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I spent a substantial amount of time on creating the website for this module, so it could be relevant to do a short evalutation. Pros of the website: 1) it helped a lot to structure the module, 2) it made objectives and tasks very clear to learners, 3) it allowed individual learners to work at their own pace, 4) they found it exciting and involving, 5) it contained exactly what I wanted, unlike resources from publishers or from the internet, including all the resources they were meant to use. Cons of the website: 1) it is not very interactive in itself: interaction only happened on the shared folders linked, 2) Unless I pay for a premium (or the school does), I will not be able to store many websites and re-make them every time is not time-effective. MAYBE, next time I could look into the possibility to build the website collaboratively as a class, giving each group the task to build a page. Clearly, in this case, the structure of the website would be different.

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They seem to access videos much better than last week. Hopefully it is not only my wishful thinking. Some of them say they have become better at recognizing specific chunks (like “cardiovascular system” or “depolarization wave”) and this helps them to make more sense of what they are hearing. We had a couple of really good explanations of ECG and some decent presentation on the control of the cardiac cycle. However, I am worried that some of them are not showing the “grade level” that they usually show. This is a problem for my future CLIL teaching: how do I ensure that they achieve their full potential in a certain topic “despite” or maybe “thanks to” the CLIL approach?

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I started the lesson doing our mindfulness routine in English: that was nice. Beside explicit learning tasks, it is good to have more “general” interactions and instructions in English. Maybe I should give them instructions in English next time we go to the lab. In this respect, it is a shame we have not done the dissection.

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Some groups are populating their lexical notebooks, some not so much. Same with other task to share in the platform. Maybe I could get them to use individual account on Google Drive, so I can keep record of individual contributions and make them accountable for what they do out of lesson. That is always a problem with group work.

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Accessing information from a video in English can be an issue for some of my students: about half of the class has some problems with it. In class, I encouraged them to use English subtitles and that worked for some. Also, I repeated short bits of the video a few times. For description, again, some need frames and some can do without them. Role-plays and movements worked nicely: no surprise with this class. CAREFUL: some of them were still carrying the nasty misconception about oxygenated blood in the arteries etc. Hopefully, they all got the accurate definition by now, but I need to check them again.

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Occupation + unwanted and school trip force me to take out some of the activities planned. I’ll do without the heart dissection, for now – maybe we can do it in January. I also need to reduce the number of tasks at home because  we’ll have to do more in a shorter time.

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Most of them got their images, but there was some problem in uploading them on Google Drive before the lesson. Same with the entries on the lexical notebook. Now I have updated the settings on the shared folders and they should be able to edit them. About half of the class can describe the pictures in a small speech. The rest of them needed a frame, which I improvised on the board. I need to come back to the adaptations, particularly to the differences between right and left ventricle.

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A bit of informal chat on English accents, started by Enrico that should do a semester in New Zealand next year. I showed them a couple of funny videos were you can hear the differences among accents and tried to give them an idea of the huge range of different cultures and cultural characters across the English speaking world. Nice work on the “culture” aspect of CLIL, though it was unplanned and not very connected with the Science topic. How could I include cultures in the next CLIL module I will be teaching?

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Text based lesson (cardiovascular health)

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Text based lesson (cardiovascular health)

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It has been nice to try in the classroom something I had simulated just a couple of weeks ago in the course. Everything went quite smooth, though sometimes the pace slowed down. Next time, think how to divide this kind of activity in many steps that can be timed. The NHS website was quite effective as a real-life document, though a bit scary. I should use it again for other Human Biology topics.
Anyway a good start! They liked the task and the website: let's see what comes next.

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I have finally introduced the CLIL module to 3Q. Mixed reactions, as expected, even with the good relationship that we have. They like the idea of filming. Some are very motivated because they are planning to do next year abroad. Others, fairly scared. Mainly two fears: 1) not being able to access important information 2) being somehow assessed on their English alongside their Science. I understand why some of my colleagues in the course chose to teach a topic that students had already met. I will address their concern by using some Italian summaries. For assessment, the rubric should work fine.

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Working on a piece of information by changing its “format”: from text to picture, to mind map, to speech, to role-play etc. Very similar to what I have learnt in UK, particularly from “The Teacher’s Toolkit” by P. Ginnis. This last module feels quite familiar territory.

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In lecture, I have played the teacher in a text analysis. The activity I improvised was: a) read the text b) in groups, highlight 4 – 5 sentences that, in your opinion, summarize the whole passage effectively. c) groups share their choices with the whole class and we discuss differences and similarities in the sentences chosen. The lecturer pointed out something quite useful: an activity benefits from having a conclusion, a “final product” which makes it clear to everyone what they have achieved. How can I ensure my activities always have one?

