CLIL lesson plan: solve the problem

This is another lesson plan I've created for the Transatlantic Educators Dialogue. I've prepared it for History and Economics, but as usual it's flexible and easy to customize in order to suit different subjects. I’ve worked on two basic structures, the first suggested by Dr. Diana Hicks during one of her CLIL courses for teachers, and the second by the leaders of the eTwinning Learning Event “eTwinning and the Creative Classroom”. I added my personal touch and... here it is!

Of course, every single time you use this lesson plan it has to be modified a bit according to the students you're working with, their level of FL and the topic you're willing to address.

And that’s the best part of being teachers: you never have the same lesson twice!

Where: computer room

How: students working in group of 4 ( 1 pc / group)

Materials: 1 pc/ group + 1 interactive board (or simply 1 projector, to show the groups’ works at the end of the lesson)

Time: 1 hour for the preparation + 1 hour to share the different solutions (but it depends on the number of groups)

Languages: since History and Economics are quite tough subjects (also as far as the vocabulary is concerned), I let them free to discuss in any language, as long as they produced a shared solution in English. I suggested they produced a list of simple sentences, beginning with "We could...".You may change this point, depending on the subject you choose and its level of difficulty.

Goal: generate as many creative solutions as possible - understand cause/effect relationships.

The problem:

You live in a wealthy industrial city. However, in the last few years pollution has become major issue for the population (health problems, environmental destruction, etc.).
Your teams are the special committees of experts chosen by the Mayor to solve the problem.

You have to keep in mind the city key features:
- two big wood factories, very polluting but employing the majority of the citizens
- heavy car traffic
- poor quality of the air
- expanding population (high need of new houses)
- neighbouring woods

The Mayor has a good city budget to invest on your ideas (money at the moment is not the main problem) but remember all decisions you take will have consequences (i.e. if you close the two factories you’ll stop pollution but you’ll ruin the city economy! So, look for sustainable solutions).

The steps:

1: study carefully the problem, concentrating on the interaction among the different features

2: each team member produces at least one idea

3: the teams discuss the different ideas

4: each team produces a shared solution

5: the teams present their plan of action to the Mayor (the teacher!) – discussion among teams

The Tools:

I usually encourage the use of mapping tools, such as

bubbl.us https://bubbl.us/

free mind http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

iMindMap http://www.thinkbuzan.com/intl

3D Topicscape http://www.topicscape.com/

Prezi http://prezi.com/

But a simple ptt could do as well. If the students are working on these activity in more than one session, I invite them to create Google docs in order to share ideas.

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Now you just have to try this one as well and let me know! And if you'd like to know more about TED, or join in a future session, you may want to have look at this interesting article. It's definitely an journey worth taking!

A very special CLIL lesson plan for History & Geography

I've created this lesson plan together with Gaelle Farout for the capstone session of TED 2012.
During brilliant course (maybe you remember we talked about it in another post), we had the opportunity to work in groups, sharing opinions and experences with teachers coming from all around the EU and the US. During last session, each team presented a lesson idea - which was a huge boost for our creativity! Now, we all have lots of new lesson plans, lots of ideas for new projects... and lots of new friends.
So, there will definitely be a follow-up to this experience.

As for Gaelle and me, we worked on a simple CLIL lesson plan dealing with the topic of immigration. You will recognize the structure (thanks again Dr. Diana Hicks!), but I think you'll find the content and activities to be new, engaging and easy to customize to suit different topics and age range.
Note: of course you have to choose a specific aspect/period connected with immigration. I was thinking of the Italian immigration to America in the first two decades of the 20th century. It's up to you: and once you've chosen the specific subject, you can give more details to enrich the scenario.

Ok. Ready to become an inspector of the Immigration Service? or will you be a poor worker in need of a new home? Let the story go...

LEAVING HOME: WHY ?

about 24 students - 12/13 years old

subjects: History/Geography/Languages

Pupils working in groups of six

Instructions given in English - pupils can answer and discuss, when needed, both in English and in mother tongue.

Materials:

- 24 cards with States from Africa, Asia, Europe, USA (6 cards/continent, needed to make groups)

- blackboard / interactive board

- textbook.

And here’s what you will tell your students:

1) Pick a card, look at your image and at those of the others. Then form groups: you’ve to discuss how. The students will soon understand they have to divide into continents. Once they are in their group, ask the eldest of each one – who’ll be the team leader – to explain who they are and how they formed the team. Example “we are France, Italy, Slovakia, Spain, Germany and Finland. We are together because we are in Europe”. And so on. Check that all the students are in the right place. If one or more aren’t, their classmates will probably realize and tell them to move. Let them go to their correct group (this is a warming up, not a test).

2) - If your country belongs to EU or US, you are now 6 members of the immigration service.
Take a piece of paper and draw your immigration office, with your individual roles. Discuss your roles. The team leader is the member who takes the final decision. Who are the others? Find 5 important criteria according your taught about immigration.

- If your country belongs to Asia or Africa, you are the six members of a family. Take a piece of paper and draw your family tree. The team leader is the grandfather/grandmother, who rules the family. Who are the others? Remember there can be members of the family who are dead. Be as creative as you can: put names, dates, etc. And don’t forget to write in bold the family name above the tree! Think of a job for your character, if he or she is old enough to work. (This is supposed to be the motivating and amusing part, so leave them free as long as they’re actually into the role).

