Effective CLIL Assessment & Collaborative Practices
The Importance of Assessment in CLIL
It is well known that assessment exerts an important effect on teaching. It is fundamental to the success of CLIL and it is an indispensable part of instruction.
But assessment sometimes becomes a difficult task because teachers must decide what to assess: content, language, or both? What language do we assess? Which is more important? What about cognition and culture? What tools can we use for assessment? When, how…? Should intercultural competence be taken into account? And if so, how can achievement be identified and measured quantitatively?
Firstly, teachers have to establish an appropriate classroom atmosphere in which students feel comfortable and secure. Pupils should be assessed in a balanced way so that content-related and language competences are transparently accounted for. Language learning and content learning are truly integrated, and where neither dominates the other.
Secondly, we have to keep in mind that CLIL units must have clear objectives, with content as the dominant objective, so it is necessary to define learning goals and objectives. Both will vary according to specific contexts.
Thirdly, learners should be aware of assessment instruments. We have to decide what we are going to evaluate and how are we going to carry it out, and once we’ve decided it, we have to share it with our students. We should assess factual knowledge, general understanding, and higher-level thinking skills: interpretation, analysis, synthesis, application, independent research skills, and so on.
How to Assess Effectively
But the problem is… How do we assess? First of all, we need to assess what students can do with support scaffolding. We can use different tools such as gathering information about children’s ideas, using true/false, matching, multiple choice, fill-in-the-gaps, read and understand questions, rubrics, portfolios, essay writing, oral reports, interviews, and so on. It is also very important to consider students’ role in assessing their work. Besides, teachers must differentiate between three kinds of assessment: diagnostic, formative, and summative. Formative is used to make decisions about how to advance learning while it is taking place. And summative assessment has several uses including reporting to parents, other teachers, tracking progress, and sometimes for grouping and selection.
In conclusion, the assessment in the CLIL methodology can be difficult for teachers because the evaluation process involves many elements to consider. Teaching involves making decisions about lessons, content and sequencing, materials, learning tasks, etc., in order to determine the students’ strengths and weaknesses.
The Power of Communities of Practice
Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern, a set of problems, an interest in a topic, or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly. We can find communities of practice working around new methodologies, virtual teaching, teacher training, conferences, European projects, online forums, collaborative environments, and so on.
Through communities of practice, teachers can learn and share our best practices. We can participate and collaborate in different educational platforms, such as:
- An online forum or a wiki. It is an option for teachers or students to share knowledge. We might use a wiki to learn from each other’s work. Students or teachers can improve their practice by providing a forum to identify solutions to common problems and a process to collect and evaluate best practices. People with similar interests can form a forum by linking people with others who have similar interests. People can transform their practice to accommodate changes and generate new knowledge.
- Collaborating in a European project. It provides a shared context for people to communicate and share information. Teachers can exchange personal experiences in a way that builds understanding, cooperation, and innovation for good practices. It also provides stimulating learning by serving as a vehicle for authentic communication.
- Using video conferencing. People can have relevant interactions in a virtual conference. It can connect people who might not otherwise have the opportunity to interact. Furthermore, people can explore new possibilities, solve challenging problems, and create new mutually beneficial opportunities.
To sum up, it is important to collaborate in a community of practice because it helps members to create personal relationships and also provides a way to produce the resources for developing the practice. Teachers can work together in different and new ways. Furthermore, it provides a new model for connecting people in the spirit of learning and knowledge sharing effective practices, tools, methods, articles, lessons learned, models, websites, and so on. Through communities of practice, collaboration is increasingly important. I could take the best from each teacher and put them together to be an excellent professional doing amazing and new things each day.