Developing CLIL: Towards a theory of practice.

In this entry I introduce to you the last obligatory reading we had in the subject of Didàctica de la Llengua Anglesa, and this article written by Do Coyle talks, as you can imagine, about CLIL. Just to put you in situation, last year when I worked for the first time with the concept of CLIL i assumed by mistake that CLIL was just doing a subject in a foreign language with the purpose to improve your skills in the language principally and then in the contents of that subject, but after reading this article and after all the debate we’ve done in class allow me to introduce to you what CLIL really is.

In the article we understand CLIL as a way of integrating a language into the teaching of a content but with the idea of improving your skills equally in both areas, meaning that what you’re doing in a foreign language is not content that you have done before in your own language but it’s a way of working the new content with the purpose of learning it while you’re learning the foreign language. CLIL is not about translating the contents but it is about working the contents in a language with the purpose of becoming this new knowledge more interesting to the student and the teacher.

As we can see in the text the purpose of CLIL doesn’t stop just with that, the benefits of producing a high quality CLIL implies that raises the learner’s linguistic competence and confidence, raises the teacher’s and learner’s expectations, develops risk-taking and problem-solving skills in the learners, increase the vocabulary learning skills and grammatical awareness, motivate and encourage the student’s independence, takes the students beyond limited foreign language topics, improve L1 literacy, encourages oral spontaneity if students are enabled to learn through the language rather than in the language, develops study skills, concentration, etc. Generates positive attitudes and address gender issues in motivation and put cultural awareness back on the agenda. Why? Because a CLIL project is a flexible project that should adapt to any kind of content but also can adapt to any kind of activity just to make sure that we, as teachers, can adapt to every child’s necessities (taking into account the multiple intelligences).

To do all this we need a perfect coordination of the teachers of the subject and the language. Therefore not only the students must practice CLIL but teachers must study how to create and implement CLIL using modern pedagogy tools but also increasing their foreign language knowledge (content of the language but also the cultural aspects). In this way, the Generalitat de Catalunya has been doing in the past few years some courses to teachers just to prepare them to introduce CLIL in the Catalan classes.

CLIL is integrated into the 4Cs framework: content, communication, cognition and culture which means that: learners create their own knowledge, during this process interaction is essential and therefore language too (language is basic in the learning process to execute the cognition process) and intercultural awareness is fundamental to CLIL.

So with CLIL we use language to learn effectively, because language is not only a basic tool to communicate but also helps us to make a scheme of the new content. Nonetheless while applying CLIL in a class we must realise that to learn new language content we must have some bases that help us understand the new contents in language that we are receiving because if we pretend to interact and create our own knowledge, first of all we must understand what is being said.

So with that being said I think that this phrase could summarise what CLIL means:

“From this perspective, CLIL involves learning to use the language appropriately whilst using language to learn effectively”.

I hope that as I do now, you understand with my help a little better what CLIL really means and if you have any doubts, please let me know.

Enjoy your day! And be careful with you CLIL projects!

The house-school connection, affective situations and the importance of a good atmosphere in class.

Hello readers, here I am once again and today I think it’s really clear what I’ll be talking about. In today’s entry I will highlight the importance that the nearest social environment has in the development of our students, as I usually do I will give my opinion about the three topic mentioned in the title and I will talk about all this by offering some personal experiences in this area.

Recently in class we’ve talked about the house-school connection and how this link affects our students. Well I remember that when I was younger and even now, my family always paid attention about my progress with studies because it’s really important for them that I work hard for my future and this attitude shown by my parents have always helped me to improve in my studies. When I was at primary school I remember my mother sitting next to me helping while I was doing my homework, or asking me the contents for the next day’s exam or even asking me for an explanation when teachers called my attention when I forgot my homework and that was something that really helped me stay in the right path and that nowadays I’m glad that my parents were so conscious about my studies. I think that establishing a great home-school connection, not only benefits the student to be more encouraged and backed while studying, but also helps the school and the parents to know more about the students or to help each other when they’re in need. In this case I also remember when my parents went to my high school to help for carnival or when some of my teachers came to see me at the hospital when I was sick.

In this way I think that affective situations between students and teachers can encourage and engage students into the teacher’s lessons because they give a major grade of significance to what the teacher is saying. In this case even now I pay more attention to the teachers who are nice to me than to the ones that just simply explain their concepts and don’t establish social connections with you.