3) All the members of the family and the immigration service have now to introduce themselves to the others. Example “I’m Elena, the mother. I’m a journalist.” “I’m Fabio, the eldest son: I’m a singer.” "I'm Jaimie, the Director of the Immigration Office" etc.

4) - Families:
Suddenly, the two families are forced to leave their house and their country. They realize they can’t live in their homeland any more, and decide the only thing you can do is going away.
Remember, this means losing your house, friends, and much of what you have, so it should be something very serious.What has happened? Each student has to write five reasons why he could be forced to leave. Then, compare your list with those of your team mates. Are there any common ideas? Can you make up anything new together?
Write a “family list” – 10 reasons that could force your family to leave.
(They’ll probably think of natural disasters, spreading of a disease, war, etc. You’ll be surprised to see how close to real life they can get).

- Immigration service:
A family from Africa wants to immigrate in EU and a family from Asia wants to immigrate in US.
Remember, this means they've lost their house, friends, and much of what they had, so it should be something very serious.
What has happened? Each student has to write five reasons why he could accept this family in the country - what the family could do, how they can be useful for your country and its economy. And also what they have to do in order to be accepted. Then, compare your list with those of your team mates. Are there any common ideas? Can you make up anything new together?
Write an “immigration list” – 10 reasons that could convince your immigration service to accept this family.

5) Families and Immigration Services share their ideas. All of the ideas are collected on the board.

6) You’ve been acting as the millions of people who were forced to leave their countries during the 20th century and as the host countries that received them. You’ve been trying to understand their reasons, and you’ve been asking yourselves what can be so terrible as to have you leave your land. You've also tried to find out how immigration can be positive for the receiving country, and how to regulate it.
What did actually happen? Did you guess right? Let's take the book and find out together.

(...thank you Gaelle !!!)

CLIL, assessment, and student presentations

In our CLIL lessons (and also in monolingual ones) student presentations often play an important role in the assessment procedure. They may also be a homework, given to an individual student or to a group, after a series of lessons. 

The problem is, while they are an exciting moment for the involved student(s), they can be quite dull for the rest of the class. And if the class is bored, this will sooner or later lead to misbehaviour, with lots of disappointment and frustration both for the teacher and for the presenter students. Not to mention how frustrating it can be for your pupils to speak to a sleeping audience - now, wait a minute: thinking about it, that can be a nice idea after all. They'll eventually understand how we feel at times! life can look pretty different when seen from the other side of the teacher's desk...

Ok, back to the point. We discussed this issue with Dr Diana Hicks while attending her lessons in Cheltenham, and she gave us a very sensible answer: students in the class get bored because they feel they've nothing to do. They are not sure what they should be listening for and they are not given any active role in this phase of learning.

So she suggested we turn to peer assessment of presentations. The key of success, in fact, is transforming the passive audience into an active participant in the lesson. And here's her battle-plan:


1) First of all, divide the class into groups of five (give each member and number from 1 to five). Each of the five members of the group, depending on his/her number, has to concentrate on one specific aspect of the presentation, make notes and report back to the rest of the group afterwards, suggest possible improvements or comment positive features.

Student 1: Content
was there any new information?
which information was new to the listener and which was old?

http://www.school-clipart.com/

 Student 2: Visuals
did the visuals help or hinder the information?
would other images/graphs/etc. have been better?
How did the visuals match the speech?

Student 3: Structure and organization
Did the presentation follow a logical sequence?
Did the examples help to clarify the content, or did they generate confusion?

Student 4: Language (grammar, vocabulary, personal style)
Was the language clear?
Did errors hinder communication?
Was the language appropriate? was it too informal or too formal?
Was there a correct use of specific vocabulary?

Student 5: Aims - consistent, coherent, cohesive?
Did the speaker present the purpose and objectives of the presentation at the beginning?
Were they clear?
Did he/she achieve them?

2) of course, all the students have to listen to the presentation
3) each student grades his/her part of the presentation in a scale 1-5 (choose the scale depending on how marks are given in your school system). In this case, 1 is unsatisfactory and 5 is excellent
4) all same number students gather and compare their grades with those of the others. They discuss, share opinions and eventually agree on a common mark
5) students return to their groups and inform the others
6) feedback is given to the presenters.

I liked this strategy and actually tried it with my students. It can be quite a surprise for them when you first introduce it - presentation time is usually understood by the pupils as relax time. So they'll be partly intrigued partly annoyed "what? are we supposed to do something? even now?"

You have to be sure to allow enough time to explain what they're going to do, how and why, how groups will be organized, how they will work, and - most important - what will be the impact of the peers' grade on the final mark. Be careful - too little, and the class will think you're cheating, too much, and the presenters will try to bribe the audience.

Are there any other strategies or activities you use to make presentations more motivating and engaging for the whole class?

As for this one, try it with your class and have fun. After all, a student presentation doesn't have to be sleeping time for the rest of the class!

Bilingual Lesson Planning

All lessons need adequate planning, and planning is particularly important in CLIL/bilingual lessons, since a delicate balance of elements is needed.
In another post we were discussing the importance of collegiality, seen as the greatest challenge in CLIL: teachers have to work together and keep on the same wavelenght to truly meet their pupils' needs.
But in order to work effectively together, we need to plan together.

