Portfolio Module 2

Your personal thought:

• What did you learn?
• How did you learn?
• Do you have any problem?
• Would you like to investigate a bit more about any subject?
• Which question do you propose to someone who read this post to help you with CLIL?

THE COOPERATIVE LEARNING

Teachers should promote interaction and cooperative work among students to enable the construction, consolidation, extension and modification of information and knowledge they are acquiring during the learning process. In order to get and process all the knowledge obtained from the interaction among pupils some skills will be developed on the way. In front of a task, they will have to understand the ways in which information and/or knowledge is available, select what is relevant for a specific purpose and present it to their classmates in a useful and understandable way. These tasks allow students to develop cooperative habits and aptitudes through teamwork. Moreover to strengthen cooperative work can educate students within a framework of personal self-improvement apart from the competitiveness that may arise in certain activities.

It is very important to promote cooperative work because students are integrated in the construction of the learning process, giving them an active role, letting them participate, improving their academic performance and their learning outcomes, fomenting interaction and relationship between students and allowing socialization as well as knowing different perspectives about a same topic.

In CLIL lessons students must be provided with extra motivation and confidence as they are not comfortable in learning contents through and L2, that’s why we have to foster an education that is based on solidarity, equality and respect. It is very important to carry out activities where confidence and communication among students are the main point. In this way there will be a social cohesion between them in the classroom, and we will be creating a proper relational and emotional atmosphere. Students will not feel uncomfortable or demotivated during the learning process because they will be accompanied by their group of classmates. At the same time, while doing cooperative work teacher may offer some adjusted and personalized help to each group. Providing this kind of support is very important because it involves the creation of the ZDP, which allows pupils to modify the schemes of knowledge through interactivity and promotes acting autonomously in their own group.

I think that everybody while doing the activities, reading the modules, and so on, sometimes we find some problems that make us stop, think deeply, correct what we have done, reorganize our previous knowledge, and consequently, learn. Mistakes are proof that we are learning. 

I would like to investigate more about the Piktochart and the Canvas, because I will have to make a poster about a project my school is taking part in (Project Sharing to Learn). These two resources/tools will allow me to introduce the topics in a different way and also students will recieve more visual inputs. I have seen that you can also attached videos, not just pictures, which is also great. With a Piktochart you can have all the resources just in a poster. 

Well, focusing on ICT and CLIL my question would be: do you know any other tool or resource as for example Piktochart, Canvas, Glogster that we can use to put into practice during a CLIL lesson. 

What do we know about Egypt?

DISPLAY FOR THE CLASS

TASK 2

Using Cooperative Learning in your Unit Plan.

The first important and vital aspect to enhance cooperative work successfully is good communication and understanding. We all should be conscious about the diversity of opinions each student/classmate might have and how they are expressed and understood. We have to take into account that good communication it does not mean to exchange information but also the way the message is listened in order to understand the full meaning of what is being said, so what is intended to say is what it is understood. Being open-minded and respectful will help to avoid misunderstandings during the cooperative work sessions.   

The second aspects that might be taken into consideration are the roles within a team and the share responsibility. It is necessary to highlight that all contributions made by students/classmates should be equally considered, otherwise feelings of inferiority or superiority might appear as well as unconsciously their self-esteem might be undermined. In order to avoid these drawbacks each student/classmate need to know what they are mend to do, how, who with and what for. If they cannot appreciate the functionality of their actions they will disperse their efforts and lose track. A good idea to make cooperative work works it would be sharing responsibility for planning by dividing tasks based on each other strengths and interests. Delegating the tasks they will be able to learn from their classmates as they are putting in common their knowledge into a cohesive lesson plan.   

