CLIL

Are you a primary school teacher teaching maths, sport, music, science, art or other subjects through English? Are you thinking about trying it? Then sign up for the second half of our webinar series in January 2026.

Following the success of our first four webinars on Creating Dynamic CLIL Classes for Primary Learners in November 2024, we will be running four more webinars in January 2026:

  • Session 1: Teaching maths through English - Tuesday 13 January 2026 5:30pm-6:30pm (French time)
  • Session 2: Teaching science through English - Tuesday 20 January 2026 5:30pm-6:30pm (French time)
  • Session 3: Teaching sport through English - Tuesday 27 January 2026 5:30pm-6:30pm (French time)
  • Session 4: Teaching arts and music through English - Tuesday 3 February 2026 5:30pm-6:30pm (French time)

Each webinar will be accompanied by a post-course task and participants will receive a certificate of participation

Below you will find the recordings of the first four webinars in this series which took place in November 2024 and the follow-up reflection task for each. These webinars were delivered by highly experienced trainers, and have been designed with the support of pedagogical advisors from the académies of Dijon and Grenoble. They explore four topics that we identified through our conversations with teachers and teacher trainers across France. 

Session 1: Increasing student production in English Primary CLIL classrooms

In this webinar, Griselda Beacon explores the world of CLIL in primary classrooms and identifies key aspects of its methodology that combine the inclusion of school subject topics, the development of students’ thinking skills and the learning of English.

She shares practical tips, insights, resources and activities for teachers to take back to their classrooms. She introduces collaborative CLIL activities that have a playful approach to learning to get students interested, are cognitively demanding to support learning to think, use graphic organisers to scaffold language learning, and engage students in performative tasks to encourage oral production. She links these activities with a variety of multimodal teaching materials (videos, content-based texts, picturebooks, realia) that appeal to modern-day learners.

You can watch the recording of the webinar here.

After the webinar, we recommend you complete this follow-up task to consolidate your learning.

The slides from the webinar are available here.

Session 2: The Different Languages of CLIL: Language use in the CLIL classroom.

 A good CLIL plan combines elements of the 4 Cs: Content, Communication, Cognition and Culture. In this session Sarah Hilyard looks in detail at Communication to focus on how language is used to learn, while the language is being learnt.

She considers the different types of languages in CLIL, with learners actively applying basic communication skills, subject-specific language, academic language and peripheral language within a dual-focus classroom, as well as discussing the place of L1 in the learning process.

You can watch the recording here.

After the webinar, we recommend you complete this follow-up task to consolidate your learning.

The slides from the webinar are available here.

Session 3: Teaching heterogenous groups in CLIL primary classes.

Our classes are becoming more diverse and as teachers, we want to create a safe environment for all of our learners. In this session, Julia Mena Dobson explores diversity within ourselves and our surroundings and encourages us to understand each learner’s unique background and needs.

We look at planning lessons considering varied learning styles, language levels and needs, and practical support strategies to make CLIL accessible to all. We also see simple ways to adapt and create inclusive materials that foster collaborative learning and ensure everyone feels valued, as well as different assessment options to offer equal opportunities for all learners to shine.

You can watch the recording here.

After the webinar, we recommend you complete this follow-up task to consolidate your learning.

The slides from the webinar are available here.

Session 4: Right on target: Assessment for learning, as learning and of learning in the CLIL primary classroom.

Assessing learners’ progress is a process that requires careful planning and implementation. Assessment can be even more challenging in a CLIL setting since this dual-focused approach promotes both content and language mastery. In this webinar Claudia Rey explores effective ways to embed assessment in our teaching practice in a CLIL context.

She starts off by looking at the power of setting and sharing learning objectives with learners to promote self assessment and how to incorporate successful practices to assess our learners’ progress for formative and summative purposes.

This session then gives participants the chance to develop assessment strategies that they can adapt for different classes at the primary school level.

You can watch the recording of the webinar here.

After the webinar, we recommend you complete this follow-up task to consolidate your learning.

The slides from the webinar are available here.

To support you in your teaching, the British Council has developed a lesson planning template for CLIL classes that you can access here.