Webinars: Creating dynamic CLIL classes for primary learners

In this webinar, Griselda Beacon explores the world of CLIL in primary classrooms and identifies key aspects of its methodology that combine the inclusion of school subject topics, the development of students’ thinking skills and the learning of English.

She shares practical tips, insights, resources and activities for teachers to take back to their classrooms. She introduces collaborative CLIL activities that have a playful approach to learning to get students interested, are cognitively demanding to support learning to think, use graphic organisers to scaffold language learning, and engage students in performative tasks to encourage oral production. She links these activities with a variety of multimodal teaching materials (videos, content-based texts, picturebooks, realia) that appeal to modern-day learners.

You can watch the recording of the webinar here.

After the webinar, we recommend you complete this follow-up task to consolidate your learning.

The slides from the webinar are available here.

A ready-made lesson related to investigating insects for students aged 5-8 is available on our TeachingEnglish website, with a part 1 available here, and a part 2 available here.

To further develop your understanding of Bloom's taxonomy to your lesson planning, this page focuses on LOTS (lower-order thinking skills) and HOTS (higher-order thinking skills) to help you scaffold learning effectively. 

 A good CLIL plan combines elements of the 4 Cs: Content, Communication, Cognition and Culture. In this session Sarah Hilyard looks in detail at Communication to focus on how language is used to learn, while the language is being learnt.

She considers the different types of languages in CLIL, with learners actively applying basic communication skills, subject-specific language, academic language and peripheral language within a dual-focus classroom, as well as discussing the place of L1 in the learning process.

You can watch the recording here.

After the webinar, we recommend you complete this follow-up task to consolidate your learning.

The slides from the webinar are available here.

Our classes are becoming more diverse and as teachers, we want to create a safe environment for all of our learners. In this session, Julia Mena Dobson explores diversity within ourselves and our surroundings and encourages us to understand each learner’s unique background and needs.

We look at planning lessons considering varied learning styles, language levels and needs, and practical support strategies to make CLIL accessible to all. We also see simple ways to adapt and create inclusive materials that foster collaborative learning and ensure everyone feels valued, as well as different assessment options to offer equal opportunities for all learners to shine.

You can watch the recording here.

After the webinar, we recommend you complete this follow-up task to consolidate your learning.

The slides from the webinar are available here.

Assessing learners’ progress is a process that requires careful planning and implementation. Assessment can be even more challenging in a CLIL setting since this dual-focused approach promotes both content and language mastery. In this webinar Claudia Rey explores effective ways to embed assessment in our teaching practice in a CLIL context.

She starts off by looking at the power of setting and sharing learning objectives with learners to promote self assessment and how to incorporate successful practices to assess our learners’ progress for formative and summative purposes.

This session then gives participants the chance to develop assessment strategies that they can adapt for different classes at the primary school level.

You can watch the recording of the webinar here.

After the webinar, we recommend you complete this follow-up task to consolidate your learning.

The slides from the webinar are available here.

To further develop your understanding of assessment, watch the video clips and reflect on different types of assessment and their purpose, available on the TeachingEnglish website here.

You can watch the recording of the session here.

We recommend completing the follow-up task, which is available here, in order to consolidate your learning.

The webinar slides are also available here.

An example of a lesson plan on this theme is also available here.

 You can watch the recording of the session here.

We recommend completing the follow-up task, which is available here, in order to consolidate your learning.

The webinar slides are also available here.

Two examples of a lesson plans on this theme are also provided. The first focuses on the animal life cycle for students in Cycle 2 (aged 6-9), and is available here. The second is on volcanoes for students in Cycle 3 (aged 9-12) and is available here.

You can watch the recording of the session here.

We recommend completing the follow-up task, which is available here, in order to consolidate your learning.

The webinar slides are also available here.

An example of a lesson plan on this theme is also available here.

You can watch the recording of the session here.

We recommend completing the follow-up task in order to consolidate your learning. It is available here.

The webinar slides are also available here.

An example of a lesson plan on this theme is also provided here.