I’ve learned a tremendous amount over the past year and a half working as an ELL teacher. I’ve ready over a dozen different textbooks, attended a variety of workshops, and was introduced to a slew of new like minded professionals on twitter via #ellchat. Recently, I learned about CLIL (Content and Language Integrative Learning) from my online course through the Principal’s Training Center, facilitated by Dr. Virginia Rojas (Gini). I also went to a two day workshop about CLIL here in Chiang Mai with Gini as the presenter, so it was a pleasure to finally get to meet her in person!

I went into the workshop not knowing a tremendous amount about CLIL. All I knew that it was a shift in mindset about language teaching; it’s viewed as a holistic approach to learning both content and language simultaneously. I initially mistook it as a variation of bilingual education, but it’s not that simple. CLIL reinforces each language being learned in tandem, regardless of level of fluency. Content is taught, learned, and communicated in both the language of the classroom (School Lingua Franca) and the target language.

This merely brushes the surface – I encourage language teachers to read up more on using CLIL in the classroom!

The workshop was truly transformative. I learned a lot over two short days, so it was difficult to pick three highlights to outline here.

Submersion VS. Immersion

When I was in grad school studying bilingual curriculum and instruction (whatever that means) the focus was on English immersion. However, no scaffolds or language learning research / techniques were ever introduced. Students were assumed to somehow learn English by simply being present, and teachers use basic differentiation techniques to meet their needs. These basic strategies are helpful, but scaffolding language is very different than scaffolding content. Being in an immersive environment means that the target language is appropriately scaffolded, modeled, and practiced.

Submersion is the true sink or swim approach that rarely works. Few students are successful with this approach, so the majority of students are left behind.

This reminds me of my experience in a college Thai course last summer. That was true submersion; I was expected to learn mostly by osmosis. My teacher would tell me all of the time, “You’ll get better”. But how can a student learn more if content isn’t supported? My time here was full of frustration and self deprecation. I only got better when I quit the course and sought out a private tutor who appropriately scaffolded and modeled material for me.

Being in an immersive environment means that the target language is appropriately scaffolded, modeled, and practiced.

Language: A Problem or a Resource

Students arrive in our classrooms with a unique set of abilities and talents, some of which derive specifically from their home cultures. It’s our role as educators to see these unique talents as a resource to aid student learning instead of focusing on the problems. I wrote a blog post last month about using what students can do instead of highlighting what they can’t do, and the results were almost immediate (this particular student I wrote about is now doing immensely better in writing!).

Anchor Charts: Elicit the Information

I’m an elementary teacher at heart, and like many elementary teachers I love anchor charts. I love making them, using them, and watching the students utilizing them. I’m always intentional about how anchor charts are used in the classroom. They should serve a specific purpose, not simply fill space on the walls. It’s easy, however, to focus on the aesthetics rather than the practicality of use. Anchor charts should elicit specific information, and in the CLIL classroom, they should help students use language structures and functions. My anchor charts were always filled with sentence starts and vocabulary, but they can be taken a step further by being constructed in a way that scaffolds academic language.

One way this could be done is by providing the structure of language on the chart alongside vocabulary. For example, when working with a group of third graders on using descriptive language, our anchor chart had the noun / verb / preposition structure embedded on it for use. I try to keep these as open ended as possible to avoid repetition in sentence structure, but structured enough to guide students who need it (and some do!).

A Reflection on CLIL

Combining both content and language in our teaching makes language learning more relevant to learners, and it facilitates the learning of academic discourse. This workshop changed my outlook on the best ways to go about meet both the content and language needs of my students. I’ve already started tackling Co-Teaching lessons with a CLIL mindset – so stay tuned for a future update on the results!