What type of teacher are you – a tortoise, lioness, or peacock? Our CLIL experts Liz Dale and Rosie Tanner are back with some activities for the peacocks among us!
Picture this: a secondary school where pupils are taught more than half the curriculum by subject specialists using English as a second or additional language. What do English teachers do in this situation? What kind of English teacher do CLIL schools need? Or, to put it another way… what do you do when faced with a challenge? Are you a tortoise, a lion or a peacock?
CLIL Tortoise
The CLIL tortoise pulls its legs, tail and head into the shell for protection, mumbling, “Oops, I’m out of here.”
If you are a CLIL tortoise, you ignore the fact that pupils are using the past tense in history lessons or the passive in science lessons from day one in school. You use a course book and follow a traditional EFL grammatical syllabus, starting with the present simple. You work through the course book steadily, so pupils know where they are at, make measurable progress and systematically develop a solid foundation in general vocabulary and grammar.
CLIL Lioness
The CLIL lioness roars “Grrr. Out of my way!” and pounces on her prey.
If you are a CLIL lioness, you take on all those subject teachers who think they can just start teaching in English and give them what for. You make sure they submit all their lesson materials and tests to the English team before they let the pupils see them, so an English specialist can check the language isn’t too difficult, and make sure there aren’t any spelling and grammar mistakes. You visit lessons regularly to make sure subject teachers use correct English and assess their teaching methodology using the latest insights into content and language integrated learning.
CLIL Peacock
The CLIL peacock spreads its spectacular tail, shows off its beautiful feathers and says “This is me! Look how wonderful.”
If you are a CLIL peacock you throw the course book out of the window! You find out how the pupils are using English in the rest of the curriculum and use your expertise to develop a language curriculum that follows and supports the pupils as they learn the other school subjects. You work with subject teachers to integrate content into language lessons, to prepare pupils for writing and speaking tasks set in other subjects.
CLIL Example
For the peacocks among you, here is an example of a CLIL activity about the cotton trade, which is a familiar part of many geography curricula. In this lesson, you use input about the cotton trade to help your students learn both geography and English. You can use this video clip in the English lesson about the journey of a piece of cotton from cotton plant to t-shirt.
As a CLIL English teacher, you can show CLIL methodology in practice, supporting the geography teacher. List the main events on the video on cards. Jumble them up. Before pupils watch the video, ask them to guess the correct order. You will also notice that there is quite a lot of passive voice – for example: is harvested, is straightened and pulled – to describe the process of cotton making in the video and on the cards. Point this language usage out to your students and do some work on the passive with them.
Pupils then watch the video and check their answers.
Answer key: C, G, B, H, D, A, E, I, F
CLIL Activity
Check out CLIL Activity 4.3 Eye Witness for more ideas on how to use input from geography and other subject curricula in a speaking task. You can also use the rubric “Collaboration in CLIL” which can also help CLIL departments decide how they would like to make use of language teachers’ expertise.
Wondering why some of the verbs on the cards are in italics? In our next post, we’ll give some more examples of how to integrate content from subject areas into language lessons.