Lithuania - CLIL Teacher Training 2012

The Lithuanian ministry of Education is investing in CLIL teacher training.
June 17-18th 2012

I was invited by colleagues from the University of  Vilnius to contribute to their programme of in-service training. This involved working with a small group of trainers from the programme for a day followed by a day with 80 teachers from the programme across the country.
 

Teachers' association president opens proceedings 


The department of modern languages 
The brief for the training was basic principles of CLIL, projects, and materials design.

The slightly different characteristic with this group of colleagues was that there was a mixture of languages including English, French and German.

The oak tree planted by colleagues from the department 


The university is a maze of inner courtyards 

I talked with the group of trainers on a range of issues to do with their programme of training which is planned over 2 years and includes 200 hours of input for the teachers on the programme.
The teachers' workshop took place in a lecture hall, on a warm humid day and we decided to offer them a plenary as a whole group, and then divide the languages into two groups. We certainly would have had problems without the trusty Monika to interpret for the group.  
I spoke on the topic of identifying language for content teaching and followed this up with practical activities with a focus on materials design. The idea was to provide the teachers with a portfolio of ideas and techniques for creating their own resources.

  
Main courtyard 
 

Luckily too, I knew where to look for a range of content resources available in numerous languages, Science Across the World. The principles of CLIL I talked about were based broadly within examples from the Science Across programme.
 
Topics chosen included:
Biodiversity - Talking from a picture (English, French, German)
Acid rain - Guiding listening (English, French, German)
Chemistry in our lives - Supporting writing (English, French, German)
What did you eat? - Reading and sorting (English, French, German)
Keeping healthy - Group discussion (English, French, German)
Road safety - Carrying out a survey (English, French, German) 
I also put together a template for the speed reaction test.
 

President's residence 


We managed to get active... 

and interact in the lecture hall 

The speed reaction test was popular, and this comes from the Science Across project 'Road Safety', but it's no longer in the series of exchange topics today.
I'm posting links to the topic files here in case there is interest from colleagues in looking into doing a project on this topic. Some of the data is out of date, but the activities are still relevant, particularly in countries like Bulgaria where I live and where road safety is a continuing major problem.
Road Safety (English, French, German) 

Many thanks to Macmillan for the onestopenglish subscription and the CLIL resources which went home with colleagues at the end of day 2