1. EAS CLIL alla scuola primaria:
introduzione
DI MARZIA VACCHELLI
ISTITUTO MAZZARELLO
CINISELLO BALSAMO 4 SETTEMBRE 2014
4 SETTEMBRE 2014

2. Social relationships and meaningful activity
 “Learning is not an end, but means to building
social relationships and engaging in meaningful
activity. What does this mean for our schools?
 If we are to be a nation of lifelong learners, school
has to become a place where students take charge of
their learning for life – where they become eager
constructors of knowledge, and view the entire
world around them as a rich and welcome
resource.»
 (Eckert, Goldman & Wenger 1997).

3. It is as learner we become educators!
 “Teachers need to act as themselves – as adults and thus
as doorways into the adult world – rather than
constantly acting like teachers, that is as representatives
of the institution and upholders of curricular demands,
with an identity defined by an institutional role.
 They should act as members end engage in the learning
that membership entails, and open forms of mutual
engagement that can become an invitation to
participation – it is as learners we become educators! “
(Wenger, E. ,Communities of Practice, ‘Learning,
Meaning and Identity’, Cambridge University Press.
1998).

5. Calendar Time

6. Users and designers
 Children can participate in a design process either as
user or as designers. As users children can contribute
on different aspects:
 Children are good at giving unreserved criticism to
something existing (e.g. a prototype).
 Children can give feedback on both contents (what is
fun?) and structure (what is motivating?).
 Children can evaluate interactivity and different
designs.
 (Pedersen 2001).

8. European dimension
 Ogni cittadino dell’Unione Europea dovrebbe saper
usare in modo funzionale la sua madre lingua e
almeno DUE lingue parlate all’interno della UE.
 Si leggano le reazioni del 10 giugno 2014 alla
decisione di Matteo Renzi di lasciare in Italiano e in
Inglese la pagina web ufficiale della UE dopo il 1
luglio (inizio della presidenza italiana):
 http://www.euractiv.com/sections/languages-culture/
italian-presidency-website-will-not-be-french-
or-german-302693#comment-1

9. Free lessons during the holidays?
 From: “Commission looks at language skills
to boost EU 'prosperity”
http://www.euractiv.com/culture/commission-looks-language-
skills-boost-eu-prosperity/article-175337
 In France, Education Minister Xavier Darcos
recently unveiled plans to offer free English lessons
to students during school holidays, describing failure
to speak the language fluently as a handicap in
today's world (EurActiv 04/09/08).


10. Language Learning as a lifelong process
 Language learning is a LIFELONG process, the
communication stresses, calling on vocational and
adult education to do more to promote it. It also says
more effort should be made to offer a wider variety of
languages, and calls for more teacher exchanges to
take place to enhance their own fluency.
 The text will also highlight the potential to better
exploit EU languages abroad and non-EU languages
within the bloc itself.

11. Language diversity as « a source of wealth»
 Describing language diversity as "a source of
wealth" for Europe, EU Multilingualism
Commissioner Leonard Orban told a public
hearing on 10 September that "languages are the
most effective tool to promote intercultural
dialogue". Outlining the case for language learning,
he warned that mutual incomprehension can act as
"a barrier to exchange between cultures" and "lead to
misunderstanding and conflict".

12. 60 % EU students learn two foreign languages
 http://www.euractiv.com/culture/eu-students-learn-
foreign-langua-news-222667
Most EU students learn two foreign languages:
Study (28.09.2009)
 60% of students in upper secondary education
study two or more foreign languages, according to
figures published last week by EU statistical office
Eurostat.
 6%, however, do not learn any foreign language at
all, the data revealed, while a third of students only
learn one.

13. 2007: figures on language skills in Europe
 The latest figures on language skills in Europe, which
relate to 2007, were published by EU statistical office
Eurostat last week (24 September) ahead of European
Languages Day, which was celebrated across the
continent on Saturday (26 September).
 Secondary schools in the Czech Republic, Luxembourg,
the Netherlands and Finland all reported that 100% of
their students learn two or more foreign languages, with
Slovenia and Slovakia (both 98%) and Estonia (97%)
following close behind.
 .

