My CLIL Science Corner

HAPPY THURSDAY!!! Are you familiar with Bloom's Taxonomy ? Today I would like to deal with Bloom's Taxonomy and the verbs you should use in the different thinking levels to help your students go from low thinking levels to high thinking levels. Bloom's taxonomy was created by Benjamin Bloom in 1956. Bloom's taxonomy is a hierarchical classification of the different thinking levels. Bloom's taxonomy should be applied when creating unit objectives.  The first Bloom's taxonomy had the following thinking levels (from low to high thinking levels): -Knowledge -Comprehension -Application -Analysis -Synthesis -Creating In 2001, Bloom's Taxonomy was revised by Lorin Anderson and David Krathwhol. It is a taxonomy for learning, teaching and evaluating. In the revised Bloom's Taxonomy, Synthesis was changed by Evaluating. Let's have a look at each thinking level: REMEMBERING . It refers to recalling facts and basic concepts. Verbs for this level are: copy, defin...

  Hey!  Wednesday already! How's your week going? Today I want to share with you how I am trying to go PAPER FREE. Nowadays there are a lot digital tools which can help us to save paper and help the environment  These are the apps I have started using as a teacher.  Would you like to know how I use them? Keep reading  ☑️ Additio allows me to keep track of the students' attendance among other registers. I also use it to grade my students.  ☑️ Drive  is great for keeping the materials you create using Google docs, Google presentations,...  In addition, I can share folders and documents with other teachers and the students. ☑️ Google keep is the replacement of the post-its and notebooks I used to write my To-do lists  ️. I love it! The best is that you can download the app in your portable devices  ☑️ Since I discovered Google Calendar  , I haven't bought any diary ☑️ And the most recent incorporation: OneNote! These last years I would...

 HELLO! HELLO! 💗 How are my Teacher pals going? Some days ago, I shared the article "How I plan my CLIL units" in my Instagram account. One of the teachers who commented the post, asked if I could explain CLIL Matrix more extensively. I agreed and here I am. Are you familiar with Cummin's Matrix? Since this blog is about CLIL, I am going to tell you about the CLIL Matrix.   Professor Do Coyle (2002) adapted the CLIL Matrix from the Cummin's Matrix (1984). The CLIL Matrix is a tool for CLIL teachers and it can be used to measure the combination of cognitive and linguistic levels of the different tasks. As you can see in the image, it is divided into 4 quadrants:  Activities on quadrant 1 are cognitively easy, but they require a demanding language.  Activities on quadrants 2 and 3 are accessible in terms of language. Cognitively activities are  low to high cognitive demanding ( Bloom's taxonomy).   Activities on quadrant 4 require to master the lan...

  HIYA! How are you doing? It seems that this weird school year  has all teachers more stressed than usual. In today's post, I would like to give you hand. As teachers, many times we think that we have to prepare all the materials by ourselves. That's ok, but teachers are very supportive and we like sharing with our colleagues. Today I am going to share with you a webpage which contains " Ready to use CLIL units ". Yes! You have read correctly: ready to use CLIL units. This units have been prepared by other teachers and some of them have also been supervised by Philip Hood, one of the parents of CLIL. Other units have been prepared by teachers who have been participating in an innovative project of the Generalitat de Catalunya called "Generació Plurilingüe" (GEP). And you may wonder: "What is the name of this fabulous webpage?" Here we go!  The name of this webpage is ARC .  Type  "ARC Departament d'Ensenyament" in the Google bar and ...

  Hi, everyone! Some weeks ago in Twitter and Instagram, I read some tweets and posts by teachers and parents complaining about bilingual education in Spain. They wondered if it was really worthful to teach the contents of a subject (Arts, Science, Maths...) in English. I could see that those people were really concerned with this issue and that the majority of the opinions were against bilingualism. Their opinions were based on their experience.  One of my followers in Instagram sent me the link of one of these posts and I couldn't help giving my opinion. I told them about how I thought a subject in a language differen from L1 should be taught. As many of you know, I am a CLIL Science teacher and I consider I have enough experience on this issue. That day I decided I had to write a post on what I consider CLIL is and what CLIL is not. Let's get on with it! From my point of view, CLIL is NOT : - Translating contents from L1 to L2 - Repeating contents which have already been ...

  MORNING!!! 😃 As English or CLIL teachers, we are always concerned with encouraging our students to speak English in our class. Some kids quickly catch structures and vocabulary and  they start using English without much support. However, that's not the most common. SCAFFOLDING is based on Vygotsky's concept of the zone of proximal development. Scaffolding is the process of supporting students during their learning process. At the beginning, students need guidance and suport. As they make progress, Scaffolding can be gradually removed. In CLIL , you can scaffold the process and the language.  SCAFFOLDING  can be presented in many different ways: realia, clip, visuals, graphic organisers, picture dictionaries, mind maps, substitution tables, videos, songs... SCAFFOLDING is highly important both in English and CLIL lessons. When we are learning a language, we need different types of support until we can perfom by ourselves.  I would like to know how you use...

Wow!  I have realised it has been a long time since I last came over... This school year is being a bit stressful..., but I have to find time for me and for YOU! As CLIL teachers, we often face with the difficulty to find texts adapted to our students' English level. Some years ago, I started adapting texts so that they were appropriate to the structures and vocabulary my students were familiar with. I assure you that all the effort and time invested in this purpose pays off. Let me tell you how I adapt texts in my CLIL classes. What I do is either I seach for a text and then I adapt it or I write the text myself. As you can see in the images below, I hightlight in bold the words I think they might not understand. They usually read the text by themselves and they underline the words they don't understand.  Then we read the text together and I make sure they are understanding it. Finally they answer the comprehension questions, but first I check they know what each question mea...