Class Organization: Workgroups and Pairs

Cooperative Learning Technique 1: Jigsaw Groups for cooperative learning Task you are going to work: Description The class will be divided in six groups of three. First of all, the teacher will give one picture about different seasons to each group, without saying anything about them. Then, s/he will give the instructions. They will have to explain which objects and people appear in the picture and say what they are doing. They will have the dictionary to look for some words, but only if it is really necessary. The teacher will go around the class and will listen to the pupils and help them making questions like: How many people are there? What are they doing? Why? What is this? Do you think that all this pictures are from the same place? After some minutes, one member of each group will explain its group conclusions to another group (remix the groups in order that each member of a group explains the conclusions to another group).  The teacher can ask more questions to make them think more about the pictures. Description Conclusion. There is a river, the Nile, and it has a lot of water. It is an inundation. Then, farmers are planting vegetables. Finally, people collect vegetables and it starts again. So, the Egyptians divided the year into 3 seasons, according to the Nile river. Then, the teacher gives to each group one piece of paper that has three descriptions. Pupils have to match each description with the correct season. Finally, they will correct it aloud, the whole class.

Cooperative Learning Technique 2: Tea Party Task you are going to work: Description After doing the previous activity, pupils will have to form groups of 4 with different classmates of the pair they will have had in the last activity. With this group, students will use their description to play “what do I have in my head?” game. One pupil will have a picture of an Egyptian god in his/her head with the correct name, and the student will have to make questions to his/her classmates to guess what God his/her classmate have in his/her head. But pupils can answer questions just using yes or no answers. The questions that the classmate can make are: Are you a …? Yes, I am / No, I am not.  Do you wear…? Yes, I do / No, I do not. Have you got…? Yes, I have / No, I have not. Do you… (Action)? Yes, I do / No, I do not. These questions will be written in the blackboard, as a help for pupils. With this activity, students use and practice the different structures they have been reading in the previous activities, and they will have learnt in previous units. can find the cards with the Egyptians gods’ picture accompanied with its appropriate name, and also a model of the diadem pupils will wear on its head to avoid see what god they have to guess by asking questions to its classmates. Annex 14

Comunicative skills

TASK 1

IDENTIFYING THE COMUNICATIVE SKILLS

Session	CALP Content Language	BICS Basic Interpersonal Language	Language through Scaffolded Language.
1	Key vocabulary: -Vocabulary that comes from pupils’ contributions (pharaoh, pyramids, mummies, name of clothes, and so on). -Adjectives to describe temperature, size, etc. (warm, cold, big, long, large…)	… is larger than… … is more beautiful than… … is the biggest… … is the most beautiful… Is … bigger than… ? Is… the smallest… in the...?	Language coming across when looking for describing characteristics about Egypt and answering questions.
2	Key vocabulary: -Akhet, Peret, Shemu, inundation, river, farmers, recollect, vegetables… -Bread, onions, goat, banana, pork, lamb, cherries, radish, lemon, carrot, duck, orange, cucumber, fish, beef, pear. Key structures: -It is… It has… -It is. There is/are. What is the meaning of…?	Seasons Potatoes, onion, vegetables Did the Egyptians eat ___? - No, they didn’t. -Yes they did.	We can see, There is, there are, it is, what do you think is it? What’s the name of this food?
3	Key vocabulary: Wig, dress, sandals, bracelets, necklace, headband, crown, skirt, belt, pharaoh, priest, noble, slave, peasant, craftsman, scribe, field, barn, line and privileged. Key structures: -Comparative structure (he is more privileged than…) - He/she is wearing…	- I think that the first character is… - The most/less privileged person is… - What is she/he wearing?	- Language to explain who each character was.
4	Key vocabulary: Egyptian clothes such as wig, dress, sandals, bracelets, necklace, headband... Egyptian culture such as ride a camel, pyramids... Key structures: She/he is wearing... - She/he has got... – I am wearing... - I have got... – There is/are...	What can you see? I can see... - I think this symbol match with the letter... - What is the hidden message? I think that the hidden message is... - What is the correct picture? I think it is...	-Language needed to express previous knowledge and to discuss hieroglyphs decoding. -Language coming across when making a personal description.
5	Key vocabulary: Egyptians’ god names, vocabulary related to each kind of god (strength, evil serpent, flood and so on) and vocabulary linked to the physical description.	-What can you see? I can see...  - What is the hidden message? I think that the hidden message is... - What is the correct picture? I think it is... -What is she/he? She/he is a/an… / -Is she/he wearing a/an…? Yes she/he is, No he/she isn’t.  - Has she/he got some objects? Yes, he/she has, No, she/he has not  -What does she/he do? She/he is a/an…	-Language needed to express previous knowledge and to discuss about what kind of Egyptians gods they are. -Language coming across when making descriptions about Egyptians gods.
6	Key vocabulary: Hieroglyphics, plus, minus, equal, necklace, blocks, scarab, beads, workman Key structures: -Mathematical expressions (… plus …, … minus…, … times …, … equal…)	- I think that we have to do a… (Addition, subtraction…) - The result is….	- Numbers. - Language to explain what sum should they do and why.
7	Key vocabulary: desert, plateau, arable land, degrees, granite, limestone, mud brick, slave, craftsmen, farmers, officials, camel meat, bath tub, linen clothing, body oil, pillows, eye make-up, board games, compete in gangs, reward with gold, time off, beer rations, quarrying granite. Key structures: I would select... I would choose...	I think that the correct option is... They did it because...	I think that the correct option is... They did it because...
8	Key vocabulary: All the language learnt in the previous sessions. Key structures: All the key structures learnt in the previous sessions.	-I don’t know how to … -I need some help. I- don’t find…	- Language coming across when making the Glogster.