14. One foreign language
 The highest proportions of students studying one
foreign language are to be found
 in Greece (92%),
 Italy (74%),
 Ireland (73%),
 Spain (68%)
 and Malta (60%).

15. English dominant
English dominant
 English is the most studied language in all member
states for which data were available, except for
Luxembourg, where English, French and German
have equal standing, and the UK and Ireland, where
French is most popular

16. Starting early…..
 Iniziando presto, alla scuola materna o alla scuola
primaria con la bilingual education si può
raggiungere l’obiettivo lanciato dall’Unione Europea:

17. Definizione di Bilingual Education
« Any system of school education in
which, at a given
moment in time and for a varying
amount of time simultaneously or
consecutively, instruction is planned
and given in at least two languages”.
(Hamers and Blanc, Bilinguality and Bilingualism, 2nd ed. New York,
Cambridge University Press,2000)

18. Dialogical
 la bilingual education dovrebbe quindi essere
dialogica,
Significando cioè che entrambi, docenti e learners
usano” two or more languages” in classe per scopi
comunicativi.

19. Productive language and language reception
 “However, the quantity of productive
language in each of the languages used by
the pupils may differ from the quantity of
language reception, which is accordingly the
quantity of language input in each of the
languages offered by the teacher”
( Daniela Elsner, Jörg-U.Keßler, Bilingual Education in Primary School,
Narr Studienbücher, Narr Verlag, Tübingen, 2013, page 2)

20. Immersion programmes
 Negli immersion settings la maggior parte delle
discipline (almeno più del 50 %) sono insegnate
nella target language al fine di provvedere a un vero
e proprio ‘language bath‘ come suggerisce il termine.
L’idea dietro questi programmi era ed “ to immerse”
completamente in un’altra lingua, mentre lo
sviluppo della prima lingua è supportato
costantemente (e. g. Martin 2012: 38).
 Buoni esempi sono :
 i French immersion programmes in Canada,
 or Swedish immersion programmes in Finlandia.

21. Diffusione della metodologia CLIL
 La metodologia CLIL si è diffusa progressivamente
sempre di più in Europa sia a livello di scuola
primaria che secondaria (cf. Coyle et al. 2010, Marsh
& Meyer 2012, Egger & Lechner 2012).
 Nell’ambito di questo quadro, più del 50 % delle
discipline sono insegnate nella lingua target mentre
l’altra metà è proposta in prima lingua.

22. Ore aggiuntive per le Istruzioni
Parallelamente, sono aggiunte lezioni di lingua
straniera agli studenti, e
molto spesso
Ore aggiuntive
di istruzioni in lingua straniera
precedono
I programmi CLIL.

23. The most pending questions about
Bilingual Education at Primary Level
The most pending questions about bilingual education
at primary level deal with the following aspects:
 What would be the benefit of bilingual education for
content matter?
 How can bilingual education cater for the needs of
the specific subject content rather than just serve as
additional language input?

24. Pending Questions II
 Which approach(es) to bilingual education are most
promising in primary
 school settings?
 How can bilingual content classes and subject matter
be evaluated and
 assessed?

25. Pending Questions III
 Do primary teachers (both modern language teachers as
well as content
 teachers) need a specific additional qualification to teach
bilingually?
 Could bilingual education enhance both language and
content learning or
 would it rather water down one of those or even both
areas?
 Are bilingual educational settings appropriate for
learners with migration
 backgrounds or would such settings rather impede their
learning of the
 majority language?

26. The 4Cs-Framework (Coyle)
 The 4Cs-Framework (Coyle, 1999, 2006) offers a
sound theoretical and methodological foundation
 for planning CLIL lessons
 and constructing materials
 because of its integrative nature.
 It is built on the following principles:
Content, Cognition, Communication, Culture.
 (see Coyle, 2006: 9-10).

