How to EIOfy your lessons – four possible teaching strategies

European and International Orientation (EIO) is often an aspect of bilingual education that teachers find difficult to integrate with their subject. For example, some aspects of the EIO rubric are rather abstract, and the rubric does not offer concrete examples of its criteria put into classroom practice.

Of course, for some subjects (for example: social studies, geography and history) incorporating EIO can be as straight forward as identifying the relevant content of their subject. At some schools the approach has been to teach EIO as a separate subject. But what about other subjects in the curriculum? How does a science teacher, for example, add an international dimension to their lessons?

In order to try and offer teachers a concrete approach that includes examples for actual teaching practice for how to EIOfy a lesson, we have come up with four EIO teaching strategies. We would say that potentially every subject could use at least one of these.

Strategy one: Experiencing an aspect of another culture

This strategy is about finding lesson materials or ideas for lesson activities that use or adapt something from another culture. Physical Education teachers in the bilingual stream often offer a good example of this when they give their learners the opportunity to try out sports from other countries (for example, here in The Netherlands there has been a successful cricket league set up between bilingual schools). How about other subjects though? An example we’ve used in workshops is of games from other cultures that a maths teacher can use for teaching particular topics. For example, how about getting the pupils playing the ancient Chinese game of Nim as an idea for learning about calculating probability?

Strategy two: Experiencing how to resolve conflicts and negotiate solutions

With this approach learners are given co-operative learning or small group tasks, in which they need to work together to complete a task or solve a problem. The point is to also have the pupils focus on the ways they work together, and to encourage them to make explicit for themselves the different skills involved. A teacher needs to also draw attention to the link between these types of task and the international projects and/or exchange trips that learners will probably also participate in as part of a CLIL programme – the same skills that they use in the classroom for working together will then need to be applied in an international setting.

Strategy three: Learning about multicultural and intercultural content

This strategy is possibly the one that is the easiest to connect to the EIO rubric, and the rubric itself does offer some indication of ideas for lesson content. But teachers can also use the idea of EIO as a launch pad into a range of related topics – such as human rights, sustainable development, and citizenship – that all subjects in the curriculum could potentially connect with.  These topics could then become the focus for cross curricular projects that different subjects contribute to.

Strategy four: Looking at something from another (cultural) perspective

With this learners are asked to experience another or alternative (cultural) perspective to their own. Role playing activities are a good way to explore this strategy, coming up with controversial topics for discussion, for example, and then giving pupils a particular role to play in that discussion that could be related to a different cultural perspective to their own. Another example we used in a workshop was a poem written by a refugee in the UK, in which we took out some key words and asked the participants to complete the poem themselves (thus putting themselves into the position of the poet). They were then asked to discuss what they thought about the person who wrote the poem (cultural background, age, gender, job etc.) and were often surprised to then discover the difference between their own assumptions and the truth.

Taken together what these four strategies show is that implementing EIO is an approach that can involve knowledge and understanding of subject content (and which can potentially be linked between and across different subjects) but also a range of skills that different subjects can also work with.

We’d be interested to know what teaching ideas other people have in relation to any of these four lesson EIOfying teaching strategies. Or indeed any thoughts on adding an international aspect to CLIL in the classroom.

Winter Warmers for CLIL

Snow is upon us (at least it is here in The Netherlands) and the temperature is dropping! Even more reason to get learners warmed up at the start of a lesson.

Warming up is important in order to help learners make the transition from a regular lesson to a CLIL lesson – warming up in this case could focus on the use of English in the lesson.

Activating tasks are also essential to help motivate learners and engage their interest for a particular topic.

Warming up is also important for the transition between subjects in a bilingual stream – in this case an energizer might focus on subject content and activating prior knowledge, alongside activating language use.

Here’s a suggestion for five (winter) warming up activities for a CLIL lesson.

Balloon stomp

This can get very noisy! Choose a set of questions (Q) and answers (A). Write each Q and A on separate pieces of paper. Roll each one up and place it in separate balloons. Blow the balloons up. Learners walk around the room until the teacher says, “jump”. Each person then stands on a balloon to burst it and releases the paper inside. Each then looks for the person with the A to the Q they have, or the Q to the A. Alternatively, use collocations with different words that need to be put together. For example, one person has “fish” and has to find the other person with “chips”. Also possible to do this activity without the balloons!

CLIL beach ball

Write questions all over a beach ball. For example, what would you do with a million dollars? which famous person would play you in the movie of your life? which vegetable do you hate the most? Then throw the ball around the room to learners — wherever their right thumb lands, they answer that question. Questions could also be related to subject content – but then they need to be open-ended questions in case of people getting the same question.

Fat question

A fat question is an open-ended question that has no single answer and requires more than a single sentence in a possible answer. For example: Is there life on other planets, what do you think? Use a fat question at the start of a lesson to get brains into gear and to generate discussion, as well as motivating interest in the topic for that particular lesson.

Coffeepotting

Place pupils in pairs or small groups. They take it in turns to think of a verb. Others have to ask questions to discover the verb chosen using the word ‘’coffeepot” in place of the verb: for example, “Do you coffeepot at night? When do you coffeepot? Where do you coffeepot?” etc. until they find the answer. Verbs could also be related to a specific topic to connect with subject content.

Top Secret

Everyone writes something down which he or she knows about him/herself but that no-one else in the class knows. Gather cards together, then redistribute them. Everyone reads out their card, and guesses who it comes from. As an alternative, learners need to write a secret about themselves using different tense, for example, one sentence in the present tense, one sentence in the present perfect tense.

new CLIL magazine

Great new CLIL magazine just published! You can read it online here:

www.clilmagazine.nl

It contains a variety of articles covering CLIL, including something I've written on mini whiteboards and something from Rosie on the CLIL beach ball.

