Sweet Chocotalk about CLIL

Hi my bilingual friends!

Nice to be here again! I would like to tell you that the last 7th of April, my classmates and I made a Chocotalk. 
What? Chocotalk? Yes, it is... A Chocotalk is an online chat or natter, in our case, about CLIL and how it can contribute to improving learners' Emotional Intelligence and making them happier people. 
On the one hand, if you followed me on Twitter, you could see my tweets and my classmates´tweets posting not only during this life event, but also before and after it. On the other hand, did you miss our it? Don´t worry! I am here for making you happy, so you can see it now!

 In the Chocotalk, all the members of the class had a role:

• CONTENT CURATORS: Estrella and Gonzalo were in charge of collecting all the information and everything that could happen during the development of the Chocotalk. As you will see after, they created a Storify to sumarize all the proccess.
•  
• SPEAKERS: in this case Celia was the one who had to talk during the live event, representing the rest of the group according to the ideas that we put together previously. From my point of view, we chose the correct persone since she is a fluent English speaker and she has always the perfect words to defend what she thinks (or what the group think, in this case).
•  
• DISSEMINATES: My classmate María and I were in charge of spreading and commenting what was happening in youtube, through different social networks such as facebook or twitter. We all used the hashtag #chococharlas and #ictclil_urjc

Once all of us were ready, the whole group started to search information about the influence of ICT in CLIL. What we finally concluded was how games can help in a bilingual classroom for motivating students and promoting a meaningful learning. We wanted to link civer games with Emotional Intelligence, the bilingual learning and ICT: they can motivate children and make them able to be self-confidence and self-sufficient; most of that games are originally in English, so they can help them to improve their English level; and obviously, playing a ciber game recquieres a computer, a mobile phone or something like that.

Before going on with the live Chocotalk María and me, as disseminates, created an ad using the tool Piktochart in order to catch people’s attention and engage them in the event. We made the following posters and we share them on Facebook and Twitter.

Before starting with the  Chocotalk, our speaker Celia was on Hangouts with the rest of other groups’ speakers Rubén, Patricia, Neus, Lola Álvaro,Inma, @GLHmaster, and  María Jesús, our ICT teacher in the bilingual classroom. They spent more than two hours arranging everything. And tha´s only before the event! They are superteachers!!

Then... The Chocotalk STARTED and we all were so excited for the event! It was the first time that we did an online talk, with possible viewers from all over the world. The Chocotalk followed a clear structure:

1. The first topic we were dealing with were the advantages and disadvantages of CLIL. Many people think that bilingualism affects negatively to the mother tongue acquisition so they feel afraid of this type of education that is offered currently in most schools. The conlusion we made were that the most appropriated way to work on bilingualism would be through cross curricular links, for instance working with projects.
2. The second topic refers to social and emotional benefits of CLIL. This Chocotalk was called “how CLIL can contribute to having happier bilingual learners” so, nothing else to say… My peers agreed with the importance of motivating students and making them feel confortable in order to foster language acquisition. This quote, which I really love, was from my classmate Rubén and it made me wonder about my teaching: “We’re teaching humans, don’t forget”.
3. The third one, was related with the use of ICT in the CLIL classroom. The conclusion we all agreed was that the more important aspect of teaching in any educational context is the purpose of the tools we are using for and the students’ learning process rather than the tools itself.
4. Finally, the speakers had to make a summary of each group’s e-project.  Celia presented our common project called “The Earth Adventures” and our peers explained also their projects related with ICT and CLIL:

• Patricia told us about their project “Learning about body and senses with ICT”.
• Rubén introduced their collaborative project about "History".
• Inma and her mates have created a project about “European Geography”.
• Lola presented their project called “Travelling around Europe”.
• Álvaro  and Neus have created a project with their colleagues about “Neighborhood”.
• Guillermo  told us about their “Animals eproject”.

Our content curators Estrella and Gonzalo have created this amazing Storyfy which allows you to see how the Chocotalk event was.

I hope you enjoyed it!
 If you want to add any comment, you can write us on Twitter. Remember that you can visit our Twitter profiles and the programs´ websites (when it´s possible) by clicking on them.