Guest post by Phil Ball, Part 3 of the “Practical CLIL ideas” series Sequence of activities This sequence of activities looks like nothing special at first, but it was very important to me because it confirmed what I’d always thought about good CLIL practice – that it works best when the…
Do your students talk a lot? Good! CLIL is all about maximizing language output for students. But that is not easily achieved when a teacher explains most of the time, leaving little room for students to actually practice their speaking skills, is it? That is were student speaking time comes…
Why are language expectations important? Guest post by Janet Streeter “Do you know One Direction?” “Have you met Justin Biber?” I was reminded that teenagers are the same the world over. I smiled, said “No, sorry, I’m afraid not” in my best British English and looked hopefully at my colleague…
Pronunciation as a vital element of CLIL A couple of months ago I received a mail asking me about the role of pronunciation in CLIL. Or, to be more specific, phonetics. The write mentioned he could not find any specific content about this topic in relation to CLIL. I have…
Easy to implement CLIL activities in your Mathematics lesson! I posted an article about this topic sometime ago and wanted to share more ideas on activities I regularly use in my lesson. For the record: all of these activities require no preparation time at all and can be used in…
A creative approach to CLIL Guest post by Rosie Tanner, Part 2 of the “Practical CLIL ideas” series The CLIL ball is one of my favourite activities. You can use a CLIL ball to activate prior knowledge about a topic or about language or to revise or assess what your CLIL…
In CLIL Magazine issue 10 several CLIL experts shared their best ideas on the use of CLIL in lesson. These ideas will be published online over time and can be found on this page. Part I Peter Sansom: From image to text: How to encourage pupils to think creatively Part II…
Why focus on ICT? As the world around us evolves and becomes more computer-minded (or device-minded, if you want to get technical), we as teachers have to ‘evolve’ as well. In my experience, education is quite often a step behind because of the huge investments involved with new ICT developments…
The latest in-depth CLIL Book It doesn’t often happen that a CLIL book that tries to challenge the established ideas, shake them up a little, and approach CLIL from a different perspective is published. Putting CLIL into Practice does exactly that. I found it to be a refreshing read, cover…
Tests in a CLIL setting So, in your CLIL lessons you: keep an eye on the language output of students make sure students are engaged with the tasks you prepared for them motivate students to speak English all the time. So far so good right? Indeed! But you are not…
Practical ideas! With only a few CLIL books out there, I quickly noticed this CLIL resource pack. The book itself is quite different for a couple of reasons. First of all, the target audience are primary schools and lower grades of the secondary schools. Furthermore, unlike other CLIL books, this…
The book as a start, not as a goal.. As a Maths teacher, I always use my book as a source for the problems my students have to do. It is simply too much of a task to come up with all of the problems myself. Yet, instead of just…
CLIL and Second Language Learning: A must? Whenever CLIL is discussed within any content, the main topic is always: second language acquisition. This makes sense, because CLIL is all about learning a second language while learning a subject at the same time. Or is it? The role of language within…
Images as a source for language Guest post by Peter Sansom, Part I of the “Practical CLIL ideas” series As an art teacher in my lessons I make use of a great deal of images. Paintings and sculpture from art history, films, drawings and photographs all have a part to play.…
It has been a while… You might have noticed it has been a while since I last published something on the CLIL blog. The birth of my son as well as changing jobs forced me to prioritize a little, but: I am back! To make it even easier for you…
It’s been a while since I last update my blog, but don’t worry: I will start writing more in the near future. But first things first: The latest CLIL Magazine has been published! I know, I know. It is no longer Fall. It’s not even 2017 anymore. Publication was a…
It’s official: the latest issue of CLIL Magazine is finished and has just been published! I’m really proud of this ninth (!!) edition of the magazine, as many both recurring and new authors have contributed to this issue. The authors originate from over 5 different countries, making CLIL Magazine an…
It is that time of the year again! As an early Christmas gift I present to you: CLIL Magazine Fall 2016! Opinionated pieces Janet Streeter shares her ideas on the purpose of competitions in a lesson and the reason this might be a great way to motivate students. Phil Ball…
CLIL and mathematics. By many considered to be challenging at best, maybe even impossible to implement. Don’t worry thought, I am here to help! And believe me, after teaching mathematics in English for almost ten years, I can assure you both CLIL and mathematics can be integrated use as easily…
When looking for interesting new authentic material to use in my lesson, I often encounter the fact that the different education orientated materials found on the web are categorised in different key stages. That’s fine, it is a matter of simply linking the correct key stage to my target age…
I have always had the up most respect for primary school teachers, for various reasons. One of the most important things a primary school teacher does is facilitate differentiation: allowing each and every student to receive instruction and work on his or her own level. At secondary schools, differentiation is still…
The school year has started again after summer. Or at least in my part of the world. Students get ready for school, enter your classroom, do their work. And take notes ferociously. Or do they? In my experience, students have to take a lot of notes. (Remember, it’s ‘taking notes’,…
Wait, I already wrote a post on the definition of CLIL before right? Yes I did, however, I feel I should write something regarding the use of CLIL again, as still many different ways of working with CLIL still exist. The problem with CLIL is that it is a methodology…
For some time now, I have asked students to create activities for each other. According to Bloom, creating is a high level thinking skill, so asking this of students could be quite a challenge. Another reason for doing this activity is to help students remember things better. After all, you…
After the disappointment last year of not being able to publish a CLIL Magazine, I am happy to be able to announce the latest issue is finished and ready to be read! New design The first thing you might notice is the change in the design. Colours of the website have…
A couple of years ago Peeter Mehisto (co-author of “Uncovering CLIL”) observed one of my lessons and commented I could think about tasks I could give to students. Tasks I would normally do myself. I even went a little further than that. I tried to get my students to create their own…
I like running. Twice a week I’ll run a distance somewhere between 5K and 10K. Or at least I try to. Yet I find that I don’t do it when it’s raining it’s cold outside I feel tired Motivation is a thing here. I recently signed up for a run in…
A lot has been written about CLIL activities. The very good book “CLIL Activities” by Liz Dale and Rosie Tanner, but also “CLIL Skills” and “The TKT Course CLIL Module” are very interesting reads if you want to find inspiration for your own CLIL activity. However, I still hear teachers say…
In the posts on this website I usually share my opinion on CLIL as well as share some ideas of others. This time however, I would like to share CLIL resources that I think are really worth your time and can be used to advance both your knowledge of CLIL…
If I would have to name the single biggest question most (new) CLIL teachers have with CLIL it would be: How do you balance language and subject in a CLIL lesson? They might even think the subject content of their lesson would become less important. That is simply NOT true. Let…