Lifelong Learning Programme

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Experiences

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TEACHERS EXPERIENCES FORM

Title of the Experience
CLIL unit vertebrates
Name of the teacher
Mª Reyes Llácer Pérez
Country where it took place
Spain
School typology
High Secondary School
Thematic Area
Biology
Experience typology
Teaching in class, Online Learning
Type of contact
Direct
Description of the Experience
To teach a subject in a foreign language class involves rethinking a change in the way of teaching:
- Language is used to learn as well as to communicate.
- It is the subject matter which determines the language needed to learn.
- A CLIL lesson is therefore not a language lesson neither is it a subject lesson transmitted in a foreign language.

The experience consists of designing a CLIL unit on vertebrates in which the basis of the characteristics of vertebrates allows its classification in the different groups.
As learning strategies teacher highlights the key vocabulary, explanations rely heavily on images, points lists are made, examples are provided and the information is summarized.
The activities developed in this unit combine the four language skills: listening, reading, speaking and writing. These activities include listening and labeling a drawing, a chart, parts of a process, filling a table ...
In this unit the following activities are made:
- Real and virtual dissection of a fish
- Playing a on line classification of vertebrates.
- Output to Bioparc, where students will be able to see different kinds of vertebrates.
- Game in the class to identify and classify vertebrates, which will allow them practicing vocabulary - Writing about an animal that is endangered

Both the design of activities and the class promote students to communicate in a foreign language promoting interaction among themselves and with the teacher.

Comments on this Teachers Experience

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Date: 2014.11.09

Posted by Irena Šuchterova (Slovakia)

• I appreciate the use of teaching tools to help students to be better oriented in a given area. They will better remember what they have seen rather than what they have heard; by active participation more knowledge will remain in the students’ minds.
• I think that observation and active experiential learning are prerequisite for increase of the interest in science subjects.
• I have similar experience. Students work better when they have opportunity to discover certain facts, phenomena and laws of nature themselves. If they not just receive the information from teacher, but they discover it by their own experience.
• I appreciate the increasing linguistic competence within the project CLIL, at our school we are working on subjects in a foreign language, my daughter at elementary school has similarly set teaching of biology - part of the lesson is in English or just important terms are in the English. For students it is a possibility for better orientation also in technical language, not only in the current language.
• I could use the game during my lessons, but I would not be able to practically improve pupils' language competences because I do not know foreign language.

Date: 2014.11.06

Posted by Amparo Ponce (Spain)

I use CLIL units for teaching biology in English, i think that CLIL it's a very good tool for teaching, not only for teaching different subjects in different languages even for teaching in your language.
CLIL units are really interactive and students learn new concepts using them in a different way
I use videos, games, descriptions..
Using CLIL units is prossible promote students to communicate in a foreign language and to promote interaction among themselves and with the teacher.

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