Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Timing
Teachers communicative
skills
Pupils physical
involvement
Motivation tools
Materials
Expected outcomes
Imagine that you are asked to put the above aspects of planning into an order of
priority. Which two aspects would you place at the top of your list?
2 Integrating English
In Enright and McCloskeys Integrating English (1988), the writers state that planning an
integrated [CLIL] unit varies depending on a teachers specific needs, teaching materials and
thinking style.
They believe that the aim of the planning process is to have a set of learning activities that allow
your students to explore different subject matter areas using different thinking processes and
language processes that are exciting and enjoyable [that] have authentic goals [that]
build on students previous cultural and linguistic experiences [that] involve students working
cooperatively and provide success to students at many levels (p49).
In their approach to planning CLIL, they suggest the following framework:
(i) Identify the topic/content to be taught
(ii) Brainstorm activities and ideas using a topic web
(iii) Use the topic web to develop learning objectives
The learning objectives we identify need to reflect our content aims as well as the language that
we need to deliver the content. The needs of the pupils, as well as the school curriculum, will
shape the whole planning process.
Their approach to planning is summarised in a flowchart on p66 of their book:
Sequence activities
Implement
Revise
Sequencing activities
The sequencing of activities should fit into the existing teaching cycle and start by motivating
and engaging the pupils. By engaging pupils interest from the beginning, we provide them with
a route into the content area.
Opportunities for pupils to interact with the material are then created. The skills and knowledge
that pupils gain through working through the different activities are incorporated into later
lessons and units of work ie what goes before builds on what comes next. This helps to make
each unit of work coherent and cohesive.
Imagine that you need to plan a content topic on the life cycle of a frog.
Brainstorm 6 or 7 ideas that you would include on your ideas web. Use this
to identify one content and one language learning objective for the topic.
Content objectives
Language objectives
Content concepts
Supplementary materials
Adaptation of content
Meaningful activities
Content concepts
The content concepts outlined in guidelines for the first language curriculum should not be
diminished in any way. Pupils should be taught the same content concepts that they would be
taught in their mother tongue. It is just the language and approach to teaching these concepts
that needs to be modified.
SIOP model
According to the SIOP model, when planning for second language (L2) instruction in a first
language (L1) classroom, we need:
(i) To identify our content objectives ie those statements that identify what pupils should
know and be able to do in particular content areas. These content objectives are frequently
linked to school or national curricula outcomes.
(ii) Plan for the systematic development of pupils language skills. This includes identifying
the language objectives for our unit ie the key words and phrases needed to deliver the unit,
plus the functional language that we will need to facilitate classroom interaction.
Supplementary materials
To enhance our teaching and provide learners with sufficient support to master the content of
the subject, we need to take into account the range of supplementary materials that we can use.
Echevarria, Vogt and Short state that the purpose of these supplementary materials is to create
context and support content concepts (p33). They suggest using plenty of realia (real life objects)
to back up what we say, as well as plenty of pictures and other visuals, including multimedia and
demonstrations, as well as hands-on experiences to support the content message that we want
to get across. Modifying the language that we need is also key to ensuring that our message has
meaning and is understood by the pupils. One way to do this is by presenting the content to our
pupils through using traditional language learning techniques. This could include asking pupils
to use graphics to illustrate ideas, to complete jigsaw readings as a pair in class, to use graphic
organisers to sort and categorise their ideas and/or complete scaffolded writing tasks.
Echevarria, Vogt and Shorts approach to planning and the relationship between the main
aspects of the SIOP approach are illustrated in the flowchart they provide on p22 of their book:
Lesson
Preparation
Content
Objectives
Language
Objectives
Appropriate Content
Concepts
Supplementary Materials
Meaningful
Activities
Adaptation of
Content
Into
Through
Beyond
See Module 2 in the eLibrary for a link to Brinton & Holtens complete article.
Content
Cognition
Communication
Culture
Content refers to the content that we want to teach and our pupils to learn in the CLIL lessons/
units of work that we prepare.
Cognition refers to the cognitive experiences that we want our pupils to experience as
part of the learning process, ie opportunities to employ a range of thinking skills such as
hypothesising, justifying choices, categorising and/or applying knowledge and concepts, etc.
Communication refers to the key language that we will need to deliver the topic and achieve
our content aims.
Culture refers to the pupils awareness of a world beyond their own. In Coyles example lesson
plan (p13) this is reflected in the fact that as pupils will be learning about the structure of
castles in French, they learn about this through the context of castles built in France.
See Module 2 in the eLibrary for a link to Coyles complete article. See p13
of her article for an example lesson plan and p15 for her CLIL curriculum
planning checklist.
References
Brinton, D. & Holten, C. (1997). Into, through, and beyond: A framework to develop contentbased material. Forum, 35 (4), 10-21. Retrieved June 12, 2009 from http://eca.state.gov/forum/
vols/vol35/no4/p10.htm
Coyle, D. (2006). Content and Language Integrated Learning: Motivating learners and teachers.
Retrieved July 16, 2009 from http://www.strath.ac.uk/media/departments/curricularstudies/
scilt/slr/issues/13/SLR13%20Coyle.pdf
Echevarria J., Vogt, M. E., & Short D. J. (Eds.). (2000) Making Content Comprehensible for English
Language Learners: The SIOP model. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.
Enright, D. S., & McCloskey, M.L. (1988). Integrating English. New York: Addison-Wesley
Publishing Company.
Lange, G. (Ed.). (2002). TIE-CLIL Professional Development Course. Milan, Italy: M.I.U.R.
The Partners, Getting started with Primary CLIL, Comenius 2.1, 2009.