How to Design A CLIL Activity
Key aspects of a CLIL activity
Before I show you how to prepare for a CLIL activity, let me tell you what I think
should be included in every CLIL activity:
• A subject topic and learning goal
In other words: What will your students know or be able to do when the activity is
finished? Do you want to introduce a topic or is it more of a rehearsal exercise?
• A language goal
Obviously. It’s Content and LANGUAGE integrated language. Simply ask yourself
the question: what can I do with language? This can be very small or very big,
depending on the situation.
• An active learning component
Every student should be participating and has to have a certain level of
responsibility. Ask yourself the question: How do I make sure every student is
involved?
If you cover these three aspects, you have yourself a CLIL activity!
Preparing a CLIL activity
So how do you prepare? Quite often, I don’t. As I said before, I quit often come up
with ideas while teaching. If I find that I have some time left or want to do something
different, I think of a way to use the current topic and do something together. But that
did not happen in a day.
Your situation might very well be different. You might prefer preparing a CLIL activity
before hand or you might need to copy or prepare materials. That’s all fine as well of
course.
If you sit down to create a CLIL activity for the next lesson, think about your topic and
answer the three questions above:
1. What is my learni