I'm sharing this time the "Balance Planning Model" given us by Dr Diana Hicks during the course in Cheltenham. Of course, as usual, you will find these papers uploaded in The Next Generation TwinSpace, under "useful materials". But this time I'll share them here as well as images, so that we all can see what we are talking about.
You'll see they are two versions of the same model: the first one has some annotations, to give you an idea of how to use it. The second one is blank: you can choose to use it as it is, or customize it to suit your needs.

 So, here's the scenario: talk about your lesson idea with your colleague(s) - remember subject teachers(s) and language teacher(s) need each other here - and then share this paper and try to fill it together. You need to be very clear to each other about some core points: your goals, how to reach them, the role

 of your students in this process, your role in this process, how to assess the pupils' work.

This model can be shared with students as well, so that they understand what they are going to do and why, and where they are supposed to go.

The advantages:

- it creates a shared language for collegiality

- it offers a scaffolding for creating activities integrating language and content

- it enables teachers to plan more quickly, efficiently and effectively

- it enables teachers to work towards appropriate assessment activities
- it enables teachers to realize they have to include different activities for the different learners' styles
- it defines the role of "other actors" in the lessons: experts, visitors, parents etc.

- it provides a checking mechanism to ensure that neither language nor content get lost during a lesson or unit

We are used to templates and models when planning in our subjects, but CLIL planning is often perceived as a "free field".

So, sometimes, activities are not structured in detail, or come from an ex-tempore collaboration between teachers. Any kind of collaboration is great of course: but if we want to be efficient, we have to give a structure to what we do.

Whe have to work within a framework - which is easier and much more practical: we don't have to invent the same activity twice, we can capitalize our experience, and the work we already did.

Personally, I used this tool - with some customizing - and found it very useful and understandable, for colleagues and students as well.

Well, what do you think?

Do you have any other model or templates to share? Or any other experience in bilingual planning?

Always looking forward to getting to know more :)

CLIL lesson - Geography

This is the Geography version of the History "GO FIND YOUR PEOPLE" lesson-plan.
As for that one, this activity can be a fun revision of topics your students are already familiar with. You can allow a couple of hours at the end of one of more work units. In my classes we had been studying Western European countries and our activities dealt with the cities, landscapes, languages and traditions we had found during our "European journey".

GUESS WHERE?

up to 30 students - 12/13 years old (but of course activities can be adapted to suit any age range)

subjects: Geography/Languages

pupils working in teams (number of teams depending on how many States they have studied)

About 2 hours needed

Instructions given in English - pupils being free to answer and discuss both in English and mother tongue.

Materials:

- for the "tuning in" activity: pictures of cities or monuments of the different countries (one for each student)

I had 24 students and we had studied 6 countries, so I had prepared 24 pieces of paper with images of well known cities of those countries. For each country, there was the capital city + 3 other cities (as I needed 6 groups of 4 students).

- for the secon part (betting game): that's the same simple activity of the History lesson-plan. I had prepared a ppt presentation with 20 multiple/choice questions (English). As usual, there were questions dealing with what we had studied plus a bunch of funny questions (show-biz, weird traditions, funny facts).

Steps:

1) Pick an image and guess where you are. Now, go make groups. Students have to show their picture, look at those of the others, and then try to understand how to make groups. If you give them pictures of famous monuments and landscapes, they'll be sitting in their groups in a matter of minutes.

2) Are you in your groups? Now, who has the capital city? The "owners" of the capital cities will be the group's spokesman. Starting with group 1, can the spokesman please tell me: which State do you represent?  The team leader says for instance "we represent the United Kingdom, and I have London, the capital city."

3) Starting with group 1, can each member of the team please name their city? Double check that all of the students are in the right group: remeber the capital city is the easiest one! Your students may have had a quite harder time trying to recognize different cities.

[Personal note: in Geography, I believe seeing is the core point: you can't just study a country on written lines, because you won't understand what you're not able to see. We're so lucky now, with the amount of technology we can use to actually see the world! So be sure to offer your students plenty of opportunities to see (and work on) images of different countries: they'll understand better, they'll remember more easily, and they'll probably want to visit them in the future!]

As usual, if one or more of the students aren't in the correct group, they will hopefully realize it with the help of the others. Let them move to the correct group.

4) Now, go to the map of Europe in your book. Can the spokesman please tell me where your country is located? (you can ask some more questions here about languages/climate/ economy... you name it: Geography is such a wide world! Anyway, remember to be very specific in your questions, or you'll spend all of your time on this step).

5) Sit in your groups. We will have now a betting game: who will be our millionaire?

Each group starts with a treasure of 100 gold pieces.

You will be asked 20 multiple choice questions. The group has to bet on the right answer. You can bet from a minimum of 10 gold pieces up to all the gold you have. But be careful in your bet: for if you are right, you'll win the gold you bet. But if you are wrong, you'll lose it.

6) I close the activity, as usual, asking: is there anything else you would like to know about these countries? Tricky question, once again - in Geography you'll have to be ready to answer about all of the human knowledge of the last 5000 years - or send them to a colleague, saying "that looks more like Science. Ask your teacher, maybe she knows best!"

If you've time, you can ask your students which of these countries they've already visited, or which one they'd like to visit first, and why. But I'm not sure you'll have any time to spare: you'll be surprised at how fast those two hours will run (I always am).

