Harriet Thomson, expert CLIL and English teacher and teacher trainer, was the speaker of this course followed by 117 bilingual teachers in Castilla y León. It took place on the 11^th and 18 of February 2010 by videoconfence.

Teaching a non-linguistic subject in English provides an ideal opportunity to exploit the language that occurs naturally in this context. It is important to maximise exposure by using the target language in class as much as possible, and the most natural and authentic use of the English through positive classroom management.

In order to achieve these objectives during the course Harriet Thomson went through these contents along both sessions:

The planning of the lessons includes an effective use of everyday language for routines and personal interaction with the learners and among themselves. A conscious and motivational “linguistical interaction” encourages communication above linguistic accuracy, even in no so comfortable situations, such as the many examples the participants of the course went through.

The speaker invited the teachers to reflect about these key issues before planning their lesson:

During the first session the participants in the course compared text book exercises in order to choose or improve the most suitable to reach our objectives, taking into account content, language used, and the students’ motivation.

In both sessions all Non-Linguistic Subjects were accounted for, providing a wide variety of activities, resources and online tools for each of them.

Drama and other creative activities were considered as a way of motivating students and make them take an active part on their learning.

Cross curricular activities played an important role in the development of both sessions, making the participants link their subject to the main topic that Harriet Thomson provided. Teachers also provided activities that fit in the lesson and connect the learning.

After the course, the participants have designed activities -even complete lesson plans- based on what they learnt from the speaker and their colleagues during the videoconferences. We are sharing these activities in the blog of the course: https://upgradingspeakingandwritinginclil.blogspot.com/

The teachers in this course have acknowledged its great quality and welcomed the enormous quantity of resources and ideas provided during the course and in the blog.