Training courses. What I would like to do in the future

As a teacher I know that I have to study and recycle my knowledge every year. It is important to learn more and more during our life. As a plurilingual teacher I know that I have to improve my skills and develop new strategies in teaching.
On the one hand, a way to acquire knowledge of work practices and refresh pedagogical skills is to participate in teachers exchanges and going abroad in order to learn and develop new strategies. At the same time, I would improve a foreing language.
The participation in structured courses in other countries inside the European Unión is an excellent idea. It could be also interesting the possibility to travel to other school in a foreing country with our pupils and share experiencies with other students.
On the other hand, If we stay in our school, we can be active too. An interesting idea is to share our own material and resources through a personal blog or platform. Sharing information and experiences amongst teaching professionals is a good idea and we can do from home.
I am really concerned in CLIL teaching so I am interested in courses which let me learn new kinds of resources, programmes, apps, etc. Through CEFIRE we can find interesting courses and materials for teachers.
In concluision, depending on our needs, we can choose among a big variety of training courses. In my case, nowadays I prefer share information through platforms or a personal blog, but in the future I would like going abroad to acquire new knowledge in a foreing country.

The most important thing I would teach my students about my subject in a CLIL context

Both learning and teaching in a CLIL context means a change on the way to teach our classes. Although the main feature of a CLIL lesson is the education and not the multilingualism, we have to take advantage of this new approach and upgrade students learning.

In a CLIL approach we not only teach academic contents but also we have other contents to develop such as communication, cognition and culture.

So, teaching and learning goals are much more extended. In a CLIL lesson we have to develop thinking skills through HOT activities. So, we will enhance the learning process. For that, we can prepare an develop our own material in order to adapt it to our students taking into account their level and sociocultural environment. For instance, I would start a CLIL lesson reviewing the vocabulary acquired previously. I would continue it presenting new vocabulary necessary for the lesson and  after that I would introduce the content through activities which let them develop their learning skills. I think applying  instructional scaffolding in our teaching is useful to focus class work, because I consider that is an essential element off effective teaching. The teacher as a guide in order to move students progressively toward stronger understanding.

So, the most important think I would teach to my students in my subject it would be help them to increase their autonomy to learn the contents about a subject through a language different than their mother tongue.

Otherwise, if we talk about the assessment, this have to be formative and summative. I would asses not only their learning in contents but also the language, such as language components, language use or language competences and other components as learning skills or general behavior. Also, the tools I would use for this purpose could be portfolios, rubrics, tasks and exercises and exams and tasks to evaluate contents. 

Advantages and disadvantages of using the ELP with my groups

The ELP is a tool which let us evaluate the levels of the language. The ELP is designed for promoting autonomy, reflection, multilingualism and mobility in order to enhance learning throughout life. Also, provides a way of teaching and assessing all languages in Europe. It has three obligatory elements: a language passport, a language biography and a dossier.

From a pedagogical point of view, the ELP is a tool that can be used correctly or badly.

On the one hand, I think the advantages are important. Sometimes, students are unmotivated, because they think that their progress in learning languages is locked. They finish the course and have the feeling that they have learned nothing.

So, the self assessment through the use of ELP during the course after the lessons (and also  at the end of the term) let them incentive their learning in order to achieve linguistic goals. If students can realize that are improving, they will be  more motivated.

Other important advantage is that the self assessment in an integrated way develops learners autonomy. They are more confident, their attitude is positive and more mature, and this is a benefit for the whole of the class.

On the other hand , a disadvantage that I can find is that sometimes they do not understand completely the utility of the ELP, and this produce them boredom.

In conclusion, I think that teachers have to encourage them to use the ELP and present it as an effective tool for their learning for the present and the future.