If you were not limited by the demands of the national/regional curriculum, what would you say is the most important thing you would teach your students about your subject (in a CLIL context)? How would you assess their learning?

In the first place, if I were not limited by demands of national and regional curriculum, I would like to teach my students learn to develop in real situations of everyday life.

So, I would put emphasis in experiential learning instead of working so many conceptual contents. Because I think that it is better that students develop skills that allow them to construct their own learning.

As a Technical teacher of Vocational Training, I would steer students in the direction of improving their professional capacities, values, and skills for their working future.

How would I assess their learning?

Assessment is one of the most difficult area for teachers in general and for CLIL teachers in particular. The assessment is an integral part of every lesson. Due to it, I would assess through:

• Diagnostic assessment:  before instruction, with the purpose of establishing a baseline from which to observe growth.
• Formative assessment: during instruction, with the purpose of providing on going feedback to students. This involves children in assessing their performance and deciding their next steps.
• Summative assessment: after the instruction, with the purpose of testing the learner outcomes.

Moreover CLIL teachers have to assess content and learning skills, and the use of language and decide how to do it. From my point of view, being CLIL teachers we should focus on content, “the language will be learnt in progress”. Therefore, content and skills first, then language.

By other hand, we have to select the tools we can use to assess not only the content but also the four language skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing). We can asses the language through a variety of approaches:

• Selected-response activities (true/false, matching, multiple choice).
• Constructed-response tasks (fill-in, short answers, performance assessments).
• Personal-response assignments (conference, oral reports, portfolio, essay writing, self- and peer-assessment, interviews). 

In conclusion, assessment is a difficult area for a CLIL teacher because we have to assess the content and the language. Moreover, I would like to coach my students so they can achieve a good job; I therefore prefer to use assessment for learning and not assessment of learning.