New CLIL Teacher?

Before you set off: top tips for your new journey! 

Being a new teacher is an exciting - if somewhat intimidating - stage of your career. However, being a new CLIL teacher - even as an experienced teacher - may well trigger the same emotional rush! Moreover, the 'new teacher' stage usually comes with long hours of planning, creating your personal resources and discovering what works well in your teaching and learning context. So, you start your new CLIL journey, here are five tips to help you on your way: 

1. Start with 'Why' 

Before you begin the frenzy of planning lessons, designing materials and assessments, take a step back and ask, “Why?” The first block to add to your foundation of CLIL teaching needs to be a firm understanding of the type of CLIL you are expected to deliver. Are you in a situation where you are expected to assess the subject, the language, or both? Get hold of the school’s syllabus aims and find out what the learning outcomes are for your class. Once you are clear on the purpose of your class, then you can proceed with CLIL-ing your lessons. 

2. Analyse your students’ language demands 

When you are planning your lessons, always consider the language demands that are being placed on students. In a school context, usually, to facilitate proper understanding of lessons, students need some degree of cognitive academic language proficiency (CALP). If you are expected to teach 'Strong CLIL', you need to have a clear understanding of the kinds of language demands that are specific to your subject as well as a general understanding of the language skills students need to understand and carry out instructions.

3. Collaborate with your peers 

All teachers new to CLIL need to undergo an adjustment. If you are a language teacher, you need to start thinking about content and if you are a subject teacher, you need to start thinking about language. Collaborating with your opposites can only enrich the teaching and learning experience. Language teachers can help subject-teachers isolate the language structures that are common to the topics of the content area and provide advice on resources. Similarly, subject teachers can help language teachers discover and unpack content resources and so forth. Working with your peers can help strengthen the types of lessons each CLIL teacher can offer. 

4. Work on your lesson aims 

In planning each lesson or unit of study, always be very clear on the aims of your lesson. The conceptual sequencing model will allow you to clarify the primary and supporting aims of your lesson by parsing the lesson into concept, procedure (skill) and language. If you are in a 'strong CLIL' environment, you should be very clear about what subject content is to be acquired, what language skill(s) will facilitate this, and which language structures will be required. This process of analysing concept, procedure, and structure might seem time consuming - and perhaps even a little painful at first - but starting your lesson planning with a clear understanding of the natural synergies between the content and language for your particular topic will allow you to design meaningful tasks that will engage your students. Your students will be involved in learning content and language that isn't artificial, stilted, or without purpose.

5. Remember inductive learning! 

As you have probably noticed by now, CLIL lessons take quite a bit of planning - especially for new teachers. Indeed, all new teachers can attest to a desire to plan each lesson down to the last detail. This rite of passage most likely stems from the belief that having a detailed knowledge brings confidence and a sense of control in the classroom. However, it is important to remember not to position yourself as the sole source of and dispenser of knowledge. Remember that one of the foundational positions of CLIL is to encourage cognitive learning – learning by induction: designing your lessons in a manner that lets learners construct and discover new knowledge and connections from their existing understanding. When planning each segment of your lesson, ask yourself, “Am I simply relaying information?” or “Am I involving the learners and drawing on their previous knowledge?”. This will allow you to check that you are keeping your learners stimulated, engaged and involved. By doing this, you re-centre your lesson on the crux of CLIL: “using languages to learn, and learning to use languages”. 

As you embark on your CLIL journey, remember that you are not alone: reach out and consult your peers and the many online CLIL resources. Like your students, teachers too, have prior knowledge on which to build.