CHALLENGES

Teaching implies a high level of commitment and work. I believe being a teacher involves facing challenges every day. Personally, I consider that some important challenges I will have to deal with are the following:

• Students. Every class is different, which means that as a teacher I will have to take into account the number of students I have as well as the needs of each kid. This asks for an adjustment of every activity, every lesson and didactical sequence to reach every student.
• Planning. I strongly believe planning is an essential and one of the most important things a teacher must do to achieve a successful teaching. Elements such as setting a good timing, creating creative and inclusive activities, how to sequence them and all the topics to work on a didactic unit, thinking about hands-on materials to be used among other aspects.

And if those were not enough, extra difficulties or obstacles appear when implementing CLIL. In my opinion, some aspects that need to be considered and implemented when applying a CLIL methodology could be the ones below:

• Level of the L2 (foreign language) of the students. Every child is different and also is their proficiency in the L2. This is important when developing the lesson and all the elements of it, since the use of the language needs to be simple for those with a lower level but also demanding for those with a higher level.
• Topic and language. As previously mentioned, considering how to develop the topic and how to sequence it is important. However, when applying CLIL it is also really necessary to know which parts of the language linked to the topic have to be worked (vocabulary, structures, ...).
• Activities. They are always considered and they need to be planned consciously, but reflection is even more required when children are not using their mother tongue. Activities should promote the use of the L2 in a real context for a real purpose to achieve students’ production in that foreign language, Moreover, they need to be simple, easily understood, but also demanding, inviting to reflect about the content and the language. And this, leads to pose the following question: ‘When do we need to make kids speak in English?’. It is important to think when and how we want students to use the L2, consider if the mother tongue is going to be forbidden or if it is going to be allowed speaking in the mother tongue but answering simple words in English. This decision should be taken according to the level of proficiency of each student and the class general, so what we expect from each student and from all the class will be different every academic year.
• Scaffolding. The help students receive is also a challenge, since it is difficult to know which is the most appropriate one and do it well. It has to be a support to reflection but not the solution to a task. Of course, teachers also need to consider the use of this scaffolding: to understand the task, to explain the task or the information receive or to produce in the L2. So the scaffolding can go from flashcards with images and words to associate the meaning, to half sentences to produce a text or an explanation, etc.
• Assessment. And last but not least, how students are evaluated is essential to know what they have learnt. They need to be assessed along the process as in the ‘regular teaching’, but when applying CLIL not just content needs to be considered but also languages. The process in both is important to be measured. Personally, the main challenge I think I will face is ‘How can I know that students use L2 when working alone, by groups, etc…’. I believe it is something I will discover when putting in practice this methodology.