Portfolio

What did you learn? Or how did you learn?

Do you have any problem?

Would you like to investigate a bit more about any subject?

Which question do you propose to someone who read this post to help you with CLIL?

Which aspects do we have to take into account to plan a CLIL lesson? Although planning a lesson requires a lot of time, and the teacher must think in an accurate way and prevent some possible problems students may have; while planning a CLIL lessons, it’s very important to bear in mind the basic language ability and the academic language proficiency in our students’ first language and in the language we want to teach them the contents (the L2).

What is the meaning of CLIL? Contents and language integrated learning. What does it mean? It means that teachers have to teach, for example, science through English. Well, this is what it’s thought, but it’s not 100% true.

If we want to use a CLIL approach, it is important to foster teachers’ motivation. It is my belief that there are still some teachers who don’t feel comfortable about this new pedagogical approach. And I think it is because teaching in a different way is not always easy. Most of teachers have a particular way to teach and if the method and the strategies they use work is not necessary to change them. Despite the fact that innovation may be difficult to accept, as a teacher we have to innovate and adapt ourselves and our methodologies to the social changes. Nowadays English language has a high importance in our society, and by implementing CLIL students will increase their linguistic competence and improve their skills. Personally, I can think about more advantages than drawbacks.

While I was doing the CLIL unit plan I was thinking about the importance of the language demands and the language support we have to consider previously.

When we are teaching using the L2 is useful to know what the students’ skills are (listening, speaking, reading and writing); and we have to plan the activities and have a variety of strategies to face the activity we have planned. Also it would be a good idea to make a list of which problems the students may find while they are doing the activity, and try to give them the best support we can offer to make the activity more understandable and easier. Scaffolding is very important when teaching CLIL.

About the language support we provide our pupils, I think it’s also useful even if we just teach English. Language for learning, language of learning, and language through learning are three items which require a deep thought.

I would like to investigate about Bloom’s Taxonomy, in order to create a list of tasks for each level of the pyramid. So, I would like to get some useful resources about Bloom’s Taxonomy, any kind of web related to this topic will be more than welcome. 

CLIL Unit Plan

In the link below you can find the CLIL unit plan in a slideshare presentation. 

CLIL unit plan

The SWOT analysis about CLIL

The SWOT analysis about CLIL