL. The constant exposure to the target language allows students to develop language awareness. The use of CLIL gives teachers the opportunity to foster critical thinking on the students and allows students to inter relate concepts within the learning process and not in an isolated way.

5) One of the most common and effective ways of anchoring into previous learning is through brainstorming. Brainstorming is an exercise in free association. A topic is raised (elephants, safety issues at school, alcoholism, etc) and participants say whatever comes to mind in relation to the given topic. Once the initial brainstorming session is completed, the results are analyzed. Students are usually encouraged to see if they can group or categorize the points raised during the session. Instead of simply listing words on the board during a brainstorming session, a web can be created. Any given circle in the web can used to start brainstorming a new subset. Another option is to structure thinking prior to beginning a brainstorming session by using a framework. It could be a diamond. The students are provided with the topic, in the centre of the diamond, and four subheadings. Students brainstorm one category at a time or all four at once. A different possibility is to use organizers. For example, provide the students with a partially completed fishbowl organizer. The teacher presents the topic and most of the subheadings. Students can also provide some of their subheadings. It will probably help them to recall more information than can be obtain during a simple brainstorming.

6) In education circles, perhaps one of the most widely known model of critical thinking is Bloom’s taxonomy. He states that all learners need to develop both lower and higher order thinking skills. The six levels of difficulty start with practical lower order thinking (labeling a diagram) and move upwards to more abstract and more complex higher order skills (critical evaluation). However, not all teachers have found all levels of Bloom’s model easy to use. Working in concert with Bloom and his colleagues, Anderson and Krathwohl posited a modified version of Bloom’s taxonomy. Remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate, and create. We find this modified taxonomy particularly useful as a checklist. It is our belief that if the majority of lessons are based on tasks associated with applying one’s new knowledge and understanding, analyzing the effectiveness of the application of new knowledge and understanding, evaluating progress in task completion and learning and creating something new, this will lead to greater recall of facts, for we learn best through experience. In fact, the “remember” and “understand” levels are imbedded into activities such as analyzing, evaluating and creating. We can achieve it at Primary school level through different strategies: two of them are predicting (anticipating what is likely to happen) and role-playing. In order to put the predicting strategy into practice, teachers can tell students to put some lentils or beans on humid cotton and then water them. They predict what will have happen by tomorrow. The next day they observed what have happened and compare this with their prediction. The same process of predicting, observing and comparing observations with predictions continues for a week. The students assess whether their predictions are becoming more accurate each day and why. Another idea is that the teacher works with storytelling and then she/he asks to the students what they think will happened at the end. With the purpose of using the role-playing strategy, teachers can tell students to pretend they are leaf that falls from a tree, breaks down and re-enters the tree. A different option is that the teacher asks the students to take the roles of a buyers and sellers in a shop.

Natalia Evangelista

II)

LESSON PLAN

Teachers: Estela Braun and Liliana Monserrat.

Trainee: Natalia Evangelista.

School: School N°246 “Quelulén”.

Course: 6^th grade.

Textbook: The materials will be provided by the teacher.

Topic: Food and healthy habits.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

·         To recognize and incorporate new vocabulary about different nutrients (protein, carbohydrates, sugars, fats, vitamins and minerals).

·         To know what function nutrients have in the body.

·         To learn what kind of food contains each nutrient.

·         To be aware of the frequency in which some nutrients should be consumed.

·         To take into account some tips in order to improve the lifestyle.

·         To reflect about the importance of having a healthy diet.

·         To practice the reading, speaking, listening and writing macro-skills.

WARM UP

-          The teacher will present some flashcards on the board with the name of different nutrients (protein, carbohydrates, sugar, fats, vitamins and minerals).

-          The teacher will show the students flashcards of some food items and she will stick them bellow each nutrient.

-          The teacher will explain the students what food contains each nutrient. For example: meat and fish contain protein.

-          The teacher will explain the students why is important to consume different nutrients. For example: protein gives you strength.

Type of interaction: Teacher students.

Macro-skills: Listening.

Timing: 10 minutes.

Materials: Blackboard and flashcards.

DEVELOPMENT

First activity:

-          The teacher will give the students a copy with a text called “Healthy lifestyle – Healthy diet”. The students will have to read the text and solve an exercise. They will have to complete the “Food Circle” that appears on the right corner at the top using the words in a box.

