Teaching individual CLIL lessons
Hello there,
Last week was full of struggles :( CLIL appeared to be something difficult to conduct, especially when the topic is science, and CLIL teacher (me) know only basic things about it. But somehow we managed to go through 3 lessons so far. On Wednesday and Thursday, I will be finishing my unit.
It was really stressful, as I was not sure how to approach it. I have no experience in teaching CLIL, so it was quite a challenge.
On my first lesson, I've realized that kids know much more than I've expected. It was nothing new for them to talk about planets in the Solar System. They pretty much knew all the names so there was no need to focus on it. First, we collected our ideas about the circle, what could it be? After some suggestions and more amazing drawing from me, students got it and said: "it's a planet!". Then we talked about what do they know about our planet. Then we've been working on a model of the solar system, and students described the Earth for me. That's it's mostly blue because of water, that it's smaller than...and bigger than... Then, by using prepositions they described the location of the Earth. Then we talked about what makes our planet special? and so we've learned some words like Sun, temperature, oxygen, and water of course.
Then we conducted two experiments. Students were calling all the preps needed for it and shared their expectations on the outcomes. We seed the grass and put it on the windowsill and in the wardrobe (no sun), to check if Earth could exist without Sun. We also checked the presence of the oxygen in the classroom with an experiment with glass and candle.
It was quite fun for me, but no surprise for students came out they already knew it.
I will not describe all my lessons in detail, there is no point in it. What I would like to talk about is some problems that I've faced during conducting those classes
Sometimes I think I don't really understand the difference between CLIL and teaching subjects in English. Because...grades 1-3 have general teaching anyways. They touch different things that belong to one wide topic. So it's just doing the same in English, isn't it? I've had classes for CLIL on BA studies and now on MA and I still don't see the difference. I just gave some basic physics lesson in English with the usage of things that they already know. It's natural and this is how they do it in general teaching in the native language.
Conducting the lesson is also difficult because I never know what to expect from my students. Will they understand? will they be able to learn it? What do they already know? Won't it be boring?
This is why I came to realize that this kind of teaching CLIL will never work out. Random teachers coming to random classrooms, without any knowledge on how much students know already to make lessons interesting and understandable.
But from positive things! Some content that I've introduced during my lessons students knew in polish because they are doing the same with their polish teacher! This seemed nice cooperation, even if made by coincidence, but I felt like this might have some great outcomes later.
I will share more details next time.
Hope you enjoyed reading and maybe someone can answer my questions and doubts? Pleaseee!
XOXO
Last week was full of struggles :( CLIL appeared to be something difficult to conduct, especially when the topic is science, and CLIL teacher (me) know only basic things about it. But somehow we managed to go through 3 lessons so far. On Wednesday and Thursday, I will be finishing my unit.
It was really stressful, as I was not sure how to approach it. I have no experience in teaching CLIL, so it was quite a challenge.
On my first lesson, I've realized that kids know much more than I've expected. It was nothing new for them to talk about planets in the Solar System. They pretty much knew all the names so there was no need to focus on it. First, we collected our ideas about the circle, what could it be? After some suggestions and more amazing drawing from me, students got it and said: "it's a planet!". Then we talked about what do they know about our planet. Then we've been working on a model of the solar system, and students described the Earth for me. That's it's mostly blue because of water, that it's smaller than...and bigger than... Then, by using prepositions they described the location of the Earth. Then we talked about what makes our planet special? and so we've learned some words like Sun, temperature, oxygen, and water of course.
Then we conducted two experiments. Students were calling all the preps needed for it and shared their expectations on the outcomes. We seed the grass and put it on the windowsill and in the wardrobe (no sun), to check if Earth could exist without Sun. We also checked the presence of the oxygen in the classroom with an experiment with glass and candle.
It was quite fun for me, but no surprise for students came out they already knew it.
I will not describe all my lessons in detail, there is no point in it. What I would like to talk about is some problems that I've faced during conducting those classes
Sometimes I think I don't really understand the difference between CLIL and teaching subjects in English. Because...grades 1-3 have general teaching anyways. They touch different things that belong to one wide topic. So it's just doing the same in English, isn't it? I've had classes for CLIL on BA studies and now on MA and I still don't see the difference. I just gave some basic physics lesson in English with the usage of things that they already know. It's natural and this is how they do it in general teaching in the native language.
Conducting the lesson is also difficult because I never know what to expect from my students. Will they understand? will they be able to learn it? What do they already know? Won't it be boring?
This is why I came to realize that this kind of teaching CLIL will never work out. Random teachers coming to random classrooms, without any knowledge on how much students know already to make lessons interesting and understandable.
But from positive things! Some content that I've introduced during my lessons students knew in polish because they are doing the same with their polish teacher! This seemed nice cooperation, even if made by coincidence, but I felt like this might have some great outcomes later.
I will share more details next time.
Hope you enjoyed reading and maybe someone can answer my questions and doubts? Pleaseee!
XOXO
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