CLIL Methodology Unit 2 Starting out Task 1 Speaking A) A good lesson How would you define a successful, satisfying lesson from the perspective of a teacher? B) Typical class A friend who knows nothing about your subject has asked you to describe a snapshot of a typical moment in your class – a picture that captures the look, the atmosphere, the learners´ mood, the teacher´s attitude, etc. What would your instant snapshot show? C) What makes a teacher? Think back to some teachers (of any subject) you have had in your life. What do you remember about them and their lessons? Can you recall any specific teaching techniques? Task 2 Do you consider these statements true or false? 1. Being a teacher means that you behave like a ´teacher´. 2. A common cause of boredom in classrooms is when the material used is too easy. 3. When students work in groups it is better to leave them alone as a lot of ´teacher help´ is actually interference and gets in the way of students working on their own. 4. The basic building block of lesson is a text. 5. You learn to teach by teaching. 6. Teaching is not an art, it is a simple combination of effective techniques. 7. For every lesson you need a detailed lesson plan including clearly stated goals of the lesson and all the activities. Task 3 How to prevent learning Here are some ways that teachers unintentionally prevent learning. Match their description with titles. a) TTT (Teacher Talking Time) b) Echo c) Helpful sentence completion d) Complicated and unclear instructions e) Over-helping/ over-organising f) Flying with the fastest g) Not really listening 1. STUDENT: I think that smoking is… TEACHER: A bad thing. Yes, I agree. When I went into the pub… 2. TEACHER: When nothing else is happening in the classroom, I open my mouth. I´ve no idea what I say most of the time but it stops those horrible silences. It´s probably useful for them to listen to me anyway… 3. TEACHER: Well, so what I´m gonna do is I´m gonna ask you to get into pairs, but before that there are some things we need to work out. So just take a pen, could you please write this, and then when you´ve finished we can do the next thing which involves more cooperation… 4. TEACHER: So – what´s the answer? STUDENT A: It happened on Saturday morning. TEACHER: Yes, very good. Anyone else got that? And why did he buy the guide? STUDENT: Because he was going to Korea. TEACHER: Good. Everyone understands then! 5. STUDENT: I´m feeling bad. My grandfather die last week. TEACHER: No, not ´die´- say ´died´ when it´s in the past. STUDENT: …he died last week… TEACHER: Excellent. Now, did anyone else´s grandfather die last week? 6. STUDENT: I went to the cinema. TEACHER: You went to the cinema, good. You went to the cinema. 7. TEACHER: Yes, now you can ask your question. Mmmm, that´s a good question. What do you think? What´s your answer going to be, Silvia? Go on, tell her… Task 4 Video Watch Rita Pierson giving a talk on education. What educational principles does she propose? What makes her an effective speaker? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFnMTHhKdkw) What would your TED talk on education be about? Prepare an outline of a speech. Task 5 Language: Idioms Can you spot idioms about learning in the sentences below? Can you guess their meaning? a) "I got very drunk once and was really sick. I won't do it again, I learnt my lesson." b) "I learnt all the vocabulary off by heart." c) "She's new here and is still learning the ropes." d) "He could never learn how to use the Internet. Just shows you can't teach an old dog new tricks." e) "She got into the university of her choice, because she passed all her exams with flying colours." f) “Other countries could teach us a lesson or two on educational policy.” g) "I studied at the University of Life." h) "I never knew that she was married. Oh well, you live and learn." i) “A new computer simulator teaches drivers how to handle a skid before they end up learning the hard way.” (For more, go to http://www.english-at-home.com/vocabulary/english-studying-vocabulary/) Task 6 Reading – Key ideas in teaching I. The Zone of Proximal Development Vygotsky (1978) coined the term Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) to describe a point just beyond what a learner already knows or is able to do on his/her own. He suggested that learning takes place when learners interact in the ZPD with someone who is more expert than they are. Activating helps learners to work in their ZPD. II. Scaffolding The idea of scaffolding is based on work by Wood, Bruner and Ross (1976) and Vygotsky (1978). Builders use temporary scaffolds to support a building during construction, and then – once the building can stand alone – the scaffold is removed. CLIL learners can be helped with teacher scaffolding in the same way. There is an important difference between helping and scaffolding. An example of help is when a child asks how to spell a word, and the teacher tells them. If, instead of providing the answer, the teacher asks the child to sound out the word and write down the sounds they hear, the teacher is providing scaffolding, which helps the learner to solve a similar problem themselves next time. III. Effective talk Mercer (2000) has shown that some types of talk are more effective than others. When teachers encouraged learners to explain and justify their ideas using words like because, but and so, their learners developed better understanding. Encouraging learners to speak helps learners understand a subject and it also helps them to write better. When they talk about their ideas before they write, learners also produce better quality writing. They also write better if teachers give them plenty of models of the texts they need to write and if they talk about how the texts are organised. (adapted from Dale, L. & Tanner,R. (2012). CLIL Activities. Cambridge University Press.)