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Now I am learning some new practical ideas! This is particularly convincing and I will use it in the module I am planning. It also ticks the box of collaborative work and ICT. I like particularly the idea of putting the words in context and using them in “chunks”.

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Despite my affection for textbooks, I am not very likely to use one in my CLIL module for this course. IGCSE resources tend to be too easy, A-Level resources tend to be too hard. Plus, they are not for free. For this module I will probably pre-select resources from the web and challenge students to find more resources. And for the future? Where can I get textbook-equivalents? For Chemistry, actually the ChemGuide website is pretty similar to a simple textbook.

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Interesting debate in lecture about the use of textbooks. I still find it quite ideological to think a teaching and learning world without textbooks. Internet is, clearly, the fashionable alternative. However, most students are not capable to select sources that are reliable and appropriate to their level – though it is necessary to teach them to do it, gradually. The model of the webquest tries to overcome this problem: the teacher selects the web material and structure the way in which the learners need to use it. This is interesting and I will use it. However, it makes again students depentent on the teachers. Two strong points of a good textbook in my opinion: 1) it is a concept reference for the teacher (crucial in a subject like Natural Science, were no one can be expert in every aspect 2) it is a tool that students can use independently.

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Interesting to get to know the specific language style of other disciplines. I have been in touch with legal writing when I bought my house in London, signed job contracts etc. but I didn’t know, for example, the reason for “false and untrue” or similar stuff. Not sure this particular bit will help me to teach CLIL, but it's nice to know.

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I do know scientific English from my studies and from teaching in UK. Now I am understanding a little bit more why it is that way. Maybe, a mid-term goal could be to get my students to produce lab reports by using “real” scientific reports written in English as a model. ALWAYS SEEN AND NEVER NOTICED that scientific nouns have German roots and the correspondent adjectives have Classical roots. I will definitely get the kids to notice this.

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Lots of stimuli from linguistic sessions

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Lots of stimuli from linguistic sessions

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The work on text is definitely interesting, though I am finding it a bit “too much”, considering I am not a Language teacher. First thought: working on linguistics is allowing me to formalize lots of “way of saying” that I tended to use automatically, without thinking. Ideally, this should happen to my students. However, is it realistic that this happen with such a partial exposure to the language?
Pre-modification stuff shocked me, anyway: maybe I have been getting things wrong all the time for 9 years?

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In the ICT module, they sponsor padlet. I have used padlet last year with two classes and students found it difficult to access. Moreover, now it is not unlimited free. Maybe this is a good chance to use Google Drive as tool for collaborative work? Padlet is a bit more visual: I like the way the final product looks. But for high school students a shared word or excel may allow for more complexity.

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I definitely understand that cognition can play an important role in CLIL: accessing the information, making sense of it and, particularly, showing your own understanding in a different language are challenging cognitive tasks. For culture, I am a bit more doubtful. Can my sole subject produce cultural awareness? Maybe it should be a common effort involving a number of subjects taught in different languages. Moreover: which “culture” are we talking about? British and American culture? Or the cosmopolitan culture that can be experienced in an international environment? Or the scientific culture shared within the Science community across the world using English as a medium?

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Teaching approaches in Languages and in Science

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Teaching approaches in Languages and in Science

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It’s interesting to compare/contrast different “schools” in glottodidactics with different approaches in Natural Science teaching. The “equivalent” of communication in language teaching could be laboratory experience in science teaching. In both cases, there is a different importance given to “practical work” and a different relationship between “theory” and “practice”. The idea that learners could interiorize grammar rules from just using the language (like in the UK approach, I am told) is similar to the idea that they could just “discover” or “work out for themselves” scientific laws from the experiments that they do. Both positions seem fascinating and utopian to me: some background theory is probably needed in most cases

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It’ official: I dislike learning about laws and policies in Italy as I did in the UK. And in Italy there is more of it, generally…

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What is the alternative to my “only English” approach that I have used so far? I could switch between Italian and English a bit more. Maybe using more English for informal chats? But maybe I need to switch prospective: it is more about them learning to speak/write about the subject in English and me modelling and facilitating this process.

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Different approaches to glottodidactics are giving me some new tools to interpret my own teaching in English. Some schools may actually appreciate what I have done so far, in CLIL and in Cambridge: walk in and do a lesson as you normally would, just in English

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I have taught scientific subjects in English for many years, so what do I want from this course? Probably my first goal is to learn how to bridge the gap between my Italian students and the contents delivered in English. I can see some potential controversy here: some think it is enough to expose students to as much English as you can, without worrying too much about whether they can understant. They have a point: I have also learnt a lot from "just" having to understand and making myself understood. Is there anything more to do rather than "just" teaching in English? I hope to get lots of new ideas from the course.