Finally, creating a good atmosphere in class between students and with the teachers, helps the pupils and the school to decrease the risk of problems we can have in class but also increases the possibilities of having the help of students when the school is in need in the period of Christmas and different festivities, which benefit both parts.

So creating a safe and close relation (respecting the distances) between students, teachers and parents, can help the three parts to increase the possibilities of success of students but also could mean that school and parents will help each other when they’re in need.

Do you agree with what I’ve just said, let me know please, your opinion is so important to me!

Rethinking classroom management.

As the authors of the text, Natalia Maldonado and Pilar Olivares, say the main thought was until now that classroom management was basically having our students under control by establishing a serial of rules that force them to put in practice some attitudes just not to disturb. But this thought could have become a little rusty nowadays in the 21^st century, so that it’s why these authors promote a new view of the concept of classroom management in which we are not only talking about behavioural issues, but also about being responsible about our own teaching and learning and creating an attitude of responsibility for learning.

In this case the authors offer the possibility of treating classroom management in three interrelated ways that depend one from the other. These are: the organisational issues, the curriculum issues and the social issues.

When we talk about the organisational issues in the text, we talk about all these rights and duties that students have in the class. In this case, we should consider if the rules that we will establish in our class should be selected by the teacher or by the students that form the class too. I think that the fairest point would be that together students and teachers choose which rights and duties will be present in the class not only to keep under control the students mood but also to create rules that allow students take as much profit as possible of the experience of being in class.

Talking now about curriculum issues we should be aware about how students learn. In this point the authors talk about the importance of knowing what we want, as teachers that our students learn. Once we know that we must challenge ourselves to offer our students the activities and strategies that adapt better to the situation we have in our class. In this case, in the text we talk about the importance of offering diverse activities that adapt to every students way of learning, moreover, we should combine individual and group tasks just to help our students develop their social and individual skills. Finally even though every teacher has his/her own teaching style, our main goal should be that our activities are engaging, encouraging and interesting to our students in terms that these activities promote in them a critical thought and let the students have space for reflection and metacognition.

Last but not least, when we talk about the social issues in the text, we refer to the climate of confidence and security that students feel when they’re in class. This issue should not only be related to the social relations that students have with their peers but also with the teacher. Even though students pass most of their time with their equals, and surely it’s important that they have a peaceful relation with their classmates it’s important too that students feel confident when they’re talking with the teacher. Based in my self experience I have learned more and better when I had a good relation with my teacher than when I hadn’t so teachers should pay attention to the classroom environment that has been established in the class.

Therefore and as I said previously once I have read the whole text I think that we should all consider the importance of the three points or issues treated in this entry because they all have the same importance but also they need one another just to make sure that our students could exploit all their potential through their learning process.

Thanks for your attention!

The ultimate resource films and series in class!

Hello readers, once again I’m updating my blog and today I bring you a very personal entry, but as always an entry related to English in the educational world. In this entry I would talk about two resources that really helped me a lot to improve my English level, I’m talking about watching series and films in English.

As I have said, probably, a thousand times, during my early years at high school I started taking Cambridge classes and during that time I also started to watch English series and films, not only to improve my English level but also to have a good time. After years of doing this I could realise how much vocabulary and pronunciation I’ve learned but also I  could realise that my listening skills have Improved a lot, therefore I tried to offer this resource to my younger brother in order to prove my theory about how useful this tools are but also to help him to improve his level. After some time watching series in English I could prove that the English level of my brother improved dramatically too.

That it’s why I am doing this entry, to offer you the possibility of giving these tools a chance and introduce them in your classes, not as I watched them but doing rich activities with them instead. My idea would be to introduce these tools at the early stages, during the first courses of primary school, we could offer our students anime series or cartoons series in English with Spanish or Catalan subtitles and as they move forward, change the kind of series or film they watch and also the subtitles into English ones. Once we have this in mind, at the early stages we should offer the possibility to our students of giving their opinion about the film or serie or doing simple questions about what did they like about it, as they group up the difficulty of these activities should increase and therefore we should do activities like propose and alternative ending to the chapter or film you’ve seen or maybe analyse his/her favourite character in the film, finally, we can also offer them the chance of debate orally about the film.

