Creative with CLIL

This video caught my attention this week, especially since my New Year's resolution (yet again) is to "Slow down". Give students 10 seconds to perform a task, and they all come up with the same answer. Give them 10 minutes and their creativity explodes!

But what does this mean for CLIL? For me, it means that we can:

• give students more time to work on CLIL projects
• ask students to spend time on writing drafts and rewriting longer pieces of writing (instead of lots of small ones)
• get students to think more about what they are learning (use the well-worn idea of think, pair, share)
• use HOTS (higher order thinking skills) more than LOTS (lower order thinking skills)
• plan fewer activities in our lessons: the activities which we do do can then really engage students
• encourage and reward creativity in language use when students are writing or speaking, rather than punishing them or marking them down for making silly mistakes

If we do these things, maybe our students' creativity will increase and you will be prouder of what they make or perform.

CLIL STARTERS COURSE

And if you want to be creative with CLIL, are new or pretty new to CLIL and would like some attractive teaching ideas for your lessons, we'd like to let you know that our CLIL starters course in Utrecht is starting again on 26 February. It's definitely going ahead, but there are still some places free and we would love to meet you! Here is the Application form.