Learning through Languages UK and the Centre for Language Research at Aston are pleased to announce the launch of « CLIL Mondays », the second Monday of each month from 4.30 to 5.30. This series of online talks is aimed at teachers at primary, secondary and tertiary levels who have an interest in Content and Language Integrated Learning. CLIL Mondays combine short 30-min talks on aspects of CLIL with Q&A time. From Spring 2021, one session per term will be open to practitioners for sharing of good practice, you are warmly invited to come and present your CLIL work…

Recordings and resources linked to the CLIL Mondays Talks can be found in the Resources > Talks section of the website.

CLIL Mondays programme 22-23

The talks are held on MS TEAMS between 4.30 and 5.30 pm (UK time). A meeting link will be sent to all the people enrolled through Eventbrite.

Monday 26^th September 2022 (4.30-5.30)

• Dr Peeter Mehisto (UCL, Institute of Education)
• Equity and High Performance: Lessons from Estonia’s education
• Estonia is Europe’s top performer on PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment). How was that accomplished, when that was never the goal? This talk unpacks how Estonia, despite high levels of poverty, has steadily improved student performance on PISA, surpassing Finland in all tested domains. Moreover, Estonia has half the number of low-performers when compared to other European countries. It also has a higher than average percentage of high-performers coming from families in economic need. The talk uncovers reforms, mistakes and lessons learnt that have been harnessed to create a high-performing, high-equity education system. This includes social and education policies for giving children a good start in life. Policies fostering equity, inclusion, learner autonomy, as well as school teacher and principal professionalism, autonomy and responsibility are drivers of change. Innovative voluntary formative assessment systems that contribute to student and teacher learning are detailed. The talk also unearths how easy access to a wide range of data such as perceptions of well-being, autonomy and connectedness, in addition to examination results, builds internal and external accountability, and contributes to stakeholder collective efficacy.
• Link to the book:https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/edit/10.4324/9781003255543/lessons-estonia-education-success-story-peeter-mehisto-maie-kitsing

Monday 10^th October 2022 (4.30-5.30)

• Bring and Share Best Practice Event
  • Tetyana Myronenko & Lesia Dobrovolska (V.O.Sukhomlynskyi National University of Mykolaiv (Ukraine): “Fragments of the Sky”, BA History students
    • The presentation shows positive results of a CLIL implementation at MNU for BA students – future teachers of History that is supported by good results in the Summative Assessment. The Lesson that will be presented familiarizes learners with the history of ancient culture, the origin of meteorites, their significance and meaning for a particular historical period. It also helps students to learn terms and phrases, enlarge their vocabulary in L2, and practice their speaking skills according to the topic.
  • Letizia Cinganotto (National Institute for Documentation, Innovation, Educational Research – INDIRE), Italy – A survey of language learning/teaching with an overview of activities in Italy during the COVID-19 pandemic
    • The presentation will show the main results from a survey launched by INDIRE (National Institute for Documentation, Innovation, Educational Research) with the support of the Italian Ministry of Education and the European Commission and addressed to language and CLIL teachers during the pandemic.
    • The report is collected in a volume which is freely downloadable from the following link: https://www.indire.it/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Report-Survey-on-languages-13.02.2022.pdf

Monday 14^th November 2022 (4.30-5.30)

• Liudmyla Babiy, Olha Datskiv & Iryna Zadorozhna (Ternopil Volodymyr Hnatiuk National Pedagogical University)
•  CLIL in Ukraine
  • Iryna Zadorozhna (Ternopil National Pedagogical University, Ternopil, Ukraine) & Associate Prof. Olha Datskiv (Ternopil National Pedagogical University, Ternopil, Ukraine) – ‘CLIL lessons at the New Ukrainian School. 5th form continues the reform’
  • European schools adopted CLIL to promote multilingualism and internationalization. Ukrainian teachers are looking into the possibility to use CLIL potential to increase the secondary school students’ level of foreign language competence. This session will address the implementation of the New Ukrainian School reform in the fifth form of secondary schools, the need for quality materials for CLIL lessons, and an attempt to create a textbook for the fifth form which would further promote CLIL in Ukraine.