Mini Whiteboards Revisited

You know we are fans of mini whiteboards. Here is a short video, "How to use mini whiteboards", which includes ideas from teachers: a new angle on jigsaw reading, an idea for vocabulary development, a way to evaluate peers, an information gap drawing activity. Hope it inspires you to dust off the mini whiteboards and get the students active again...

Ideas for working with vocabulary

We’ve been rather quiet for a few months with this blog…so we thought that we could kick start our blogging for the new school year with a piece about working with vocabulary.

There are, however, some important guiding principles that underpin these activities:

• Avoid pre-teaching vocabulary if at all possible, and instead aim to elicit vocabulary and ideas about meaning and use of words from the learners.
• Use these activities as ways to build on what learners already know, and by encouraging interaction between them enabling learners to share this knowledge with each other.
• Think of how these activities can lead into new activities that work at a sentence level, getting learners to use new vocabulary within sentences in various ways.

Here, then, are some quick and easy ideas for working with vocabulary:

Before reading a text

Choose five or six words from a text that is going to be read. Write these words on the whiteboard. Ask students, in groups of three or four, to speculate on what the text is going to be about. Give out the text for comparison and discussion.

To do whilst reading a text

Choose ten or so words from the text that is being read and put a list of their translations on the whiteboard. Tell the students that their English equivalents are to be found ‘somewhere in the text’ and ask them to find them.

Matching activities / odd one out activities

There are lots of online activities to use that require students to match words or look for the odd one out. For example, to use with younger learners: http://www.learnenglish.de/Games/OddOneOut/ooo1.htm

Categorizing tasks

Prepare word cards with names of man-made objects related to your subject (e.g. test tube, bunsen burner for Science; football, rope for Physical Education). Divide the class into small groups and give each student one of these word cards. Ask each student to either write above the word the name of something that went into the making of the object, or beneath the word something that is made from the object. Each student then passes their card on to a neighbour, who then tries to repeat the exercise with their new word. Continue the game to see how many words can be collected.

Dictionary games

Write an English word on the board that can produce a variety of possible translations. Ask students to read through (in their bilingual dictionary) the translations of that word, and choose from those translations a foreign (that is, their mother tongue) word that they translate back into English (using their dictionary again). Get them to repeat the process until they have a chain of at least a dozen words.

Building new words

Use word families to help students to build up vocabulary. Word families are groups of words that have a common feature or pattern - they have some of the same combinations of letters in them and a similar sound. For example, at, cat, hat, and fat are a family of words with the "at" sound and letter combination in common. The 37 most common word families in English are: ack, ain, ake, ale, all, ame, an, ank, ap, ash, at, ate, aw ay, eat, ell, est, ice, ick, ide, ight, ill, in, ine, ing, ink, ip, it, ock, oke, op, ore, ot, uck ,ug, ump, unk.

Crosswords/word puzzles

There are heaps of online resources for making vocabulary puzzles. For example, try out: http://www.discoveryeducation.com/free-puzzlemaker/

Some of these ideas have been adapted from: Morgan, J. & M. Rinvolucri Vocabulary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986). Another good resource is Penny Ur's Vocabulary Activities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).

Rosie's secrets!

While I was at the IATEFL conference in Glasgow this year, Cambridge University Press interviewed us (Rosie Tanner and Liz Dale) about writing our book CLIL Actvities together. And about our secrets related to teaching. Here we are on YouTube!

Lesson Reflection in CLIL

We can think of a CLIL lesson as a three course meal: an appetizer that energizes the learners at the start; the main course activities that hit all the key learning objectives for the lesson; and a final dessert that reflects on the lesson by consolidating what's been learnt.

It’s essential to plan for reflection at the end of a lesson in order to get feedback on the lesson — have the objectives for the lesson actually been achieved? For CLIL, wrapping up the lesson can be an opportunity to reflect on both the learning of subject content and also of language. It can also be an activity that provides another opportunity for learners to produce spoken output, sharing their ideas and reviewing their learning with each other.

I often get asked by teachers for ideas for lesson reflectors. Here then are ten ideas for lesson reflectors in CLIL.

• Select a group of students to give a summary of the lesson as a short presentation in front of the class.

• Ask a group of students to create a ‘still frame’ of a key idea from the lesson (a still frame is a frozen tableau). The other pupils have to discuss what the still frame shows.

• Ask students to write an important question to ask the rest of the class to test their understanding of the lesson. Students can share and discuss the questions in groups.

• Use a speaking/writing frame:

“The best part of the lesson was…”

“The most difficult part of the lesson was…”

“The most interesting part of the lesson was…”

• Put the questions you are going to want answered at the end of the lesson on the board at the start of a lesson. Draw attention to these questions at relevant moments during the lesson, and then ask pupils to answer them (perhaps through a small group discussion) in the last ten minutes of the lesson.

• Ask student to write down three facts that they have learnt in a lesson and share these with a partner or in a small group.

• Ask pupils to complete a list of ten keywords from the lesson with each word put into a sentence to show they understand its meaning. These are shared with a partner or in a small group, everyone adding to their lists.

• Ask students to design an exercise for the next lesson as a follow up to work done in the lesson.

• Get students in small groups to design one screen of a Powerpoint presentation (they do this on a large sheet of paper) that uses a heading and bullet points to sum up what they learnt in the lesson.

• Ask pupils to work in small groups to make a set of word cards drawing on the key vocabulary from the lesson, with definitions on other cards, then use the cards to compose sentences that describe the main ideas from the lesson and/or ways in which ideas in the lesson could connect with other subjects.

Finally, how about getting pupils to complete a feedback form for the teacher: what went well (www) and even better if (ebi)?