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

To start with, I would like to say that teachers  are limited by demands of both curriculums: national and regional. Nevertheless, it is true that we can prioritizing some objectives above others. Curriculum should be as a guide to help us to design our lessons but we can be flexible and choose those objectives that we consider more essential.

As a Physical Education teacher I have some priorities. Due to the fact that P.E is mainly a practical subject, I feel it is essential promote motor skills. Even so, I strongly believe that values, general behavior and social skills are fundamental. At my lessons I always explain to my students that it is more important to be educated and respectful than to be the most athletic person. We should not forget that first of all we are teaching EDUCATION and then, PHYSICAL. I think at the curriculum social skills should become more important.

In a CLIL context I think Physical Education is a great subject to foster English language among the students.  We can promote the communication skills above all speaking skills thanks to the interaction with the others. We can design activities that foster the speaking. For instance, students can prepare some oral presentation related with physical topics. We shouldn't forget that in physical education students are permanently interacting with their classmates. Therefore, we should give them some oral strategies in order to prepare a correct speech.

We should not forget to work also the listening, reading and writing. Frequently, my students are active learners and they participate in the PE blog. They also read some sport articles and they watch some sports videos in you tube. We have to motivate them to be English users and not to be afraid of using it; scaffolding is crucial.

In relation with assessment, I would like to say that assessment has always been difficult and contentious due to all the issues that should be taken into account. In fact, it is well-known that assessment can be very unfair, or at least at physical education lessons, because each student is unique, with particular characteristics and needs. But, however, focusing on the assessment made by CLIL teachers it is particularly difficult to decide if we should assess content, language or both.

In CLIL lessons there is a dual focus, language and content integration, with two assessment processes involved. Learning objectives should include both, content skills and language skills. Therefore, it is paramount to decide clear learning objectives before an assessment focus through an advanced planning which includes how the achievements will be assessed. Personally speaking, in my physical education lessons before a new project we decide together, students and teacher, the achievements of content. In fact, we prepare some rubrics in order to foster students participation.

We have to define which aspects of content and language we are assessing. If we want to assessed content it is important choose a method of assessment that uses the least language. For example, in physical education lessons we can focus the assessment in physical activities. Conversely, if we want to assess language we can focus the assessment in oral activities like: oral presentation, explanation of games ‘rules and so on.

I would like to say that assessment involves many aspects that should be taking into account. In my opinion, formative assessment is the most effective category of assessment and what to say about the student self-assessment, absolutely necessary.

To sum up, we can say that assessment is a complex and delicate process, a huge challenge for teachers.