Bulgaria - FACT Journals Issue 35

CLIL for EAL at The International School of Belgrade 

It's a great privilege to visit another teacher's class, particularly when you are there to provide feedback and ideas. I'd firstly like to thank all of the colleagues who warmly welcomed me into their lessons at ISB. I learned a lot from you!
I was invited with my CLIL hat on to visit the school to provide ideas for teachers who are of late receiving more students with greater language needs in their classes. I saw a broad range of lessons from a lesson on the Model United Nations, another class on Voice in Drama, two maths lessons 'Expressing Solutions to Maths Problems' and 'Rules for Radicals', a design lesson where students write up their research plan for a project, and last but not least a literature lesson focusing on dystopian works. I take my hat off to these teachers and recognize too the quality of the students in their lessons. In each class I was placed with students who have the greatest needs for language support. I met young people who could speak very little English who managed to function thanks to translation applications. I met young people with minimal Englsh, but high subject knowledge finding their way through expressing themselves in English as a foreign language.
This collection of resources both summarises the lessons visited and offers ideas for providing learners with language support within lessons. 
If there is a conclusion to draw from the experience, it is this. The teachers and learners have developed strategies for coping in class in an admirable way. What they could usefully use is a resource like a 'language handbook' where both teachers and student can go for academic language presented in response to curriculum objectives. 
This collection offers a start to this process.

Please use and share this collection with your EAL and CLIL colleagues!

Best wishes
Keith
PS - I proofread and edit all the materials, and so any typos are entirely my responsibility!

Download FACT Journal 35