About me
My name is Patrick and I live in The Netherlands. I am a teacher and just like every other teacher I want to keep challenging both my students and myself. Because I had been studying in a bilingual education system as a student, I decided I wanted to use this experience in my teaching as well and became a bilingual mathematics teacher.
CLIL
You probably already know what CLIL is, but just to make sure we are on the same page, I think it makes sense to explain it very shortly. CLIL stands for Content and Language Integrated Learning. In other words: learning a subject while using a second language. In my case: I teach mathematics in English instead of Dutch.
CLIL encompasses a lot of different ways of teaching and numerous descriptions and clarifications have been provided over the years. I like to keep things simple, so I summarize all of those characteristics of CLIL into one important rule:
A CLIL teacher motivates his students to use language as much as possible in class while stimulating higher order thinking.
CLIL Magazine
During the first couple of years that I taught in bilingual education I experienced a lack of both tested materials as well as a sense of community when I talked to other bilingual teachers. I really felt like we were reinventing the wheel a lot, despite all wanting the same thing: the best type of bilingual education you can provide.
That’s how CLIL Magazine started.
To share ideas, create discussion and connect people, I launched the very first CLIL magazine in 2012. At first I only focused on the Dutch schools, but quickly realized the potential of the magazine internationally. The magazine quickly developed into a regular publication and is now being published in the spring and autumn of each year. Many different types of articles have been published in the magazine. Examples of these articles are interviews with experts on didactics, columns about experiences in the everyday school days and articles by renowned experts on various subjects.
All of these efforts are made for free and the magazine will be available for free as well, both in print and digitally online. With the support of various advertisers I hope the magazine will stay free for a long time.
But that’s not all..
CLIL Challenge
After a couple of years of publishing CLIL Magazine, I still felt like I could do more for the people who worked with CLIL every day. As I asked for questions and used those questions to create the CLIL Challenge: a series of emails with information on a variety of different topics concerning CLIL with challenges to help you out in your lessons.
This free email course is the first of many online courses and webinars I hope to create in the future.
CLIL Blog
To challenge myself, I set myself a goal of writing a blog post about CLIL once every week for a longer period of time. To stay up to date on these articles, join my mail list and I’ll be sure to help you with teaching in the future.
Free gift
I like giving away things for free, which you might have noticed when you read through this little bio. If you sign up for the monthly newsletter of CLIL Magazine, you will not only stay updated on all of my publications, you will even receive 5 activities that you can use in your lesson immediately as well! For free! How cool is that?