27. Content
Content:
 Content matter is not only about acquiring
knowledge and skills, it is about
 the learners creating their own knowledge
 and understanding and developing skills
(personalized learning);

28. Cognition
Cognition:
 Content is related to learning and thinking
(cognition). To enable the
 learners to create their own interpretation of
content, it must be analysed for its
 linguistic demands; thinking processes (cognition)
need to be analysed in terms of
 their linguistic demands;

29. Communication
Communication:
 language needs to be learned which is related to the
learning context,
 learning through that language, reconstructing the
content and its related cognitive
 processes. This language needs to be transparent and
accessible; interaction in the
 learning context is fundamental to learning. This has
implications when the learning
 context operates through the medium of a foreign
language;

30. Culture
Culture:
 the relationship between cultures and languages is
complex.
 Intercultural awareness is fundamental to CLIL.
 Its rightful place is at the core of CLIL

31. A new paradigm
 Embracing the CLIL approach does not
automatically lead to successful teaching and
learning.
 To truly realize the added value of CLIL,
 teachers need to embrace a new paradigm of
teaching and learning
 and they need tools and templates
 that help them plan their lessons
 and create/adapt their materials.

32. Teacher Training
 The CLIL-Pyramid is based on the 4Cs-Framework
and was developed
 as an integrative planning tool
 for material writers and lesson planners.
 It has been successfully used in both
 pre-
 and in-service teacher training courses
 in Germany and across Europe.2

33. CLIL - Pyramid

34. Quality Principles (Dialnets)
 The following quality principles and strategies are based
on the latest insights from
 CLIL research,
 second language acquisition (SLA),
 teaching methodology,
 Cognitive psychology,
 extensive classroom observation in several countries,
 as well as a critical refl ection of the author’s personal
experience as a CLIL teacher, teacher trainer and
materials writer. (Dialnets- Towards Quality CLIL)

35. 1. Rich Input
 Strategy No. 1: rich Input
 Meaningful, challenging and authentic. Those should be
the main criteria for selecting appropriate classroom
materials.
 Video clips, flash-animations, web-quests, pod-casts or
other interactive materials on
 English websites combine motivating and illustrative
materials with authentic language
 input. They constitute a rich source for designing
challenging tasks that foster creative
 thinking and create opportunities for meaningful
language output.

36. 2. Scaffolding Learning
 Strategy No. 2: Scaffolding Learning
 To make sure that students successfully deal with
authentic materials and that as much
 input as possible can become intake, it is essential
for students to receive ample support.
 They need scaffolding3 to help them cope with
language input of all sorts.
 The quantity and intensity of scaffolding can be
reduced as students’ language skills advance.

37. 3. Rich interaction and pushed output
 Strategy No. 3: rich interaction and pushed output
 Long’s Interaction Hypothesis proposes that
language acquisition is strongly facilitated
 by the use of the target language in interaction. Long
suggests that feedback obtained
 during conversational interaction promotes
interlanguage development because
 interaction «connects input, internal learner
capacities, particularly selective attention,
 and output in productive ways» (Long 1996: 451-2).

38. 4. Adding the Intercultural Dimension
 Strategy No. 4: Adding the (Inter-)cultural Dimension
 Grimalda recently examined the degree of interaction among
individuals in the process of globalization (Grimalda, 2006).
Preliminary results indicate that people’s willingness to
cooperate significantly increases the better they know each
other.
 This means that students need to learn about other countries.
However, factual knowledge about other countries and
cultures is not enough for successful intercultural
communication; neither are foreign language skills alone.
 Cultures differ in many aspects including view of self,
perceptions of time, and verbal and non-verbal
communication styles, which need to be taken into account
also.

