My CLIL Science Corner

  HOWDY! 😍 It's been a while since my last post. As teachers, you know that the end of the school year is overwhelming: meetings, grading, festivals... and these are some of  the reasons why I've been absent. I have had this post in my mind for weeks and today I have finally some time to share it with you. I love reading books for teachers to keep updated, to learn more and to help me reflect on my practice. I want to share with you these two books which can be really useful for CLIL teachers: 1) " CLIL: Content and Language Integrated Learning " by Do Coyle, Philip Hood and David Marsh. For me this book is the "bible" of CLIL and it is a "MUST HAVE". Not it only deals with theoretical concepts, but also how you can adapt CLIL to your context, assessment in CLIL, evaluating the impact of CLIL, programmes and future directions. 2) " 101 Scaffolding techniques " by Donna Lee Fields . If you are looking for ideas for Scaffolding, here you h...

Good afternoon teachers! Have you realised it's just four weeks until the end of the school year? This countdown makes me feel stressed, but I had to share with you this tip my 6th graders shared with me two weeks ago. As you may have read in other posts, I use videos in my CLIL Science classes to clarify concepts, to introduce content... (you can also  read a post " Videos and Songs for your CLIL Science Lessons" ). This term my students are learning about "Invertebrate animals". I wanted them to search for their own information and I suggested them watching some videos I had found on Youtube. The content and the language were quite good for my students, but the character spoke too fast. When I arrived in class, I told them about the videos and explained them we were going to watch the videos several times because the character spoke too fast. Some of the students raised their hand and said: "Don't worry, Eva! You can slow down the playback speed"...

  Hi teachers, How are you going? Some months ago I shared on my Instagram how my students do experiments and how they report results in our CLIL Science lessons.  Sometimes English and CLIL teachers complain because their students don't speak English in class. From my point of view, the most important issue we should take into account is that we offer students with motivating and meaningful situations, so that they are eager to use language. However, some of our students may not feel confident yet. In my case, my students are 10-11 year-old and they don't have a good command of English yet.  Here's when SCAFFOLDING should appear. Thanks to CLIL methodology , we can plan Language for Learning and Language of Learning in advance. This is a great opportunity to make sure our students have the language accessible to them. It is a good idea to have the structures and vocabulary they will need in a visible place, so that if a student needs to take a look at it, he/she can do...

  Hi teachers, Today I would like to talk to you about teaching VOCABULARY and GRAMMAR in CLIL . Should we teach vocabulary and structures before starting a Science or Arts unit?  After years of teaching with a CLIL approach, I confess there isn't a specific way to do so. I am going to tell you about my experience as a CLIL Science teacher. From my point of view, it depends on the age you are teaching and your students' level of English. When I teach 6-9 year-olds , I usually spend the first two sessions to teach and revise the new vocabulary that they are going to need in the new unit. And you may wonder how I do it. At these ages, I like using flashcards or realia and to play games with them. You can find some ideas about how to use flashcards in the post my dear friend and colleague Núria and I prepared: Let's see it with an example. The CLIL unit " A Healthy Mind into a Healthy Body " was divided into differents parts: 1) Introduction to Food 2) Where does it ...

  Good morning! Do your students like doing experiments? I'm sure they do! Kids are so curious that experiments captivate their attention from the beginning to the end. At least, that's what I have observed in my Science classes and do you know which is one of the reasons why I love experiments too? ALL students get involved no matter what their level of English is or if they struggle with contents. I love seeing their faces when they discover what happens or when they realise their hypothesis has nothing to do with the result. I love their excited faces. The two experiments below where carried out with my 5th graders. They were learning about BUOYANCY and DENSITY.   The experiment about BUOYANCY is like magic. It is called "Dancing Raisins". Can raisins dance? Do raisins float? Find it out with this experiment. I must confess that as an adult, when I tried it at home before doing it at school, I enjoyed like a little girl. You can download the experiment direction...

  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...

  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.                       

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...