I think CLIL works particularly well with Geography. What do you think?

Do you have any other experience in this field?

Remember that all of your tips, suggestions and ideas are always more than welcome!

Collegiality - the CLIL challenge

Collegiality between subject and English language teachers is the key element of any successful CLIL pathway. I'm sure we all agree on this point.

In a popular post of last summer, we dealt with the "subject teacher/language teacher" question. Now, while collecting papers for a presentation about team teaching, I ran across Dr Diana Hicks' guidelines for collaboration in the CLIL classroom. She suggests we should take into consideration some key elements for a successful cooperation with our colleagues:

• Relationship: we are individuals, and let's face it, we don't get along with all of our colleagues. Before planning any collaboration, we should consider whether we are compatible or not. In my ten years' experience in the same school, I've met colleagues who've quickly become friends - and when you make friends, you immediately want to do something together: lessons, projects, experiences, school trips... Guess what? Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. It's just like a love-story not meant to be: sorry, no sparkles. And then, of course, there are those people you don't want to work with because you don't trust them. So, think before you plan.
• Rules of behaviour: ok, you believe in this relationship and you want to give it a try. Now you have to think about how to work together without ending up hating each other (with the obvious consequences on your students' learning process). You can work formally or informally together. Obviously, I would suggest working formally. And obviously, especially in eTwinning CLIL projects, we end up working informally 90% of the time. We all do this, and we all know it's wrong. Please, do yourself a favour, and at the beginning of the school year sit down with your colleagues, write down your working plan, and have it signed by your Principle/Headteacher/whoever it is that can recognize your efforts. Remember: informal won't last. Plus, you and your colleagues will feel more committed when working formally together.
• Responsibilities: Dr Hicks was very clear on this: teachers have to mark their specialist territory (personal note: invading that of the others is the best way to spoil your CLIL project and make them hate you). As for individual responsibilities of the Language and Subject teacher, have a look at the chart and let me know what you think.
• Organization: that's the when/what/how moment. We should discuss timetable (how many lessons? when? with the teachers being together in the classroom or not? how will they be paid? etc), resources and preparation time, and, above all, assessment. To be honest, in Dr Hicks' brilliant course, the assessment part was the weakest. It was more like a question than a solution: what would you do? I wish I knew. Anyway, in my experience I've often found it better to give two different marks to the students' products (Language/Content). But it's my personal - maybe wrong - opinion. No evidence, no expert's support here.

What do you think? What's your experience in CLIL courses?

Looking forward to getting to know more!

Laura

PS and as usual, don't forget you can find all of our materials and worksheets dealing with CLIL in The Next Generation TwinSpace, "useful materials" section.

LOOKING FOR CONTRIBUTORS: High School/university students, young workers

Let's look at the other side of the coin...

We've been talking a lot about CLIL and cooperation programmes from the teachers' point of view.
We all agree Comenius, Grundtvig, eTwinning and all related actions are crucial for our professional development and we believe they motivate and engage our students with a positive impact on their competences. True. Or is it?
I mean, we want to think the effect is what we planned. But are we sure? How are these experiences seen (and lived) by the students? What do they think? What's the impact of these actions on their lives?

The best way to know is ask the main actors of cooperation projects: students.

That's why we are looking for "guest posts" written by High School students, University students and young workers who had the opportunity to live any kind of cooperation experience in the UE and beyond.

How to apply:

• posts must be limited to 500/600 words (images welcome if not copyright protected) - all of EU languages are welcome
• content of articles is at the discretion of the eContributor, as long as it deals with international work/study experiences
• please forward your contribution along with a short resume about yourself (not a curriculum vitae, just few lines so that we know who you are!) to laura_maffei@yahoo.com or kiss.mnika76@gmail.com
• you will be given access info to publish the article yourself
• deadline for submission: February the 26th

So, if you are a student/just graduated/worker, we re looking for you!

And for all our fellow teachers... why don't you ask your students to share with us their experiences?

Looking forward to get to know more...

[to be continued...]

CLIL: cooperation, cognition, context... and eTwinning!

I was given the guidelines for CLIL activities I'm going to share with you today, during two different training courses I was able to attend in the past. And this time I've not only to thank Dr Diana Hicks, but also Mrs Cathy Pickles: she was my teacher in Cork, Ireland, in a brilliant CLIL course that was a turning point in my life as a (CLIL) teacher.

When talking about CLIL activities, we usually wonder what kind of tasks we should give our students.
Dr Diana Hicks started by introducing to us Jim Cummins' theories, then gave us examples of how to apply them in the everyday lesson.

In a task, we should pay attention to context (embedded/reduced) and cognition (demanding/undemanding). Now, if we look at the different combinations, a task can be:

1. context embedded (students have some support - map, picture, chart, etc) + cognitively undemanding (not much thinkink needed). An example of this can be matching tasks (matching words and pictures for instance)
2. context reduced (no support for students) + cognitively undemanding. Examples of this can be listing tasks (list the causes of global warming/the causes of a war... list the different sources of energy you know... etc)
3. context reduced + cognitively demanding (it needs a strong effort of thinking on the students' part). The typical task here is writing essays.
4. context embedded + cognitively demanding: Dr Diana Hicks called this "the Holy Grail". This is the perfect kind of CLIL activities. Those ones where the students are given a context and asked to work on it by thinking. Examples of this are transfer of information/genre. Students have to use what they learnt in a different context.

