You become aware of the importance of language awareness when a first year student aged 5 asks you how do you know that his name is written on a paper just because he doesn't recognize any letter yet...

I am a POrtuguese-English teacher, this year have have the bilingual English-Portuguese teaching programme with the first year in my school. I have english, moldavian, chinese and russian students in the classroom.... 

If you allow these children to use their home language you transform their ability to access content material and you transform their ability to develop an identity of competence, and this means they are not condemned to use six months’ or a year of non-participation, because you allow them to contribute in a much fuller and much more cognitively demanding way.

I have language and procedure routines with my students: an organized notebook is important with very well identified sections, a language corner with the key words for the the lesson (I call them the magic words) which changes every class . All of them have an identity card so I can memorize their names and three cards that are put on the corner of their tables: "I need help"; "No problem" and "I have some doubts" so I can see when they are working, what they need.

Language competence is the base for communicate in a multicultural society . It's the key to open all doors of acknowledgment and integration in a real world

 

This year I am having my first CLIL experience with 3 classes from the first year.
 To help me understanding what CLIL is meant to be I am attending a course at the British Council , in Portugal. One of the most important things I am learning is that CLIL is not a language teaching class but a content class taught in English. Since is a 1st year and they are learning how to write in native language, I was afraid that this could be a problem for them, which has revealed as a non-problem, and this is being a great motivating experience!

 I m working with first years with Clil, so at the moment I think everything is an advantage for students, teachers and family. Everything is new for them, most of content are taught in English only few words in Portuguese. What I think is a difficulty is the preparation of classes , since I must simplify everything and choose thoroughly the words, the language, turning every content into games, songs, activities which takes us a long time to do so. I teach 3 classes first year and 3 classes 5th year.....so.... a lot of different work. When we teach CLIL in older ages / stages the difficulty becomes the technical vocabulary related to contents that can not be our main subject.  

So, I showed my learning objectives for the class and “played around” with key language: naming colours, asking names, asking for help to correct “possible” mistakes and here and then some Portuguese appeared, some English appeared, some gesture appeared, and communication went on! In the end, a song was sung and students repeated successfully what we had been practicing: colours, names and numbers till 10.

It was a simple lesson, with simple materials and simple ideas but during assessment we were aware of its effectiveness. Children participated and were motivated. This theme is being introduced as a Estudo do Meio content:

YEAR 1 ESTUDO DE MEIO 

BLOCK 1 ALL ABOUT YOU 

IDENTIFYING YOURSELF

 name(s), first name(s), surname(s)

YOUR LIKES AND PREFERENCES

colours (counting till 10)

 

I must work better on routines, (even though we had our “Hello” time in the beginning and “Goodbye song” in the end, with colours) and on displaying learning objectives

 

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