Aleksandra Zaparucha ia a geography and English teacher by profession, Aleksandra has been in the teaching and training business for over 30 years. The main areas of her interest include CLIL and Global Issues in an English classroom. Email: ola.zaparucha@gmail.com ,

info@clilmatters.com

A brief summary of the talk

As CLIL is my major area of interest, the decision what to talk about “From the Heart’ was simple and easy - it had to be CLIL-related. I decided to address one of the features of an effective CLIL lesson, be it ‘hard’ or ‘soft’, that is so-called 3 Dimensions of CLIL. These are the three elements CLIL teachers need to consider, namely the linguistic, cognitive and procedural challenges of a specific lesson. Two of these dimensions - content and language demands, were presented on the basis of a lesson built around the lava lamp experiment. It was a showcase of English as a vehicular language allowing learners to express their hypotheses, observations and conclusions, that is the academic language. In this process, they should be able to understand the concept of density.

How you felt before the conference

There were a number of challenges to deal with. The IH Bielsko Biała’s teacher training day format, 30 min-long sessions, forced me to think through the way of presenting the experiment itself. In the face-to-face training, these would be the participants conducting an experiment in groups. Here, it turned into a demonstration conducted in front of the camera. On top of that, the slides had to be very precise and concise. They included the language tasks transferred from the original Word document. I did not have any notes but I have ‘rehearsed’ the talk a few times by going over the presentation a few times.   

What your feelings were during the talk itself

The delivery of the presentation went smoothly. I have managed to conduct a science experiment in front of the camera without spilling anything over my laptop :).

Of course, it would have been so much nicer to have a live audience, where I would have a chance for an instant reaction of the participants to what was going on. For instance, I would be able to elicit their hypotheses, observations and conclusions. However, that is the format of the teaching/training now and the only thing we can do is to adapt as best as we can.

The end-of-talk Q and A session somehow made up for the challenges of the online environment. And the questions I received via the chat monitored by the event host were thought-provoking. They concerned the language objectives of such a ‘soft’ CLIL, content-based lesson. As a subject teacher myself, it is very easy for me to overlook the need for addressing the language objectives explicitly.         

Post-conference reflections

The IH Teacher Training Day was not my first online experience of a talk/webinar delivery. I would encourage everyone to take this challenge, as I could see the more I engaged in such events, the more relaxed I would become in front of the camera.  

Please check the CLIL for Primary Teachers course at Pilgrims website.

Please check the CLIL for Secondary Teachers course at Pilgrims website.