What would I say is the most important thing I would teach my students about my subject (in a CLIL context)? How would I assess their learning?

      If I were not limited by the demands of the national or regional curriculum, what would I say is the most important thing I would teach my students about my subject (in a CLIL context)?

How would I assess their learning? 

                     First of all I would like to mention the different option we have:

                 -Integrate content and language learning (the most important thing is content)

                -Integrate content and language learning while (the most important thing is the learning of the foreign language)

                 -Fully integrated teaching and learning of subject and foreign language.

                 Taking account these different points, I would evaluate depending on the age of the students, their level of the foreign language and characteristics of the group of students.

                  From my point of view the third option is the most complete of all, but for a successful class we need to have a group of student who has a good level of English and with the ability of learning at the same time content and foreign language. However, to finding all these characteristics can be very difficult.

                In spite of the perfection of the third option, I prefer the first option and the second options depending on factors like:

                  Second option (integrate content and language learning (we focus on the foreign language) I would choose this option if my students were children from 3 ages to third of primary, because the content is for the student more easier than the second language and besides the student at this age can learn quicker and in a natural way. In the future they could have a good level of English.

                  First option (we focus more on content learning) I would choose this option if my students would be from third to sixth of Primary because the content is more difficult and if we focus only on the second language they had a poor knowledge of the content which is very important for a child and for his and her development.

                  I would assess the learning of my students, depending on the two options:

                  I would pay more attention on foreign language competence in the first option

              I would focus the assessment on subject knowledge in the second one but never forgetting encourage students to use and improve their level of English.

                  To sum up, the factor of the age plays an important role at the moment of choosing,  which option we prefer.

Advantages of Disadvantages of using Portfolio

TALKING INTO ACCOUNT YOUR PERSONAL TEACHING CONTEXT, WHAT WOULD BE THE ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF USING THE ELP WITH YOUR GROUPS?

              The phenomenon of the portfolio has increased in the last years. The idea of portfolio deals with collection and organization of the student´s learning and the reflection of this progressive learning in their portfolios. So the student can see his or her progression and what has learnt and what has to improve and trough the student´s deep thinking, the student can plan his or her learning.

            The idea of portfolio comes from of the idea of the Common European Framework, which wants to promote multilingualism. Like others aspects of our life, the portfolio has get used to new technologies, so we can find classic  portfolio print in paper and new in a electronic format.

            I think that primary teachers could not work with the portfolio in the same way as teachers of secondary education.

            In my opinion the use of portfolio with children is impossible, therefore there are not advantages or disadvantages. For me the only idea would be adapt some aspects proposed by this tool, but always with the help of parents because children do not have the ability to reflect their learning and could not evaluate or arrange the necessary information needed when working with the portfolio.

             I believe that a good idea for promoting  multilingualism and multiculturalism could be the learning of a second language, as nowadays different communities do with the teaching of a second language as Valencia, Catalan, Galician. From my point of view the learning of a third language would be perfect because this is done in different countries of Europe and we can assure that woks perfect. 

            The use of portfolio in secondary school has many advantages when the student learns a second language but at the same time we can find disadvantages. Some disadvantages that I see, could be:

            -A need planification is needed;

            -From the point of view of the evaluation is not a completed tecnique.     This should be completed withs anothers tecniques and tools;

            -When somebody does not want to work every day, it should not be used.

            To sum up, we can say that he portfolio has many advantages but not only the use of a portfolio means sucess. For a succesul portfolio we must work with it constantly