I’ve never reflected about the different stages of being bilingual: French monolingual; French dominant bilingual; balanced bilingual; other language dominant bilingual; other language dominant: emergent bilingual.

The goals of multilingual pedagogies are the following: develop a critical awareness of plurilingualism (individual, community, society); value, preserve, develop the home language and encourage awareness of language(s); use languages in meaningful way and as a social and cultural resource, scaffold and support academic tasks and school language development.

How to start using other languages in the classroom: allow, encourage, enable. First, allow pupils to use additional languages in class. Second, support, encourage and celebrate the use of additional languages for learning and creative expression; finally, plan teaching learning and resources to support cognitive and creative engagement in multiple languages. 

I appreciated the really examples a lot: language portfolios; language passports (how many languages they know and where they use them); comparing writing systems, different ways of telling a story to develop metalinguistic awareness; comparing languages to enable pupils to notice differences; creative multilingual projects (writing a story in two languages, multilingual poems); charting home languages; sharing books and newspapers with children; mind maps with all the languages in the classroom; writing a recipe in 2 languages; metaphors in different languages (matching game); Maths: how many sides has the figure? The answers are in different languages.

Translanguaging as a pedagogy, as communicative practice and as a pedagogical approach. The first language is a “stepping stone.” “We can learn about the languages and cultures of the others in class.” “I feel free when I can use my mother tongue.” “We are a mini googletranslate for the teacher.”

As teacher you can be assimilative, supportive or inclusive. You can use home languages as a vehicle or support for learning. Additional languages not just one element but a central part of the lesson. Pupils grouped in mixed language groups.

I am involved in a CLIL project in two primary schools in Portugal: I’ve to teach English in Artistic Expression lessons. I am a beginner in CLIL activities because I’ve started two weeks ago. I’ve already understood the theoretical principles: a CLIL lesson is not a language class but a subject class taught in a certain language; while students are learning about the subject matter, they are also learning a new language alongside it, so they also acquire linguistic competence in that language while learning the subject; CLIL can boost your students' motivation, as they learn a foreign language while being taught a specific subject. I’m still working on it and trying to create activities where my students can learn English without noticing. To start, I’ve focused on giving instructions. I am thinking about teaching songs with some words in English; giving instructions about origami techniques; theater plays with some lines in English. In the video, I liked the idea of video dictation and pointilism as a painting technique.

I think that a CLIL approach is very challenging and demanding for teachers because we need to find strategies, digital tools, visual literacies to access the curriculum. If done well, it can offer students enormous benefits and the curriculum can become more motivating.

Now we would like you to reflect on a possible CLIL activity to do with your students,or an activity that you have already tried out.

I work in a rural area and the primary school decided to work on a project entitled “The Arouquesa Race” because the Arouquesa cow meat has a unique taste. These animals move slowly, are friendly and get easily frightened. Its robustness is unusual, having into account the food supplies they have through the mountain slopes. As Professor Coyle said: “the content must lead the way”. Now I must teach English while teaching Artistic Expressions related to the topic. I know that communication is a key term and I have to choose something quite visual that I can demonstrate. First, I am going to introduce the parts of the body of the cow: tail, horns, snout, eyes, ears, legs, body, teats. Then, I’m going to hand out a worksheet and ask children to color the animal in brown because this is a special feature of the “Arouquesa race”. I will ask them to color the animal labels using the same color as for the animal. Then they will glue them on the appropriate rectangles 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Finally, I will review the parts of the body: What part of the body is number 1? And number 3? I think it will be motivating and interesting.

What does language awareness mean to you, in your context?

How would you bridge formal and informal learning in your language class?

What does CLIL mean to you?

What are your concerns about multilingualism? How are you tackling them?

What would you suggest to a colleague who wants to personalise language learning pathways?

I am Portuguese, but when I was born my parents were immigrants in France. I came to Portugal when I was 5 years old. I knew some vocabulary by then. My parents were Portuguese and we spoke Portuguese at home. I don’t remember having activities in kindergarten and primary school promoting the use of the French language.

Last year I had a Chinese student and I have never brought his home language to the classroom! Shame on me! Now I know I should!

I liked the final message a lot: “Il ne faut pas hésiter, il ne faut pas avoir peur de fair ces activités”.

eTwinning is all about connection and meeting people. Being international makes it a diverse experience, you become more interactive with other students. It’s a combined community of teachers, students, headmaster, the media team, … When you talk with people outside, you become more self-confident, it changes my ability to learn in different ways. Words describing the project: social, media, learn, fun, enjoyable, interesting, communication, sharing, enjoyment, online collaboration, sharing the classroom activities, projects, culture, online, virtual, collaborative. eTwinning is being part of a group which is bigger than the school!

Then I decided to find partners for the eTwinning project "e-friend exchange".

Choose the EEL project that you liked the most and add the link to the project in the Padlet below, explaining why you like this project and why you think this project could benefit your students.

http://ec.europa.eu/education/initiatives/label/label_public/index.cfm?fuseaction=project_award&award_id=9177

I think Karaoke is a very interesting language learning tool. This entertainment device is very popular and students become active and enjoy language by singing. It develops students’ language skills (speaking, listening, reading and writing), helps to gain self-confidence and increases students' motivation.