39. Higher Order Thinking
 Strategy No. 5: Make it H.O.T.
 CLIL Core Elements
 • Input
 - authentic, meaningful & challenging
 • Tasks
 - higher oder thinking
 - student interaction
 - authentic communication
 - subject specifi c study skills
 • Output
 - cross-cultural communication
 - fluency, accuracy, complexity
 Scaffolding

40. HOTS (Higher order thinking skills)
 Higher-order thinking, known as higher order
thinking skills (HOTS), is a concept of education reform
based on learning taxonomies (such as Bloom's Taxonomy).
The idea is that some types of learning require more cognitive
processing than others, but also have more generalized
benefits. In Bloom's taxonomy, for example, skills involving
analysis, evaluation and synthesis (creation of new
knowledge) are thought to be of a higher order, requiring
different learning and teaching methods, than the learning of
facts and concepts. Higher order thinking involves the
learning of complex judgemental skills such as critical
thinking and problem solving. Higher order thinking is more
difficult to learn or teach but also more valuable because such
skills are more likely to be usable in novel situations (i.e.,
situations other than those in which the skill was learned).

41. 6. Sustainable learning
 Strategy No. 6: sustainable learning
 «Julia, could you please sum up the main points of last
week’s lesson?«
 «No, I can’t. You see, first we were doing stuff on the
internet and then there were only presentations
 and we didn’t write anything down. So there was
nothing to start with to prepare for today’s lesson.»
 Such encounters are not uncommon and this example
serves to illustrate what is meant by sustainable learning:
we have to make sure that what we teach in class is
taught in a way that new knowledge becomes deeply
rooted in our students’ long-term memory.

42. Sustainable learning
 Passive knowledge has to be turned into active
knowledge. Competent learners are those who can
deliberately retrieve knowledge and apply it to solve
problems or complete tasks. Ideally, many of their
sub-skills have become highly automatized through
meaningful practice and they are able to display the
accurate and spontaneous use of their knowledge.
 In CLIL, sustainable teaching and learning is of great
importance since teachers have
 to facilitate both the learning of the specific content
and the learning/acquisition of a foreign language.

43. Sustainable learning
 To make learning more sustainable in the CLIL
classroom teachers should:
 – create connections with students’ attitudes,
experience and knowledge.
 – make the learning process transparent and provide
clear structuring (e.g. by using advance organizers).
 – make sure that results of group work are shared
with all students of the class (through posters, blogs,
learning diaries, websites etc.).

44. Definition of «Advance Organizer»
 The advance organizer model has three phases of activity:
 Phase I : Clarify the aimes of the lesson
 Presentation of the advance organizer
 Prompting awareness of relevant knowledge
 Phase II : Presentation of the learning task or learning material
 Make organization and logical order of learning material explicit
 Phase III : Integrative reconciliation and active reception learning (e.g. the teacher
can ask learners to make summaries, to point our differences, to relate new
examples with the organizer).
 Elicit critical approach to subject matter (have students think about contraditions or
implicit inferences in the learning material or previous knowledge)
 The simple principles behind advance organizers are that:
 Most general ideas should be presented first in an organized way (not just a
summary) and then progressively differentiated.
 Following instructional materials should integrate new concepts with previously
presented information and with an overall organization.

45. Example of Advance Organizer

46. Inizio precoce, input alto, continuità, Menuk
 früher Beginn
 qualitativ hochwertiger (Sprach-)Input
 häufiger, regelmäßiger Gebrauch der fremden Sprache
 Kontinuität
 Die Sprache, in seinem Beispiel Englisch, dient nur als
Medium um Sachfachinhalte (Mathematik, MeNuK =
Fächerverbund Mensch Natur und Kultur,
und weitere Fächer) zu transportieren.
 (prof. Piske, Fremdsprachliches Sachfachlernen in
Kindergarten und Grundschule“ ,Weingarten,
28./29.09.07)

47. Mathematics
 http://www.cimt.plymouth.ac.uk/projects/mepres/p
rimary/default.htm
- Syllabus completo di piani di lavoro,
- esercizi,
- soluzioni degli esercizi,
- fogli di lavoro
(Dal primo al sesto anno scolare)

