CLIL (Content Language in Learning) is the methodology used to teach English through content. This means, instead of just teaching English, the students learn English through learning about either Science, Math, or English-speaking cultural holidays. There are four main components of CLIL. Each Unit should contain the four concepts: Culture, Content, Cognition, and Communication.
Culture-This is going to be the cultural aspects of what you want the students to learn. For example, for the unit of Thanksgiving, the culture part would be the origins of Thanksgiving/why we celebrate Thanksgiving.
Content-In Infantíl, Culture and Content could easily overlap. The content is just what it sounds like…content! For example, if you were teaching about Math, the content would be the math facts, if you were teaching about science, it would be the science facts. Following the example above, if you were teaching the unit on Thanksgiving, Content would be “Who are Pilgrims and Native Americans?”
Cognition- This is the portion of the lesson where you incorporate higher order thinking skills otherwise known as “Bloom’s Taxonomy!” These are the “goals” of each of the lessons and use important verbs such as “recognize” “explain” “describe” and “identify” and usually begins with “The students will be able to…” (meaning, by the end of the unit). For example, the Cognition portion of the Thanksgiving unit would be, “The students will be able to recognize the first people that celebrated Thanksgiving.”
Communication- This is the way in which the students will communicate the way that they have learned the content and culture. For example, in the unit of Thanksgiving, for the 5-year-olds, Communication would be “Use the words ‘Pilgrim’ and ‘Native American’ when identifying the two people groups.” For 3-year-olds, it might just be “Identify (i.e. point) Pilgrims and Native Americans.” This is the “evaluation” portion of the unit.
Below are CLIL concept maps for each unit and each age group. These concept maps contain the vocabulary that the students should learn in the unit as well as the “Four C’s” of the CLIL methodology.