Do have a look at Dr Hicks video (of course she's much better than me at explaining)! (thanks a lot to the teacher who recorded this and shared it on youtube, and to my colleague Frederique Cayrier who found it on the web!)

Dr Diana Hicks said that the ideal CLIL activity should include cognition, context and cooperation. In the simple and direct way that is typical of her, Mrs Cathy Pickles said that students need scaffolding. What I learnt there (and I always try to keep it in mind, in the activities I make up for my classes - and later share with you) is that we cannot build on air. CLIL activities are more complex than monolingual ones, that's why our students need more support than ever (read: context embedded tasks).

That's where eTwinning comes, providing us with that element of "reality" (it's a real-life context) and cooperation (the do-it-together factor) that can help our students feel involved - and enjoy their learning. 

No holy Grail for me to be honest. Still, I think we're moving in the right direction.

CLIL lesson - History

This is a CLIL activity I made up on my own for one of my classes. It's simple, funny, and easy to customize for different subjects (I will post a Geography version later on). It turned out to be motivating and successful, so I would rank it second in my CLIL experience, just after Dante's CLIL.

Note: this lesson-plan fits any situation when you want to revise a range of topics you've already studied with your pupils. In my opinion, it won't work for introducing a new subject.

As for us, we had been studying the fall of the Roman Empire, dealing with different populations: the Romans, the Huns, the Byzantines and the Lombards (Langobards).

GO FIND YOUR PEOPLE

about 20 students - 12/13 years old

subjects: History/Languages

Pupils working in teams (4 teams, since we had studied 4 different populations)

About 2 hours needed

Instructions given in English - pupils can answer and discuss, when needed, both in English and in mother tongue.

Materials:

- for the first part (role play) 20 pieces of paper with one sentence each (English)

 I had 20 students, so I had prepared 20 pieces of paper with 1 different sentence on each. The sentences dealt (often in a funny way) with the populations we had studied, who they were, how they lived, what they did.

Example: "I speak latin, I've been conquering the world and I call the Mediterraneum Mare nostrum. Unfortunately, at the moment I'm having problems with a bunch of dirty barbarians..." (the student had to understand he was a Roman)

"I am a nomad, I live on raids, and I spend most of my life on horses. I know there are lots of treasures in Italy and I'm heading there" (Hun)

" I took part in the invasion of the Po Valley in 568. My people conquered Italy defeating those snobbish Byzantines and we chose Pavia as our capital." (Lombard)

"I consider myself a descendant of the Ancient Roman State, but I prefer Greek culture and I speak Greek rather than Latin. My capital is Constantinople. I despize the ugly and filthy barbarians." (Byzantine)

Of the 4 sentences identifying each population, one referred to the king (or leader) of that people.

- for the secon part (betting game): I had prepared a ppt presentation with 20 multiple/choice questions (English). Most of them were just a revision of what had been studied, some of them were about funny facts dealing with the culture of those populations, and a few were about historical events we had not studied yet (but they could guess by discussing in their group and reflecting on what they already knew).

Steps:

1) Pick a piece of paper, read it and discover who you are. Now, go make groups. Students have to move in the classroom, read their papers and those of the others and try to understand how to make groups. I didn't give them any explanation first, but it took just 5 minutes for them to realize they had to find their people.

2) Are you in your groups? Now, who is the king? The king will be the team leader. Starting with group 1, can the team leader please tell me: who are you? The student says for instance "I am Attila and they are my people, the Huns". And so on, for the 4 groups.

3) Starting with group 1, can each member of the team please read their sentence? This is just to be sure that all of the students are in the right place. If one or more of them aren't in the correct group, they will hopefully realize it by reading (or their partners will). Let them move to the correct group.

4) Now, can the team leader tell me something about his people, culture, actions? Which people in this room are your allies? Which people are enemies?

5) Sit in your groups. We will have now our "war" between these populations: a betting game. Who will be the winner? Let's see whether things will go as they did in history or not.

Each group starts with a treasure of 100 gold pieces.

You will be asked 20 multiple choice questions. The group has to bet on the right answer. You can bet from a minimum of 10 gold pieces up to all the gold you have. But be careful in your bet: for if you are right, you'll win the gold you bet. But if you are wrong, you'll lose it.

This is a very simple activity. All of the students know "who wants to be a millionaire" so you won't have much to explain. Just be sure to keep the correct score!

6) At the end of the activity, if you have time, you can have some more fun seeing who the winner is and playing "what if..." (what if they had actually won in history? What would be Europe like today?).

7) I usually close the activity asking: Is there anything else you would like to know about these populations? Be prepared: you'll be asked the weirdest questions about everyday life and culture (clothing, underwear, fashion, make up, weddings, gods, weapons, even toilets!). And as always when speaking of questions, the rule is: the more the better. There are no stupid questions. All of them are useful someway.

Ok, try this one and let me know. And if you have other CLIL activities, examples, scaffolding or lesson-plans you'd like to share, remember: they'll be more than welcome!