I think that if we propose this at primary school the English level of our students can improve drastically, but we should also offer them the chance of watching these resources at home uploading them via moodle. As always, this is my opinion, but I want to know yours, so don’t forget to reflect it in the commentary section below!

Thanks for your attention!

Meeting individual needs with young learners

The text quoted at the title of this entry and written by Peter Westwood and Wendy Arnold is the result of an online discussion forum in which different experts of the educational area discussed the meaning of differentiated instruction and its influence in the school.

We understand for differentiated instruction all the activities and process that we as teachers do to give answer to all the cognitive realities we can find I our class, to make it clear, it’s attending to every students learning necessities in order to adapt to every learning style so everyone gets a special attention and get the opportunity of working with material that will exploit his/her intellectual potential.

So in this discussions experts on the field argued about different ways of attending to everyone’s necessities by grading the difficulty of the tasks, creating online tasks that goes from less difficulty to more difficulty, doing small-group activities to allow everyone to participate and give their opinion on what is being treated, doing hands on activities that can accommodate to everyone’s necessities, offering different material depending on the learning style of the student, create a atmosphere of confidence and complicity between the teacher and the student, work by projects and so on.

My idea on all this process is that I think it is vital that teacher can reach to everyone’s necessities and to do that the teacher must be aware of the every child’s learning style. So if we have a child with a visual learning style, we should offer him resources such as images videos and graphical representations that can help him/her to create deep knowledge connection between the new concepts and the old ones he/she carried with himself/herself. Moreover, we should also consider that nowadays the number of children per teacher is quite high, so we should notice that sometimes we don’t have the human, economical or temporary resources to reach to everyone’s necessities, that is why if we are really limited, we should at least offer differentiated activities to the whole class, varying from one activity to another to its learning style. Nonetheless if we have the good conditions and attitude to attend to every child’s needs, we should offer to every student different activities that contain the same concepts but that attend to his/her learning style (idea based on Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences Model).

See you next time!

Comics, the forgotten ally!

Hello I am Carlos Benito and as you can see my blog is becoming a space where you readers and I can reflect about topics related to what being a teacher implies and also what being an English teacher means. In this entry I would love to talk about a useful forgotten tool that could help us, as English teachers but also teachers from other subjects, to encourage our students to include the habit of reading in their routine, yes as you could see in the title of this entry I am talking about the comic.

The Department of Education of Catalonia and a great amount of English teachers have always been worried about the lack of a reading culture in our classes, not only in the English subject but also in Catalan and Spanish. It’s true that nowadays, though, students must read Catalan and Spanish books but not as frequently they must read English books, so if there is actually a lack of a reading culture in our classes, this attitude of underestimate the importance of English leads to a total neglect of the activity of reading English texts. This means that students not only have poor reading comprehension skills but also they are in need of different English resources that can help them to improve their English language knowledge.

That is why I think that we should introduce the comic to our English classes because it’s a tool that offer students the possibility of learning new vocabulary, helping them to improve their reading comprehension skills and having a good time while reading. Moreover, the appearance of pictures can help them to understand better what they’re reading and to give sense to the idioms and common phrases used in English. This activity can help them to be motivated by lecture and could be applied not only to English classes but also to Spanish and Catalan ones.

To sum up, the comic is a tool that some of us used to have a good time but I think that teachers have underestimated its power because while the reader is having a good time walking through the bullets, unconsciously he/she is learning new vocabulary, making sense of what he’s reading and fomenting their imagination by creating expectations of what can happen next in the story.

Naruto one of the most famous manga of all times. Really entertaining!

English at school, should we start at the early stages?

Recently has come to my mind the idea of when should our students start doing English classes at school. Nowadays all the teachers of the Catalonian educational system agree that English is essential for the social and academic development of our students, despite of that, teachers have different opinions about when should we start working the English subject at school, some of them argument that it’s difficult for children to understand a teacher talking in English during the whole hour because they have no previous knowledge about it, others say that it’s difficult for the young pupils to learn a third language at the same time they’re trying to learn Catalan and Spanish and finally others affirm that it’s vital to let our students learn English at pre-school because the younger they are the easier it is for the human brain to learn a language. So, with these different points of views brought to light I will write in the following lines, which is my opinion about this topic.

