The following infographic shows the challenges that I needed to consider in my CLIL Unit Plan. On the one hand, the titles which are in bold are the main challenges or problems that I will have to face. On the other hand, the post-its, images or text next to this bold titles are the possible solutions that I found.
Create a real Unit Plan, for me, is a challenge but apply it is a bigger one. Mainly, to create the teaching sequence I will have to face three challenges: the grouping, the timing and the materials. From my point of view these three factors are the challenging ones.
Firstly, about grouping I would like to provide an important data which is the number of students that I have in class. In the 6th A grade from les Lisses school there are twenty-nine students per class. That fact allow us to say that the range of students per class is quite big, taking into account that the average is twenty-five students. This big number of learners will affect significantly my teaching unit.
In the second place there is the number of sessions or timing. My teaching sequence is thought to be done in eight sessions more or less, that means the number of sessions is limited as well as the timing for each session. This is difficult at some point because you have to concentrate all your ideas in a few lessons, that means you must be concrete and simple. Concrete because you can not do many things in one hour and simple because if the project or you idea is too complex it is impossible to fit in so few sessions.
Finally and the third challenge are the materials. In les Lisses school we don’t have laptops for each student so that’s an issue that I will have to solve, as I am sure I will use the laptops in my Unit Plan. Possible solutions could be the use of the computer room (although if they have to work by groups is not the best solution as the distribution of the computers are in lines and students can’t talk among them neither share what they found) or the assignment of roles to the group of students and only the technician be the one in church of searching information, etc.
In my opinion, related to the CLIL methodology there are basically, two issues or challenges. The first one is the English level of the students, which is quite low. In other words, that means my students will need lots of scaffolding to develop the project that I am going to carry on. Furthermore, apart from giving them scaffoldings I will try to adapt my activities language to their level. I think most of the difficult parts are the choice of the scaffoldings and language for the tasks. To solve these problem what I am going to do is the following:
Secondly, and the last topic is the assessment. If I want to work in base groups most of the time I think it will be difficult to assess. Just observing is not enough, so I will use surveys at the beginning and end of the project to apply self assessment. Also I want to do peer assessment through rubrics made by my own students at the beginning of the project. Finally I will also give to them my feedback based on the observations done while the project takes place and the final product that the students create.
If you click this link, you will be able to see the website that I cretaed for the students, in order to follow the project and recieve the intructions of each session.
Global Teacher Prize supports and promotes the role of teachers as facilitators, as well as the following teaching skills: creativity, critical thinking, communication and collaboation. Both elements, the tecaher role and the four Cs, are present in my Unit Plan.