• • Associate Prof. Liudmyla Babii (Ternopil National Pedagogical University, Ternopil, Ukraine) – ‘Pre-service CLIL teacher training for the New Ukrainian School’
  • The implementation of an Introduction CLIL course as a part of MultiEd project at Ukrainian universities brought about changes to the curriculum and opened up new opportunities for students. Having conducted this course for undergraduate students of a pedagogical university, we have observed their great involvement and interest as well as got plenty of positive feedbacks. This session will address the issues of CLIL course development and implementation in university curriculum and discuss the students’ perspective of gaining experience in using CLIL approach in teaching.

Monday 12^th December 2022 (1.00-2.00p.m.)

• Dr Yuen Yi LO (Faculty of Education, University of Hong Kong)
• CLIL-ising EMI: Implications for teacher professional development
• English medium instruction (EMI) has become prevalent in non-Anglophone educational contexts, but teachers (usually content specialists) and students encounter difficulty in mastering the highly specialised content and English simultaneously. Hence, there have been calls to “CLIL-ise” EMI, by incorporating more explicit language instruction and scaffolding into content courses. However, this necessitates professional development and continuous support for EMI teachers. In this seminar, the speaker will share some frameworks and models to facilitate EMI teachers’ professional development, including pedagogical frameworks to design CLIL courses and models of collaboration between content and language specialists. These frameworks will be illustrated with some recent examples in various higher education contexts.

Monday 9^th January 2023 (4.30-5.30)

• Bernadette Clinton (Hackney Education)
• Language Acquisition to promote cognitive development
• LANDEV is an Erasmus+ Key Action 2 Strategic Partnership involving 11 partners in the UK, Poland, Portugal and Tenerife. It aims to explore the synergy between the CLIL and EAL approaches in order to further develop our understanding of how these impact on pupils’ cognitive development. Initially a 2 year project, it has been extended until August 2023 because of the Covid restrictions. Our materials and resources will be uploaded to our website https://landevproject.org, which is under development.

Monday 13^th February 2023 (4.30-5.30)

• Dr Sarah Lister (Manchester Metropolitan University)
•  Gamifying CLIL in a mathematical context – An Update.

Saturday 11^th March 2023 (10.00-11.00a.m.) 

• Dr Russell Cross (University of Melbourne)
•  CLIL in Australia

Monday 17^th April 2023 (4.30-5.30)

• Prof. María Luisa Pérez Cañado (Universidad de Jaén, Spain)
• CLIL for all: Reality or chimera?
• This talk will focus on one of the most hotly debated issues affecting Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) at present: diversity, inclusion, and elitism in bilingual programs. The latter have been in place in many parts of Europe for over 20 years and are evolving in exciting new directions. One of the most prominent ones at present involves mainstreaming CLIL and making it accessible to an increasing range of learners. This new challenge has thrown bilingual education a real curveball and is entailing a thorough overhaul of our current CLIL programs. This presentation will explore how evolving towards a more diversity-sensitive model is affecting bilingual education on ten main fronts: the charge of elitism, the concept of diversity in itself, the role of the L1, materials design, pedagogical and evaluation techniques, the importance of the supranational perspective, multi-tiered systems of support, teacher education, the impact of COVID, and the focus of research. For each one, it will trace where we started out, showcase the current situation, and map out future pathways for progression. The latest empirical evidence on the topic (stemming from the ADiBE Project: www.adibeproject.com) will be used to address each front and the broader take-aways and chief pedagogical implications will be extracted for the frontline stakeholders. A broad array of materials, methodological tips, and teacher development options will be made available to continue addressing the challenge of diversity in CLIL in the immediate future and to ensure CLIL for all increasingly moves away from being a mere chimera to become a firmly embedded reality in our classrooms.

