Once I know how does the CLIL method works, I want to look for some videos to watch how it is applied in a classroom. I found this interesting video in YouTube about a “Healthy Food” lesson and I would like to comment it.
First of all, the teacher open the lesson asking some questions for introduce the topic. Later, she tries to make children think with more questions like “which food do we need to eat less/more?” And what kind of benefits do each food apports us. The teacher uses the same structure for the hole lesson: she show some photos or drawings about something related with food and then she asked questions to children.
I think that the teacher didn’t take the completely advantages of a CLIL lesson.
First of all, the teacher talks every time and she don’t let children think about possibilities. I think that CLIL lessons should be more flexible and permit children develop their creative skills instead of asking them a lot of questions. For example, I would rather ask them to design in groups a healthy menu or maybe discuss the answers with the group of partners before answering.
I designed an activity for the topic “Healthy Food” with the aim of reviewing content knowledge and practising communication skills that could be interesting:
We need to look for pictures of different fruits and vegetables and then cut them out. Then, we distribute them (one to each child). They need to think about where does their vegetable or fruit come from, for example, an orange from a tree or a carrot from de earth. Children will be sitting in groups so they can ask others if they don’t know where does their fruit or vegetable come from, and also, talk about different facts of their pictures. Finally, each children stand up and explain to the rest of the class what they have discovered about their food.