CLIL, eTwinning and more: most popular posts of 2011

2011 has been a very busy and surprising year in my life as a teacher. I've had lots of "surprising problems" and lots of "surprising rewards" as well (not meaning the big awards here - though they were more than welcome of course! - but the tiny everyday success stories, half smiles of my students, little exciting "I can" moments, and so on).

This blog is definitely one of the surprising rewards. The people I met here, the support I got (and I'm getting right now), the ideas that were born here through sharing.
Yes, 2011 was a great year for LifelongLearningTeachers.

And I'd like to welcome the new year by having a look at the posts that were most viewed, commented on and discussed in 2011. Now, let's see what all the buzz was about!

1) eTwinning Conference "Leading 21st century education" part 1, part 2, and conclusion
the before during and after of a challenging event...with most etwinners being rather skeptical I'm afraid (but maybe we'll be surprised, who knows?)

2) structure of a (CLIL) lesson - start with the pupils
the basic structure of a (CLIL) lesson as presented by Dr Diana Hicks

3) CLIL: language teacher or subject teacher?
still the burning question...

4) my best CLIL lesson of 2011 and CLIL lesson for Science/Geography
practical tips for the everyday lesson: I'm glad you liked this, and I'm planning to share more!

5)  how do you fight boredom in the classroom?
well, it looks like we all have a common problem to deal with!

I'm closing this post, wishing you all a very happy and successful 2012, with the most viewed post of all times. It's a post about traditions, celebrating and children (and adults) having fun: Gigantes y Cabezudos ! Thank you Elena!

And I'd  like to thank here all of the great teachers who lived with us the LLT adventure from the very beginning. Thank you everybody.

Have a great new year!

IS THAT THINKING OR KNOWING? - teaching Vs testing

Being a teacher is one of the most thrilling and exciting risks one can choose to run. It's so rewarding, funny, amazing, never boring, yet so difficult. You are never 100% sure you're doing the right move at the right moment. The very first rule I learnt as a teacheryoungling, years ago, was this one: rest assured, you'll eventually find out if what you did was right or wrong for your students - only, you'll find out months, or even years later (when it's too late!).

I told Dr Diana Hicks my doubts about being successful in my job: how can I be sure my kind of teaching is what my class needs? her answer was another question

"is that thinking or knowing?"

And this question has been my mantra through my job ever since.

If what I do is about knowing, if there's just one right answer, then it's not teaching, it's a test.
Teaching activities have to do with thinking (how?).
Testing activities have to do with knowing (what?).

It may sound ovious, but it isn't - at least, not for me. And I think all teachers run the risk of misunderstanding this difference. Of course assessment is an important (and difficult) part of our job, but if our teaching is not successful, if we are testing our pupils all the time instead of making them think on their own, our pupils are doomed to failure.

That's another reason why I love EU projects: Comenius, eTwinning, Erasmus, and all kind of real-life educational experiences that let pupils (and teachers) meet the unexpected - school is so boring otherwise. Through these programmes, we meet new people and ideas, and we (pupils and teachers) are forced to think, as what we know is not enough. That's how we get to know something new by thinking. Together.
So, teaching first, then testing. And teaching in a way that makes pupils think, not learn by heart - and forget the very next minute after the test.

I'd like to close 2011 with these pictures of the eTwinning Camp in Budapest. A place for teaching and learning, and for sure, a place for thinking.
I'm saying bye to the adventures and experiences of this year with the images of students happily engaged in learning and having fun.

Thank you eTwinning, Comenius, Dr Hicks, and thank you friends all over Europe.
Have a great 2012, full of satisfaction, success, and fun.

After all, despite the tons of bureaucracy and boring papers, ours is still the best job in the world :)

..and now, that's thinking

(and then knowing!)

new learning strategies - involving experts

I would like to share with you some of our new experiences. We talked here together with you about the importance (and sometimes the difficulties) of motivation, and new kind of activities. It is a very special experience if our pupils and we, teachers enjoy together the lesson.

This time I read a book about the "flow" at school from Prof. Csíkszentmihályi. I found his book very interesting. He defines flow as "the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it"

I like try out new kind of activities. I think, international projects give us many possibilities. We partecipate in eTwinning and in Comenius programme as well. And, together with our partners had great adventures.

In one of our eTwinning projects (BE TWIN! - Twinning up the everyday lesson) we work together with our Italian friends.
The project helps me a lot as a teacher to motivate my pupils to study Italian language.
During our last Italian lessons we talked about the "restaurant", which is an important topic in every languages. This time I tried to choose a new kind of activity to motvate my pupils.

The gastronomy is a part of culture. If we have more knowledge about it, we can know more about the lifestyle in Italy, where our friends live.
The new words help us to develope the key competencies (communication in a foreign language), and help us to have new information.
If pupils can try out what we learned in a natural/practical situation it is very helpful in the learning process.
So..what we did? After we learned in the classroom the most important words, we asked experts to help us.

Our experts:
1. Dott. Alessandro Rosselli ( University of Szeged)
2. Zsolt Karda - proprietary of an Italian restaurant in our town.

We visited the restaurant, my pupils had some "role-plays" as waitress and guests, after we had a lesson in the cuisine :), and learned about the cooking of Italian "pasta", when my pupils asked our experts. After? We ate what we cooked as well :).