Monday 8^th May 2023 (4.30-5.30)

• Prof. Napoleon Katsos, with Jenny Gibson and Elspeth Wilson (University of Cambridge)
• Language Skills and Identity in Bilingual Education: A case study of a bilingual primary school in England
• A common concern for bilingual education is that while it supports additional language learning, it detracts from students’ progress with the society’s dominant language. Several studies in this flourishing area of research have focused on bilingual educational settings using the dominant societal language and a language of that is the native one of the students. Findings are hard to generalise to other educational settings, due to the inherent heterogeneity of bilingual education, including not only the choice of languages used but also the amount and type of exposure to each of them. Here we report on the first stage of a longitudinal study of students in a bilingual primary school in England which uses English, the dominant societal language, and French, a foreign language which is not the home language of any sizeable group of students in the school. In the quantitative part of this research we report that primary school students were achieving progress with foundational language skills in English within the expected range, and that this was the case both for monolingual students as well as children who had an additional home language. In the qualitative part we report on the role which bilingual education can play in the construction of students’ broader multilingual identities. The emerging picture is one where students in this type of bilingual setting are not negatively impacted in their progress with the dominant societal language, and in fact may experience positive changes thanks to the formation of a multilingual identity.

Monday 12^th June 2023 (4.30-5.30)

• Bring and Share
• (Participants TBC)

CLIL Mondays programme 21/22

Monday 13^th September 2021 (4.30-5.30) 

• Prof. Do Coyle (University of Edinburgh)
• ‘Ways of seeing’: positioning CLIL in pluriliteracies spaces
• As shifts, turns and uncertainties dominate our world, the dynamic of our pedagogic contexts have become a start reality. In this session I shall return to a seemingly simple yet disruptive question: what do we/I/you/they mean by integrated learning?   Acknowledging that CLIL happens in a myriad of contexts, I shall explore ways in which pluriliteracies spaces open ways of combining pedagogies to guide learners towards textual fluency across languages leading to making ‘successful’ integrated learning – CLIL – accessible for all.
• https://www.eventbrite.com/e/launch-of-the-21-22-clil-mondays-series-by-prof-do-coyle-edinburgh-tickets-162854172213 

Monday 11^th October 2021 (4.30-5.30)

• Judith Woodfield
• Bring and share best practice: Launch of CLIL resources Repository
• Judith Woodfield taught Geography through the medium of French for 18 years and supported the implementation of Content and Language Integrated Learning throughout the curriculum in three schools. She has generously shared her teaching materials for dissemination through the Learning through Language UK website. Those wonderful resources – designed for years 6-9 pupils in mind – cover topics as varied as mapwork, the rainforest, the European Union or PSHE lessons in French and German. During this launch event, Judith will guide you through the resources on the website, and will show how she put them together to create units of work across whole year groups. She will show you a methodology booklet and some video clips of classroom practice which may also support CPD. With Judith’s expert guidance, you will be empowered to create your own effective CLIL resources in any topic and language. Don’t miss the opportunity
• https://www.eventbrite.com/e/clil-mondays-bring-and-share-best-practice-event-tickets-162855875307 

Monday 8^th November 2021 (4.30-5.30)

• Prof.  Fred Genesee (McGill University) 
• The Suitability of CLIL Education for Students with Learning Challenges
• Extensive research on immersion/bilingual programs in North America and around the world has demonstrated that these forms of dual language education can be, and often are, effective at promoting advanced levels of second language proficiency without jeopardizing students’ first language or academic development. The vast majority of this research has been carried out with typically-developing students from majority language and cultural groups. This limitation in current research raises important ethical, professional and practical issues. This presentation will discuss findings from research on students with learning challenges, including language and reading disabilities and special education needs, in dual language programs.
• https://www.eventbrite.com/e/clil-mondays-by-prof-fred-genesee-mcgill-university-tickets-162856386837 

Monday 13^th December 2021 (4.30-5.30)

• Prof. Kim Bower (Sheffield Hallam University)
• The ADiBE project: Diversity in a multilingual context – messages from a case study
• …
• https://www.eventbrite.com/e/clil-mondays-by-prof-kim-bower-sheffield-hallam-tickets-162856976601 

Monday 10^th January 2022 (4.30-5.30)

• Bernadette Clinton and Raquel Tola Rego (Hackney Education)
• The Hackney Spanish First Project
• …
• https://www.eventbrite.com/e/clil-mondays-by-bernadette-clinton-and-raquel-tola-rego-tickets-162858037775

Monday 14^th February 2022 (4.30-5.30)

• …
• Bring and share best practice
• …
• https://www.eventbrite.com/e/clil-mondays-bring-and-share-best-practice-event-tickets-162858962541 

Monday 14^th March 2022 (4.30-5.30)