In my opinion promoting the use of the English language at school is essential, not only because students can learn about different cultures and habits while they’re learning English but also because the learning of a foreign language it’s a bullet proof investment for a greater future. With that being said I agree that introducing English at the early stages of pre-school is essential to help our students make their best of their brain potential, but also because they’re learning passively and with little effort what years later could become a living nightmare. We all know many people that nowadays regret not having the opportunity of learning English at school and I think that learning it when students are young can help them to avoid problems and be more prepared when they’re older. Nonetheless I am not saying it’s an easy process because I think that the coordination between teachers and parents is essential: they must offer students the possibility of talking regularly in English, watching TV series/films with English audio, listening to English music, etc.; but also they must be aware of the student’s progress, try to motivate students and helping them with the difficulties they can have along this long path that is learning a new language. If we do all this we are treating English just as Catalan or Spanish because we are approaching this language to their daily life situations and they will see the utility it can have in their daily life situations.

Outdoor classes, useful classes?

Hello readers, I'm Carlos Benito Antequera and today I bring an idea that has been in my head quite for a while and that hasn't been treated since I started my university classes 3 and a half years ago. The idea that I have been thinking of, it's (as you can see in this post title) about outdoor classes. And why I bring this topic today? Well, this week we've been asked to read an article about Student-centered classrooms and one of the main point that was treated in it was the importance of create common situation and real world situations in class in order to help our students to relate their previous knowledge and skills to their daily life and allow them to see how useful are the concepts treated at school. Therefore I thought that outdoor classes are perfect real world situations, I mean, they are more real (if that is even possible) than classes done indoor, so the situations we can offer to our students are just as they will find once they are outside school. With that being said, I think that outdoor classes could be prefect to work subjects such as science and nature because, for example, instead of reading in a book how an ant is, we can go to the forest, find an ant and look it's characteristics and physiology. Moreover, outdoor classes can help nervous students to waste their energy by walking to the place in which we are planning to do the class and help them to be more calm while doing the lesson. Despite of that, I think that maybe some students can be distracted while doing the lesson and pay attention to the people walking in the street or the birds singing instead of listening to what the teacher is talking about. Therefore I suggest this question, are you for or against outdoor classes?

If a great amount of replies are sent to this post, through the course all of you and myself can treat this topic in deep. I'm anxious to know your opinion!

Have a nice day!

Presentation!

Hello readers my name is Carlos Benito Antequera and I welcome you to my blog. In this blog I will post entries about all the different activities that I will do for the subject of Didàctica de la Llengua Anglesa at the  University of Barcelona. My first activity consists on introducing myself to you, my classmates and my teachers so, let's do it!

As I said, my name is Carlos Benito Antequera and I was born 21 years ago in Hospitalet del Llobregat, from that day to now I still live in this city. I studied primary school at school San Jaime and from there i went to Jaume Balmes High School settled in Hospitalet del Llobregat too. While I was there I began studying English actively and I started Cambridge courses to improve my English. At that point I realised not only how important English is nowadays but also the love I feel for that language. As years went by I felt more and more passionate about English so my parents and I decided that I should try to be abroad for a few weeks to improve my English level, therefore, I visited Ireland for 6 weeks along 2 years (I stayed there for three weeks each year) and I got to love that country. After all this road I started my college degree and that leads us now to this exact point.

Today I can say that I've been in Ireland (Cork) and I fell in love with the country, I've been  in the UK (London) and the same happened and this summer I just got my CAE certificate at University of Cambridge English courses so I am planning to finish my degree this year and trying to live and work in London next year.

The city of Cork

In a more personal way, besides English I like politics, going out with my friends, listening to rock music (especially in English) and spend some time at the Internet. I practise wrestling and I have a wrestling school with some friends called Spanish Pro Wrestling, recently we've become quite popular in Spain and we are trying to approach our school to more people. So basically that's all about me, if you're interested on knowing more about me please post a comment below letting me know. I leave you here two pictures and a video of my life passions, wrestling, Cork and a video of one of my favourite bands!

Me doing a wrestling move called Fisherman Suplex!

One of my favourite bands Streetlight Manifesto (Ska Punk)

See you next time!