48. Indians: Geography, dance, music, theory,arts
 http://www.narr.de/narr-studienbuecher/bilingual-education
 http://www.narr.de/download/narr_studienbueche
r/bilingual_education/teaching_indians_lessonplan
.pdf
 http://www.narr.de/download/narr_studienbueche
r/bilingual_education/teaching_indians_teachers_
manual.pdf

49. Piani di lavoro del Nordrhein-Westfalen
 http://www.standardsicherung.schulministerium.nr
w.de/lehrplaene/upload/klp_gs/LP_GS_2008.pdf

50. Assessment: from the lesson plane to the rating
scale
 http://www.ph-weingarten.de/englisch/Studium-und-
Lehre/CLIL_Unterrichtsmaterialien.php?navanchor
=1010078
 http://clil-network.uta.fi/index.php?id=8
 http://www.alsdgc.ro/userfiles/2827-10627-1-
PB.pdf
(Assessing criteria and rating scales 93-94-95?

51. Quadro di riferimento Lingue
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_European_
Framework_of_Reference_for_Languages
 http://www.oph.fi/english/page.asp?path=447,2759
8,37840

52. ESL and Digital Portfolio Work
 ESL - Effective methodology needs to strike a
 balance between teacher-centered communication
and cooperative student-centered activities
 – promote autonomous learning and introduce
DIGITAL PORTFOLIO WORK.
 – adopt a translanguaging approach
(Creese/Blackledge 2010) to multilingualism by
making strategic use of the L1 to support the learning
process. Paraphrasing games like Taboo where
students are asked to sum up the main objectives of a
lesson without

53. Holistic Methodology
 To unlock the inherent potential of CLIL, a holistic
methodology is needed that
 transcends the traditional dualism between content and
language teaching. The shift
 from knowledge transmission to knowledge creation in
multilingual settings requires students to be skilled in
not only assimilating and understanding new knowledge
in their first language, but also in using other languages
to construct meaning (Coyle/Hood/Marsh, 2010, 153).
 To realize ‘life-shaping’ potential and to prepare their
students for the challenges of a globalized world,
teachers should focus on:

54. Cosmopolitan identity and genuine curiosity
 developing the values... of young people’s character;
emphasizing emotional as well as cognitive
learning;
 building commitments to group life... not just short-term
teamwork;
 cultivating a cosmopolitan identity which shows
tolerance of race and gender differences,
 genuine curiosity towards and willingness to learn
from other cultures, and responsibility towards
excluded groups. (Hargreaves, 2003, xix)

55. The 4Cs- Framework and the CLIL-Pyramid
 The 4Cs-Framework offers a sound pedagogical and
methodological base for truly sustainable CLIL teaching and
learning.
 The quality principles are intended to help CLIL-teachers
enrich their lessons and materials while the CLIL-Pyramid
offers a proven sequence to incorporate those principles in
their CLIL units.
 The true potential of the CLIL-Pyramid, however, is in the
support it provides to establish and maintain connections
between different subjects/topics/units
 and by making explicit the study skills and literacies which
might drastically change
 the way we think about curriculum planning and the way we
structure classroom learning in the future.

56. Transformative education
“ Education, in its deepest sense and at whatever age it
takes place, concerns the opening of identities –
exploring new ways of being that lie beyond our
current state. Whereas training aims to create an
inbound trajectory targeted at competence in a
specific practice, education must strive to open new
dimensions for the negotiation of the self. It places
students on an outbound trajectory toward a broad
field of possible identities. Education is not merely
formative – it is transformative.”
 (Wenger 1998:263).

57. Mutuality
“In the life-giving power of mutuality lies the miracle of
parenthood, the essence of apprenticeship, the secret to the
generational encounter, the key to the creation of
connections across boundaries of practice: a fragile bridge
across the abyss, a slight breach of the law, a small gift of
undeserved trust – it is almost a theorem of love that we
can open our practices and communities to others
(newcomers, outsiders), invite them into our own identities
of participation, let them be what they are not, and thus
start what cannot be started.”
(Wenger 1998:277)