We enjoyed a lot the activities, and I am sure, my pupils were motivated.
You can see the results too (it's true in Italian and Hungarian languages), because one of my colleagues, Tapodiné Atlasz Marianna registered everything with a videocamera.

Hope, you like it).
Hugs, Mónika

CLIL lesson for Science/Geography

This lesson plan is another "present" by Dr Diana Hicks. Brilliant course and brilliant teacher indeed. So, once again, thank you Mrs Hicks and thank you Comenius :)

I was planning to try this activity in one of my History courses, as it can be adapted to suit different subjects. But in the end I never actually had the time to try it with my students since, as it often happens, we had to rush through things during this first semester.

But rest assured, it will be for the new year! And for all of you who asked me for some scientific activity, why don't you give it a try? You could have fun and, why not, find some interesting variation to this lesson. Let me know!

RIVER NILE - THE GAMBLING

about 20 students - 12/13 years old

subjects: Science/Geography/Technology/History (or better, all of them! these disciplines are connected)

Pupils drawing on their own, then working in groups of 4/5

Instructions given in English - pupils can answer and discuss, when needed, both in English and in mother tongue.

Steps:

1) Take a piece of paper and draw a river - this will be river Nile

2) Draw lots of fields close to the river (drawing squares of different sizes will be fine) - these are your fields

 

3) You're a  farmer and you wait for the water to come to the fields, so your crops can grow

 

4) Take your drawing with you and sit in groups. Each group will be given a dice.

5) Now, the members of the group roll the dice 5 times each

6) Each time, after rolling the dice, put a cross on your fields corresponding to the number you got on the dice (example: you got 5, you put a cross on 5 of your fields; you got 3, you put a cross on 3 of your fields, etc.)

 

7) When all the members of the group have rolled their dice 5 times, count your crosses. If you're under 20, you're DEAD.

 

8) Now, rolling the dice 5 times corresponds to 5 years. If you made less than 20 crosses, that means the river didn't reach enough of your fields, you didn't have enough water, and you couldn't grow your crops. You and your family were destined to die. Now you understand: living there is a gamble.

 

9) What could the people do to help the situation? Discuss with your group (English or mother tongue), then write down a short list of possible solutions: begin the sentence with "they could..."

 

10) All solutions are collected on the board

 

11) What did they really do? Let's take the book (or pc, or anything) and have a look together.

 

Well, I loved this activity when we tried it out at the training course (I always love role play, and I adore being the pupil !!! It's definitely less stressful than being the teacher... ok, points of view, I know). So I'll take advantage of this with one of my classes in the near future.

What do you think, can it be for you as well?

my best CLIL lesson of 2011

If you've been following my summer CLIL-soap, you'll know by now I've been reflecting on (and practicing) CLIL quite a lot during these months.
All of the people who regularly come to visit me in this blog (thank you!) helped me a lot here. We've been discussing theories and different approaches together, we've shared experiences and we've tried to overcome our empasse points. I've often been asked to share some practical tips, worksheets or lesson-plans of my everyday teaching. Part of them are, as usual, uploaded in the TNG TwinSpace.
But since we are reaching the end of this 2011, I'd like to share here my favourite CLIL lesson of this year. Important: I didn't make up this lesson on my own, I worked on a structure suggested by Dr. Diana Hicks during my summer course. Anyway, it turned out to be so nice and motivating after being customized to my case, that I think anyone can take advantage of it.
So have a look at it, and see if it can work for you as well!

THE BACK-HOME PLAN

about 20 students - 12/13 years old
subjects: History/Literature/Languages
Pupils working on their own, in pairs when asked
Instructions given in English - pupils can answer and discuss, when needed, both in English and in mother tongue.

Steps:
1) Take a piece of paper and draw a country - not an existing one, just make up your own. Place a capital city. Draw a river across the capital city. Give a name to the country, the capital city and the river (that's the funny part: pupils can be quite creative at times)

2) In the capital city, draw a Cathedral and a Town Hall (this will be useful later, when we'll set the story in the Middle Ages)

3) In this country there are two political parties. You're a politician of the leading party (if you want, you can have fun here again letting them name the parties). One day, you're sent on an important mission to the Pope, in Rome. While you're away, there's a rebellion in your country. The enemy party takes power, all of your friends are imprisoned or killed and you are exiled. Now, your family is still in the capital city, you love them and your city and you miss them. You want to go back. What would you do?

4) Write under your drawing at least 5 things you would do in order to go back home. (They have to start each sentence with "I would", then they can end it in English or mother tongue). Remember, if you go back and they catch you, you'll be executed.

5) Now work in pairs. Compare your answers with those of your partner. Are there any common ideas? Can you make up anything new together?

6) Now: the story is set in 1300. Please delete all of your ideas that don't suit this age (rest assured, there will always be plenty of bombing, alien-invading, and monster-related options).

7) All of the remaining ideas will be collected on the board.

8) Ok, now I can say: this is the story of Dante Alighieri, and you were acting as Dante himself. What did he actually do? Let's take the book and find out together.

That's all. It turned out to be a very active and involving lesson, and even the always-sleeping students had for once something to say. We had fun, they managed to speak a lot without the usual fears, and to their surprise they found out they would do lots of things Dante actually did. And even if they wouldn't have written the "Divina Commedia", believe me: they won't forget Dante and his story from now on !!!

eTwinning, CLIL... and me :)

Hello everybody,

as an eTwinning Mentor I've been asked lots of questions: of course, I couldn't answer 100% of them, since in some fields I'm more experienced than in others (ok, I do have doubts concerning some ICT tools and their applications in the TwinSpace!). Anyway, for those questions whose answer was not sure, I always managed to find another eTwinner (Mentor or not) who could help. So I learnt a lot myself.

