Yesterday’s talk about CLIL at the Oxford University Press seminar in Madrid dealt basically with some scaffolding tools we can use in the CLIL classroom. Scaffolding is key because it is what allows learners to process the input they are provided, both in terms of content and language.

Here are some of the basic ideas I presented:

Nowadays, students are multimodal learners, so we need to provide multimodal, context-rich input : written texts, podcasts, images, videos, simulations, infographics, augmented reality…

Tasks need to be manipulative, hands-on, contextualized and cognitively engaging. They should rely heavily on hands-on experiences, concrete materials, visuals and manipulatives so that they allow the learners to match experience (content) with language (meaning).

CLIL project: MADE IN…
Students checking where their goods are made in

Visual organizers help learners to organize and reorganize input and ideas, and to process the information presented to them. Check out this site for visual organizers of all kinds and my Visual Thinking board in Pinterest.

Questionning is an essential scaffolding tool in the CLIL classroom. Good questioning challenges the learners’ thinking. Questions can be used for multiple purposes and the classroom should be a safe environment where discussion and opinion can be generated and where learners can take risks.

Languaging, or self-explaining, improves understanding. Learners who are given the chance to think out loud about both the content and the language, understand both better. Out loud, collaborative thinking is more powerful tan silent, individual thinking.

Conversation in the CLIL class is a collaborative process of give and take in which both teacher and students work to send and receive comprehensible messages. The teachers’ ability to make themselves understood, to make a rich interpretation of students’ oral production, and to expand and refine the learners’ language is key to making language and content accessible.

Frames and substitution tables provide the learners with the vocabulary and structures necessary to deal with the content and help them to feel more confident when using the academic language of the subject they are learning in English.

Finally, I presented some websites where we can find all kinds of online materials which are really useful for a CLIL class: interactive games, animations, simulations, activities, resources, images, videos, lesson plans…

I am a big fan of both games and simulations. Simulations allow learners to experience and do hands-on activities to which they might not have access otherwise, or to carry out experiments with no safety concerns and, as games, they provide immediate feedback to the learner.

Here is an example of an interactive game that allows learners to learn how embalmers made mummies in ancient Egypt.

For online materials, check my pinterest and diigo