Conferences are back on the agenda, and I am ending the school year in The Hague for two days to attend one that has been in the pipeline for more than two years, the World CLIL Conference. CLIL, content and language integrated learning has been the main stay of my type of educational practice for the last twenty plus years. Yes, I’m an art teacher, but in the bilingual educational context that I work in, CLIL is my methodology, combining the teaching of art with the intensive and immersive use of a second language teaching (the use of English when teaching Dutch children art in my case).
That sounds quite simple, a different language of instruction during the lessons. It is of course that, I speak only English with the Dutch children I teach, and the language of the classroom is English. But good and slightly more complex CLIL teaching goes several steps further, and it is this that the conference this week is about, and what the consequences are of this approach.
I gave a workshop as part of the conference but have also dosed up on CLIL input that hopefully should give me ideas and angles to explore in my teaching next school year.
I don’t attend a great many conferences, certainly not in the last couple of years, but it is so good to escape the humdrum classroom life. These are the battery recharge moments that I’ve missed immensely. The chance to listen, hear new and different perspectives and simply just to reflect a bit on what we do and perhaps what we could be doing is something we don’t get the opportunity to do enough in educationland.
Particularly for those who attended my workshop during the conference, below there is a link to the PowerPoint that I made use of. It is not completely ready-made lesson material, but it is certainly enough of a reminder of the content we covered and offers the necessary basis material that may be of use to you.
Peter Sansom 