My CLIL Science Corner

  HELLO! HELLO!   How are you doing? It's the countdown!  The end of the school year is always stressful and the temperature isn't helping at all   But... teachers are here to help    Two days ago @teach.and.learn.english shared a post about REVISION GAMES (visit her account to read it) on Instagram and I decided to create a new version of the game called "GIVE ME FIVE"  . Today 3rd graders have played this game and you can't imagine how much they have loved it!  How to play GIVE ME FIVE   I have created a wheel with the topics I wanted my students to revise. I have used the app "Wheel of names" to create the wheel (Click on the image to play "Give me five"  I have divided the students in 5 groups and I have given each group a sheet of paper, a pencil and a rubber  It's time to spin the wheel! They have had 1 minute to write 5 words about that topic. I have used the app online-stopwatch to control the time  The speake...

 HELLO, HELLO! Some days ago I told you about some of my life hacks as a teacher, did you read the post? It is available in this blog. If you want to read it, click here    Creating all our resources is time-consuming, so why not investing some money in ready-to-use games?  Some weeks ago I found these memories in the supermarket Aldi . They are perfect for playing in small groups or to use them in learning stations. (click on the image to see the memory games)  Apart from playing a memory game you can also plan other activities such as classifying in categories, finding the odd one, finding out which card is missing... The one about animals also includes facts about the animals, so these cards can also be used for a reading activity. But... why using memories in your classes?  Playing memory games improves attention, concentration and focus.  Memory games improve visual recognition.  You need short-term memory to play memory games, so this brain ...

 💖 Hi teachers! 💖 Just three school days for our desired and deserved Christmas break 😉!  I'm sure you have worked very hard writing your lessons plans, creating your own materials, dealing with classroom management, attending meetings, working during the weekend... Yes, as teachers, sometimes we think we are superheroes with superpowers and we end up  the first term overwhelmed.  At the beginning of each school year,  I promise myself it is going to be different. I try to convince myself that I will only be working during the week, but this never happens. I end up working at school, after the school and at weekends. Too often, as teachers, we think we must create all our resources and that is really exhausting and time-consuming. Does this sound familiar to you? If it does, keep reading 👇👇 As many of you, I have been creating my own resources, but then I realised I didn't have free time for me and my hobbies. That is why this term I have started implementi...

  GOOD AFTERNOON! 💕 Well... or good evening or good morning, depending on when you are reading this post 😊 In this blog, I have already dealt with the following principles of CLIL: ☑ The 4 Cs ☑ Scaffolding ☑ Bloom's Taxonomy Today's post is about " The 3 As tool in CLIL ". Are you ready? 😉 The 3 As tool is used for planning CLIL lessons. Whereas the 4 Cs helps us in the overall planning of the unit, the 3 As tool is of great help when we plan the language our students will need in the activities we have planned. The 3 As stands for A nalyse,  A dd and A pply. Let's have a look at the three stages: 👉 Stage 1 : ANALYSE content for the language OF learning. This means the key phrases and the vocabulary needed. 👉 Stage 2 : ADD to content language FOR learning. This refers to metacognitive or learner's strategies, language for group/pairwork, understanding instructions, how to deal with not understanding... To me, this stage is highly important. If we wa...

Hi teachers! How are you doing?💖 Today I would like to ask you a question: do you bear in mind the 4 skills ( listening, speaking, reading and writing ) when planning your CLIL units or projects? I try to do so, even if sometimes it is a bit tricky. From my point of view, it is highly important that our students have time to practise the 4 skills in their CLIL class because, in fact, they are using a language to learn in a similar way they would if they were learning content in L1. Whenever they are learning contents from any subject in L1 they are also using the 4 skills: maybe they are watching a video and they are listening to information they need for a purpose (listening) ; they are discussing a topic (speaking);  they are searching for information in books or on internet (reading) or they are writing a report (writing). So, why not practising the 4 skills in our CLIL lessons?  Would you like to find out what activities I use in my CLIL lessons to practise the 4 skill...

  Hi teachers, Have you wondered what is the best subject to teach with a CLIL approach? Yes? No? Well, I think that in fact there isn't a best subject to teach with a CLIL approach. Now you may think: "so... how can I decide in which subject to implement CLIL?  First, let me tell you why I think there isn't a best subject for CLIL . CLIL is a methodology and as methodology CLIL gives you the principles you must apply when planning a CLIL unit o project. Whatever the subject you are going to teach CLIL, you should plan carefully Content, Cognition, Communication and Culture. Even though, there isn't a best subject, in my opinion the main objective of applying CLIL is that our students are able to communicate in L2, therefore choosing a subject which can offer them situations in which our students can use the language for a communicative purpose should be a must. Would you like to know why my school decided to teach Science with a CLIL approach ? Great! Keep reading ;)...

 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...

  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...

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 ...