CLIL & Communications
From 17th July to 28th July 2023 we were fortunate to host a group of secondary school teachers from around Europe who took time out of their busy summer to refresh their teaching methodology by looking in depth at how they could teach their individual subject content, be that Science, geography or history through English. I particularly respect these teachers as they are well-versed in teaching their specialized subject content through their own language but they have decided that their students will benefit from experiencing learning through English.
We began the two weeks by looking at the development of Content Led Integrated Learning and how it is synonymous with teaching the 9 Cs ( see if you can guess them) the most important among them being communication, culture, and context building. We looked at the language needed to cooperate academically as well as the basic language needed to complete tasks. We looked at Learning by Doing and how students tend to remember much more if they are involved in doing. We concluded that a context-rich environment where the learner is engaged cognitively is the ideal CLIL learning space. We spent week one developing a tool kit to use with our materials to ensure they follow a CLIL methodology. Both in week 1 and again in week 2 we developed CLIl materials which we then taught to international learners and had a discussion afterward over coffee on how effective they were. Learners experienced an experiment based on Archimedes' Theory of Water Displacement and an infographic on the key numbers to explain the geography of the Czech Republic. We looked at marriage in 15th century Venice through Peter Breughel's eyes and discussed university education in England through a short film on the subject.
As well as the teaching content we also spent afternoons browsing The National Gallery and learning about the Gaelic Revival or immersed in emigration through the wonderful digital museum of Irish Emigration EPIC. We had a historical tour of Dublin 2 and a pint ( or two) in the Cobble stones ( one of the most authentic places to experience Irish music). The teachers were open-minded and eager to exploit all the sources of material we uncovered and archived in our Google Classroom. On the final day, we agreed to continue collaborating through a CLIL Teachers Facebook page and by exchanges & cooperation initiatives with Irish secondary schools.
Ian Brangan. MA. DELTA.
Director of Education
The Linguaviva Centre
ian@linguaviva.com
ianbrangan@gmail.com
actualiseelt@gmail.com
Here is a short video from the practical teaching session in class.