  Hi everyone!!! Some days ago I started revising and updating the CLIL projects I will be teaching this school year and I thought it might be a good idea to let you know how I plan my CLIL units. Firstly, I would like to mention that I work in a big school. So, we have planned which Science contents are going to be taught in Catalan and which contents are going to be taught in English. The contents taught in English are mainly those contents in which students can experiment more, especially in 5th and 6th grade. Secondly, as the Science teacher, I talk to the teachers who are going to teach the contents in Catalan. We classify the different units or projects in the three terms of the school year. Next, it's my turn. Let me tell you the steps I follow to plan my CLIL projects: 1) My two documents of reference are the " Currículum d' Educació Primària " and " Competències bàsiques de l'àmbit de coneixement del medi " of the Depatment of Education of Catal...

  HOWDY! Summer holidays are arriving at the end and a new uncertain school year is at the door. We are all a bit worried for the current situation. We are specially concerned with how our teaching is going to be: in-person, virtual, hybrid? This is really important because it is our job; but, please, don't forget to keep having a healthy lifestyle. Keep reading. I have some tips for you. STAY POSITIVE More than never we need to stay positive. Remember that our thoughts are powerful and can have affect our health. EAT REAL FOOD, NOT PRODUCTS As Hypocrates said, "Let food be thy medicine". We all know that to be healthy, we have to eat the appropriate food. Choosing how we are going to feed our bodies makes an impact on how we are going to feel later. In the book " Paleovida " by Carlos Pérez , I read "Eat real food, not products". What does he mean? It means that we should eat fresh vegetables, fruits, meat and fish, not manufactured or at least the l...

  Hey! What are you up to? I hope your are making the most of your holidays. Today I would like to talk about the importance of observation. Our kids are surrounded by a world full of stimuli. Plus, we are in a world which seems to be in fast motion. Science lessons are a good opportunity to slow down since many Science activities need patience to be fulfilled. Observation requires concentration on the animal, plant, rock, ... to be observed. However, we have to make sure that our students know how to observe properly. Therefore, we should offer them some guiding, which may vary depending on what they are observing. A couple of school years  ago I prepared the template belows. They are for observing animals. They are available for FREE in English, Spanish and Catalan in my TpT Store. If you click on the images, you will be directed to my TpT store and you will be avaible to download them.                       

MORNING!!! ☼ I have been absent for a while because I have taken some days off to enjoy the sea, travelling a little bit and catching up with some friends and family. But I'm back full of energy and willing to share with you a lot of new ideas. Some weeks ago I created some flashcards for my Science lessons. These flashcards are about "The Scientic Method" . In my Science lessons I encourage my students to discover the Science contents they are learning doing experiments and applying the Scientific Method . Why using the Scientific Method in your Science lessons? Keep reading!  1. Experiments make all students ask themselves questions about a situation, a problem... 2. Experiments make students think hypothesis and elicit what can happen if they do one action or another. 3. Experiments are a good chance to teach students it is fine to make a wrong hypothesis and that we can learn from mistakes. 4. Experiments -if done in small groups-can encourage discussion 5. After do...

Good day! Today I would like to tell you which are my favourite Eric Carle's stories and that I have used with my students. Children love to be told stories, specially if you create a nice atmosphere and if they can be engaged at the same time they are listening to the stories.  I discovered Eric Carle stories loads of years ago, but I still use them with 1st and 2nd graders. I adapt the text for them because English is not their first language. I usually use them at Science lessons to learn about animals and plants, but as you already know there is a lot of vocabulary that we can revise or that they can learn as they are listening to the story. What I like the most about these stories is that there are sentences that are repeated along the story and this makes students participate and learn the structures and the vocabulary. Keep reading and you will find out how I have used these stories in my classes. Here we go! THE VERY HUNGRY CATTERPILLAR " The very hungry catterpilar ...

It's already Wednesday and I would like to share with you this wonderful tool I have used during the lockdown and that I am going to use it  more next year for sure. Edpuzzle lets you edit interactive videos that they stop at the right place you have added a question or a note. Isn't it amazing? And it also records your students progress 😊 The first step is to register. Once you are signed up, you will have to choose your school and you may find out that other teachers of your school are already using Edpuzzle. If their videos are public, you will be able to see the videos they have edited. This app allows you to upload a video from one of the platforms they suggest (Edpuzzle, Khan Academy, National Geographic, ...) or you can upload a video you already have. The next step is to edit the video. As I said before, you can different types of questions: open-ended, multiple choice, notes... You can also cut out your video and make it shorter. Once your video is ready, it's tim...

Happy Saturday! Today I feel like talking about Scaffolding in CLIL, but scaffolding is in fact important when learning any language or any content. I hope you enjoy the article below ↓↓↓. It was written during my stay at the University of Nottingham. EXPLORE THE ROLE OF SCAFFOLDING IN CLIL   The word “scaffolding” used for an educational purpose was first used by Wood, Bruner and Ross in Wood et al. (1976). In an educational context scaffolding refers to giving support to learners so that they can ‘move forward and continue to build new competencies’ (Bigge et al. 1999). An example of scaffolding is the process of learning to write. First, children are asked to write a word below a picture, then a short sentence, then they have to add adjectives until they are asked to write the description of an object. The teacher will probably make the pupils talk about certain characteristics: size, colour, use and so on. Then the pupils will have to think of an object and write the descri...