“S” for Skills

In all the subjects in the schools, the children have to develop very specific skills to consider that he has reached the established level, and CLIL is not less. However, somehow, CLIL should be considered a way to develop skills that support the development of the skills required in the rest of the subjects. For example, CLIL is a way of helping students to understand vocabulary of the world of rocks, which is a topic normally connected to “Science”. Indeed we are talking about different things, but if we do not have enough time to study rock´s vocabulary deeply, we must provide to the students help in a different way.

With these first knowledge, we can say that CLIL helps students to affront there difficulties of other subjects in a second language, but we ca not do it without connecting them with those subjects. This means that the same topic must be seen in at the same time in the two subjects. If we use the example that I have suggested before, we cannot work the topic of the rocks in “Science” and then two weeks later see it in CLIL. It must be approached at the same time; otherwise it will create a lot of confusion in the children.

Of course there are a lot of points that can help the children to learn better a foreign language or other topics, but the most important is the influence of parents. “Recent researches have shown that children benefit in many different ways when their parents are interested in and involved in their education.” (Brewster and Ellis, 1991) The problem is that is not easy to work with the parents, because you have to face their beliefs and worries, and sometimes they do not want to hear the truth. That is why “teachers need to be prepared and willing to take on these additional aspects of parent care as part of their day-to-day role.” (Brewster and Ellis, 1991) How? Teachers should be available to talk to parents about their children´s progress. Before talking with them, teachers must be prepared and sure about what they want to advice or talk about. For instance, a primary teacher that sees some characteristic aspects of hyperactivity on one of his students, first he must talk to the school psychologist and confirm that the suspicions are true or false before telling it to the parents.

Apart from preparing the class very carefully, there is another task for the teacher that is a little bit complicated. In all the classes including CLIL, it is obligatory to connect different skills to get to a new goal. Something connected with all the classes and with two important skills required is “Literacy”. “Literacy” connects reading and writing skills, both of them are needed for all the subjects and in the real life. How could we use “Literacy” correctly? “The most effective way to make the connection between reading and writing is to do it whenever the opportunity arises.” (Cloud, Genesee, Hamayan, 2009) We have to lookout for the situations that we can use to connect the two tasks, read something they have written, or write about something they have read… These is the idea of connecting not only the reading and writing, also many tasks and topics.

To conclude, in all the subjects a teacher must be trained sufficiently to provide a good learning process and make sure that the development of different skills is working. Their duty is to increase those skills or abilities which the students are good at and supporting them in their problems. Besides, society should be cornered about the important role of parents in the education of the children, without them it is impossible to create an appropriate learning environment.

References:

-     BREWSTER, J. AND ELLIS, G. (1991). The Primary English Teacher´s Guide. England: Pearson Education Limited.

-       CLOUD, N., GENESEE, F. AND HAMAYAN, E. (2009). Literacy Instructions for English Language Learners. United States of America: Heinemann.

 

Pre-reading and Pre-writing

The first process for children before reading or writing is Pre-reading and the pre-writing; these concepts are the moment before the children read and write. These two processes are essential because it prepares the students for the activities they will do during all their lives. When we are adults, reading and writing are actions that we do without problems, but if we don´t receive a good input from the school we could have many problems in the future.

Maybe this is easier if we train our children in the first language, but it´s more complicated if we are training the students in a second language. The main aim of learning a foreign language is that it should be attractive for parents easy for teachers and workable for children, and in another way, make the children be aware of other cultures. (Brewster and Ellis, 1991)

Obviously, the first process is pre-reading, because if we do not identify the signs of words or texts, the letters for instance, we are not able to write. So, how could we encourage learners in these topics? Well, we can have some points that could help us:

-          We must be a language model, explaining clearly and calm, giving examples correctly supported with actions and gestures, so that students can copy or repeat.

-     Is important to promote activities and opportunities where the children are available to read or develop their skills required for the language.

-            Adapt the material that we have according to the age of the children.

-           Avoid constant translation, only use the first language as a support.

-           Plan every lesson.

(Cloud, Genesee, Hamayan, 2009)

Something very important, that we should take into account is that the reading process is not separated to other areas. For instance, we can use music, art, creativity and other subjects joined to other skills to help learners to read with satisfaction. Moreover, an important point is that we must look for those learners that have more difficulties for learning another language, such as students with dyslexia or from other countries…

After the first process we have the pre-writing, which could start in the middle of the process of reading. Normally, writing is connected to thinking or having ideas, such as remembering choosing, selecting, ordering… When we talk about learning how to write we should focus on technical aspects, spelling, pencil control and hand-eye coordination, for instance. In the first stage, copying is a good way to practise handwriting and consolidate their understanding of new vocabulary, but never ask students at any level to write things they cannot say. In the second stage we can focus on sentences and short texts, which provide the opportunity of selecting and spelling correctly. (Brewster and Ellis, 1991)

A good activity for writing useful for all levels is to answer questions to a story or a piece of music they have heard before, working with students in a low level the teacher can read the story, and for higher level, they can read the story. Later, they have to answer some questions to see if they understood the whole story, or at least the main idea. They must write different types of texts because is essential for a successful development of the skills, that is why the teacher must create a lot of variety activities.

Teachers work as detectives, because part of their duty is to investigate the interests of each one of their students. This is a little bit difficult, but the pre-reading can help us to discover the likes of children. They can choose any kind of reading or writing, this means that the teacher should be able to give them freedom to explore their topics, if they want to read a comic or a poem or a little novel, depending in their age, they are allowed to read it, because the goal is to get used to the words and the letters.

Now I am going to put two activities for pre-reading and pre-writing forward. Obviously, we can inspire our activities from others, changing things, or adapting the same activity for another level. The first activity is connected with pre-reading, and we are going to use a Beatrix Potter´s tail:

              “Once upon a time there were four little Rabbits, and their names were—

                                                                                    Flopsy,

                                                                                        Mopsy,

                                                                                             Cotton-tail,

                                                                                                  and Peter.

They lived with their Mother in a sand-bank, underneath the root of a very big fir-tree…” (Beatrix Potter, 1989)

We provide parts of the tail mixed up, they have to read carefully all the fragments of the tail and classify them in order. After comparing with their mates the teacher tells the story with flash cards with the pictures of Beatrix Potter in order, during the tail the children will check their result, so the action of pre-reading is done, but we also connected it with culture.

 

                              

  

                                

Now let’s see an activity for pre-writing. This activity requires first a part of listening to a little son of a musical. They will also watch the video of the song. While they are listening they have to guess what happened before the song and what is going to happen after. They will write it and then read it to the rest of the class, it doesn’t matter if the story is the real one, they idea is to give them freedom to create their own story from that song.

This is the song they will hear.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqqSa9n2ZQk

Obviously, they cannot know the name of the film or the song, they only need to hear the music.

To conclude, the teachers are the ones who must prepare the children for the reading and writing actions. We can develop those skills if we take care of the facilities and difficulties that our children may have, and create or adapt activities for them. There are many ways to reach these goals, but one of the most effective is to let them to read and write what they like, that will create interest on them.

References:

-     BREWSTER, J. AND ELLIS, G. (1991). The Primary English Teacher´s Guide. England: Pearson Education Limited.

-       CLOUD, N., GENESEE, F. AND HAMAYAN, E. (2009). Literacy Instructions for English Language Learners. United States of America: Heinemann.

-              POTTER, B. (1989). Beatrix Potter. The Complete Tales. London: Penguin Group.