HOW TO PLAN A CLIL UNIT OR PROJECT

 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 Catalonia.  I select the contents, the domains and the competences my students will develop in that particular unit or project.

2) Next I write the teaching objectives and I choose the assessment criteria from the  "Currículum d' Educació Primària" .

3) The next step is to design the activities that will help students achieve the teaching objectives. These activities should follow Bloom's Taxonomy.

4) Once the activities have been designed, I analyse which language my students will need to communicate successfully. For this purpose, I use the 3 As TOOL:

• LANGUAGE OF LEARNING: I write down the key phrases and the vocabulary needed

• LANGUAGE FOR LEARNING: Revising the activities, I anticipate the structures and vocabulary they will need regarding:

• Learning how to learn
• Language for pair and group work
• Understanding instructions
• How to deal with not understanding

• LANGUAGE THROUGH LEARNING: This can't be planned in advance, but it refers to the language that emerges during the learning process. Experience can help you predit the structures and vocabulary that will come up.

5. Now it's time to prepare the SCAFFOLDING. 

"Scaffolding is based on Vygotsky’s concept of the zone of proximal development and the emphasis is on providing assistance to enable a learner to reach beyond what they are able to achieve alone"

  http://www.west.net/~ger/scaffolding.html

    You can provide Scaffolding with different resources:    

                              * Linking language, cognition and content: manipulative and realia,                                 visual support, demonstrations, mind maps, substitution tables...

                              * Using different interaction: pairs, small groups, whole group  

                             * Cooperative learning activities, such as information gap activities,                                 jigsaw, four corners...  

6. Once I have followed all this steps, I audit my tasks making use of the CLIL Matrix, an adaptation of Cummin's Matrix developed by professor Do Coyle (2002).   This tool allows me to measure the combination of cognitive and linguistic levels of the different tasks of a unit or project.  

            

7) Then it's time to implement the unit or the project in my class. As the unit or project advances I reflect how it is going and I take notes to revise the unit before the next time I implement it again. This means that some times I have to improve my activitie the scaffolding or the teaching objectives.

As you have read, designing a CLIL unit takes time and makes you reflect on the decisions you are taking at every step.

How do you plan your CLIL units? I would love to read your recommendations.

Eva 💖