• Prof. Ana Llinares (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid)
• Moving forward in CLIL research: collaboration between content teachers, languaging teachers and researchers
• In spite of decades of research on CLIL, there are still many challenges and pending issues that need to be addressed. One of these challenges is the organisation of multidisciplinary teams with content and language teachers and researchers working collaboratively on content and language integrated teaching and assessment. This session will offer insights from research within the UAM CLIL research group (http://www.uam-clil.org) on content and language integration in students’ production and classroom practices as well as the results from seminars with content and language teachers sharing their work on content and language integrated learning and assessment from the perspective of their own discipline. In this talk I will advocate for the role of CLIL in enhancing multidisciplinary work and research, which this pandemic has shown as the only way to address societal challenges successfully in the present and in the near future.
• https://www.eventbrite.com/e/clil-mondays-by-prof-ana-llinares-universidad-autonoma-de-madrid-tickets-162860039763

Monday 11^th April 2022 (4.30-5.30)

• Domini Stone (Goethe Institut)
• Combining German and STEM through a Virtual Reality App
• …
• https://www.eventbrite.com/e/clil-mondays-by-domini-stone-goethe-intitut-tickets-162860190213

Monday 9^th May 2022 (4.30-5.30)

• …
• Bring and share best practice
• …
• https://www.eventbrite.com/e/bring-and-share-best-practice-event-tickets-162861022703 

Monday 13^th June 2022 (4.30-5.30)

• Prof. Yolanda Ruiz de Zarobe (University of the Basque Country)
• Language policy and practice in CLIL
• Over the past decades, CLIL has been adopted by most European countries partly to provide an answer to the European Union’s need for multilingualism and internationalisation. This session analyses the relationship between language policy and practice, which requires revisiting some of the issues that affect CLIL implementation and research both in Europe and in other international contexts. The effect of language policy on the implementation of CLIL calls not only for new measures to increase the level of foreign language competence but also for a different perspective in the teaching of non-linguistic subjects.
• https://www.eventbrite.com/e/clil-mondays-by-prof-yolanda-ruiz-de-zarobe-uni-of-the-basque-country-tickets-162861532227 

Monday 11^th July 2022 (4.30-5.30)

• Prof. Christiane Dalton-Puffer (University of Vienna)
• Attention to diversity in bilingual education
• After having been associated for many years with selectivity and catering to the linguistically gifted, content-and-language integrated learning (CLIL) has started moving into the mainstream of Europe’s education systems. CLIL classrooms are consequently becoming more inclusive places where subject content needs to be made accessible to a wide variety of learners regardless of their socioeconomic status, educational background, or academic achievement level. The AdiBE project set out to address two problems: the lack of information about practices in northern, central, and southern Europe, and the lack of adequate resources for working bilingually with mixed ability groups. My talk will introduce three outcomes of the ADiBE project: the six ADiBE principles for materials design, the materials bank and the collection of video guides – all developed by the project team to make bilingual education a more inclusive reality for all.
• https://www.eventbrite.com/e/clil-mondays-by-prof-christiane-dalton-puffer-vienna-tickets-162862136033 

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Welcome to the MFL Hub 2018!

Primary and Secondary Teachers

Commonwealth Games Project :putting Birmingham and many different languages on the world map

Why not bring a subject specialist with you as we have an exciting project to link MFL practitioners  with subject practitioners. The need to speak a language is not essential as subject expertise is also important .

We hope that term has started well for you. We would like to invite you to our first meeting of the year, to be held at Bordesley Green Girls’ School, on  Thursday 18^th October from 4.00-5.00.

We will be looking at opportunities to be involved in an exciting CLIL resource development project for the Commonwealth Games, as well as developments relating to CLIL in the Apprenticeship world. If you would like to add any ideas to the agenda or bring resources to share, please let me know.

All are welcome – MFL and other subject teachers, curriculum leaders, academics,   teacher trainees, students. We look forward to seeing you. Refreshments will be provided!

Updates on the new Learning Through Languages UK centre and the collaboration between BCC/ Aston University and BGGS.

Ana Llinares (last week of January TBC) and Yolanda Ruiz de Zarobe (end of April TBC) will be visiting Aston University in the spring and delivering research talks, public talks and CPD as part of the University’s Distinguished visitor scheme. Details to follow