Type of interaction: Students individually.

Macro-skills: Reading and writing.

Timing: 8 minutes.

Materials: Copies.

Second activity:

-          The teacher will give the students another copy with a diagram that contains information from the text and in pairs; they will have to complete a chart using the information in it.

Type of interaction: Students in pairs.

Macro-skills: Writing.

Timing: 6 minutes.

Materials: Copies.

Third activity:

-          The teacher will give the students a copy with six statements and they will have to answer true or false according to what the text says.

Type of interaction: Students individually.

Macro-skills: Reading and writing.

Timing: 5 minutes.

Materials: Copies.

Fourth activity:

-          The teacher will give the students another copy with four questions: What do you usually have for breakfast / lunch / tea and dinner?. They will have to work in pairs asking these questions to her/his partner and writing down the answers.

Type of interaction: Students in pairs.

Macro-skills: Speaking and writing.

Timing: 6 minutes.

Materials: Copies.

 Fifth activity:

-          The teacher will give the students a copy and they will have to a kind of letter to Dan’s food website saying what they eat in a typical day.

Type of interaction: Students individually.

Macro-skills: Writing.

Timing: 5 minutes.

Materials: Copies.

EXTENSION: The teacher can continue working with this topic presenting sugar (or salt) in food.

EXTENSION’S LESSON PLAN

Teachers: Estela Braun and Liliana Monserrat.

Traine: Natalia Evangelista.

School: School N°246 “Quelulén”.

Course: 6^th grade.

Textbook: The materials will be provided by the teacher.

Topic: Food and healthy habits.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

·         To know how much sugar certain food and drinks contains.

·         To reflect about the importance of consuming the right amounts of sugar daily in order to keep healthy.

·         To learn about the illnesses that could appear due to eat too much sugar. For example: diabetes and obesity.

·         To revise different food items.

·         To practice the listening, reading and writing macro-skills.

WARM UP

-          The teacher will write a title on the board: “Sugar in food and drinks” and she will ask the students some questions: Do you eat too much sweet food and drinks? How much fizzy drink and chocolate do you eat? Do know that eating too much sugar could be bad for our health?

-          The teacher will present some flashcards on the board with different food items and she will stick plastic spoons next to each flashcard representing the amount of sugar that the food item contains.

-          The teacher will put a small table at the front of the class with some plastic glasses; all the glasses will be labelled. For example: 1 spoon of sugar, two spoons of sugar, three spoons of sugar, etc. The teacher will also put some sugar in a bowl next to the glasses.

-          The teacher will ask some students to come to the front and they will have put the right amount of sugar in each glass. For example: in the glass that says 6 spoons of sugar, she/he will have to put six spoons with sugar.

-          After that, the teacher will ask the students to come to front in order and observe all the glasses. The idea is that they can be able to visualize and be conscious about how much sugar represents one, two, three, six or seven spoons.

Type of interaction: Teacher students.

Macro-skills: Listening and speaking.

Timing: 13 minutes.

Materials: Blackboard, flashcards, plastic spoons, small table, plastic glasses and sugar.

DEVELOPMENT

First activity:

-          The teacher will give the students a copy with some food items and the spoons of sugar that they contain. The students will have to match the food items with the correct spoons of sugar.

Type of interaction: Students individually.

Macro-skills: Writing.

Timing: 5 minutes.

Materials: Copies.

Second activity:

-          The teacher will give the students another copy with some food items again and they will have to write the number of spoons of sugar that the food contains.

Type of interaction: Students individually.

Macro-skills: Writing.

Timing: 6 minutes.

Materials: Copies.

Third activity:

-          The teacher will give the students a copy with a chart containing three additions. The students will have to complete the chart with the name of the different food items first and then they will have to write the numbers, add and write the result..

Type of interaction: Students individually.

Macro-skills: Writing.

Timing: 8 minutes.

Materials: Copies.

Fourth activity:

-          The teacher will give the students another copy with an addition again. This time, the students will have to choose two food items that they want, then draw and count in order to get the result.

Type of interaction: Students individually.

Macro-skills: Writing.

Timing: 7 minutes.

Materials: Copies.