One of the most interesting questions was raised by Gracia and it deals with CLIL. I answer here because I think it can be of interest for many teachers. I believe we all share the same experience: we start with teaching at our best whit what we learnt at University, then we find an opportunity of training (Comenius, National Agencies, Ministries of Education...), and eventually we want to try out these new things in our classes. And we discover eTwinning projects, Comenius/Grundtvig and so on. All of them mean meeting new people and learning more.

Now, how to start a CLIL project for the first time?

I can give my experience. Please note, there's no rule, it's just how things worked for me.

So, these are the guidelines I would suggest:

1) involve your colleagues: of course, you can manage your

CLIL project on your own, but it won't be as effective as with two or more teachers working together. So, if you're the Language teacher, I would advise involving one/two subject teachers (it depends on the topic you're willing to deal with: History? Geography? Science? it's up to you). And if you are the subject teacher, of course you'll have to  involve the Language teacher: otherwise you will offend him/her, by apparentky teaching something they are supposed to teach (language).

2) talk about your project idea: don't keep things just for you and your involved colleague(s). Do speak with others during the official meetings: Principal, other colleagues and families need to know what's going on. They will support you in case of need, give you useful advice, or be interested in developing a similar pathway. Or - this is for parents - they will need to be reassured and to understand what's going on (let them know it won't be too difficult for their children and it won't ruin their marks).

3) choose a limited number of classes and set a reasonable timetable: for my first attempt at a CLIL project, I started with two classes, two colleagues (I teach History and Geography and I asked the English teacher and Science teacher to join me) and a series of 10 lessons. A small project, in terms of involved people and time, is easier to manage. Plus, you won't have to squeeze your brain to make up hundreds of new activities!

4) decide if the activity will be curricular or not: this depends on your school system. In my Institute, at the moment, CLIL projects need extra time, in the afternoon (which means extra money to be found, making everything more difficult). In the past, we could use our normal lesson time for our projects.

5) find a partner if you feel like: ok, it can work perfectly well with your classes alone, but I personally think eTwinning can help a lot in any CLIL project. If you have a partner class, your pupils will feel the actual need to use a foreign language. They'll be more curios and motivated. And you'll find extra help in your partner.

6) enjoy! It's an experiment, so just enjoy the activities with your pupils and colleagues. And laugh off the unexpected problems. There always are and you can't be prepared. So take them with sense of humour.

I can say these extra-ordinary activities have been among the funniest and most rewarding of my life as a teacher.

[and that's why I keep going :) ]

materials for children

Dear LLT Friends,

I uploaded in the TNG TwinSpace some new materials which could be useful if you teach in a primary school.

As I teach Italian languague too, I put some materials that I was given in Florence during a Comenius teacher refreshing course.
I met there Francesca Lo Re, who taught Italian languague in France, and she had a workshop with us with many good ideas. These exercises are connected to "i vestiti di Marianna", a fairytale. The writer is Roberto Piumini. You can easily find the text on the web too. (I didn't upload it because of the copyright).
I also uploaded some materials that you can use in the classroom. For example in a languague lesson, but not only... (I think the structure of a lesson doesn't depend on the languague). They could be useful when you teach the colours, or parts of body, animals. I like them, because children can colour them,we can make some activities together,and in the case of animals they can use their creativity to find new animals too. Here maybe it could be funny to work together with your Art colleague.

I don't know how you organise your timetable; in our school the primary school teachers are free to organize it (except the Physical Education lessons and foreign languagues because they depend on other colleagues). Now I have every Fridays two Arts&crafts lessons, and a Reading activity.
I would like to have some "project days" to motivate my pupils. It is the first time I can try to set a project with them, this way, because they are now 8 years old, and in the third class. Hope, we will have a lots of new adventures and fun.

Have fun with your pupils too :-)

Hugs, Mónika

Planning for Excellent Learning

At the beginning of any new school year, all of us teachers come up with new ideas, hopes and projects to improve our teaching. We want to be better teachers, we want to give more, we want to achieve new goals together with our pupils. We want to make up new strategies and activities to keep our pupils - and ourselves - from getting bored.
I'm no exception.

And after this engaging CLIL summer, I have even more to think of. That's why I want to share with you an interesting document: it's a lesson planning form I was given in one of the English schools I visited. I met this brilliant young Geography teacher who told me he had been working there for just a year; since he was very young and he just left University, he had been trained to perform a new kind of teaching, which he believed was not perfect, but still good. Then, he was so kind as to give me one of his lesson planning forms.

Now, if I've learnt anything in the UK, is that being a teacher there is very stressful. They're very strict as far as the teaching is concerned - and then, do you remember? there's that hard part "the pupils should be speaking 90% of the time".

So, have a look at the form and let me know what you think of it. I'm uploading it here and in the TwinSpace of The Next Generation as well. By the way, you'll find lots of new materials there, so do have a look.

Have a successful new school year you all. Enjoy your job, and have fun with your pupils!