


































8 Reading Aloud


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Reading Aloud in English and Discussing the Discovery of America: 
One CLIL Lesson Plan from a Double-focused Integrated Course for 

Primary School 

Maria Pushkareva 

Ural State Pedagogical University, Ekaterinburg, Russia 

Abstract 

Content and language integrated Learning (CLIL) today is often taken as a mainstream 
in world second language education (ESL) albeit typically optional than obligatory. In 
Russia the CLIL methodology is not widespread yet but steadily gains popularity. The 
article presents one lesson plan, “Meet Christopher Columbus”, from an integrated 
double focused course for 4th grade children devoted to reading fluency and world 
history. The author undertakes a theoretical and empirical approach. 

The main educational resource of the lesson is the well-known American poem for 
kids, “In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue”, by Jean Marzollo (Marzollo, 1948). 
The lesson goals are to improve oral reading technique and discuss some essential 
questions about the discovery of America. The lesson framework is based on Do 
Coyle’s 4C’s model (Coyle, 1999, 2006). Scaffolding strategies include some visuals 
in the PowerPoint (pictures and videos), translanguaging and codeswitching when 
necessary during the lesson. 

The lesson had been piloted in Ekaterinburg municipal school №171 in 2021 and 
proved to be effective in boosting self-esteem in reading and motivating children to 
learn more about historical figures and events. 

1. Introduction 

Content and Language Integrated Learning appeared as one of the answers to the 
great educational challenges of the end of the 20th century. The crucial global changes 
at the turn of the millennium that altered the face of humanity made people revise a 
considerable proportion of strategic guidelines about the pedagogic objectives for a 
new generation. A flexible approach, described as a dual-focus methodology in which 
content and language are learned together in an integrated way (Marsh et al., 2001) 
that could combine various educational aims in different models, has begun to win 
teachers’ minds and hearts all over the world. Today CLIL has become a driving force 
in various types of mainstream education and is seen by many as the best practice for 
the future, though no unanimity exists with regard to the linguistic competencies that 
result from CLIL and an overall picture of the long-term effects of CLIL is lacking (Goris 
et al., 2019). The Eurydice report “Key data on teaching languages at school in Europe” 
noted that CLIL increased learners’ exposure to the language they learn without taking 
the additional time from the curriculum but it was not very widespread yet (Eurydice 
Brief, 2017). Spain is probably the most experienced European country in CLIL 
application with government support, while in other countries it is realized 
systematically but offered as an option (Cimermanová, 2021). 



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In Russia, CLIL seems to develop largely in a similar way. On the one hand, the very 
idea of subject integration and deep learning stimulating development of cross-
curricular skills and functional literacy are officially recommended by the Federal Public 
Education Standard both for Primary and Secondary education. The majority of English 
language students’ books that are used in Russian schools contain cross-cutting 
themes yet confined to language learning purposes. On the other hand, several CLIL 
projects that were realized in different regions over the past fifteen years were localized 
and small scale. For example, there is a municipal language integrated school “Duplex” 
in Perm (Sokolovskaya & Nabatova, 2015). Other than that, in 2017 the implementation 
of an integrated course for first grade children in Togliatti was reported (Gudkova & 
Iashina, 2017). Some CLIL lesson plans of teachers in service are occasionally 
published on different educational sites. CLIL in the Secondary school has become a 
research topic for several Master’s degree theses during the last five years. Thus, the 
promotion of the approach is expanding, which Maria Ellison describes as initiatives 
made both at ministerial and grassroots levels (Ellison, Net(Working), 2018). 

2. The Integration of L2 Reading Fluency and History in Primary School 

The choice of two priority areas for integration was determined by some essential 
features of primary school curriculum in Russia. The first one is the widespread 
problem of poor reading skills among Russian students. Except English classes most 
of them encounter English written words in computer games, labels and signboards. 
The insufficiency is made worse by lack of time for reading tasks during English 
lessons and the differences between languages. For instance, in the Russian language 
the words are read according to rules and in the English language there are a lot of 
exceptions. Besides, in Russian there are no letter clusters. Russian children often 
need auditory memory fixation of English words as they can be taken as meaningless 
(Milrood, 2017). Additionally, it should be kept in mind that reading aloud has a special 
value for beginners for control and self-control. The optimal proportion of reading aloud 
and silent reading for young learners is 90 to 10 per cent (Solovova, 2005). So reading 
aloud becomes an important educational purpose that needs additional attention and 
practice. 

History as the second integration branch was chosen because of great opportunities 
of language integration with citizenship education. Another reason was the coincidence 
of the subjects in the basic 4th grade curriculum. The last year of primary education is 
the time of the propaedeutic history course called “The world around”. The 
simultaneous learning of history during double focused and standard lessons can 
create synergy that also contributes to the CLIL lesson effectiveness. 

3. The CLIL lesson model 

A well-known inspirer of CLIL, Do Coyle, says that the major strength of CLIL-based 
teaching is the great flexibility of the model: it can easily be adapted to suit the needs 
of all stakeholders involved (Coyle, 2005). In 2009, Р. Ball presented the classification 
of CLIL models including a strong version (hard) of CLIL, a weak version (soft) of CLIL 
and some interim variants (Ball, 2009). Our CLIL lesson model can be classified as a 
soft CLIL type, in which language classes are based on thematic units. According to 



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the classification of the British Council’s Profile Report on Bilingual Education (English) 
in Poland (Marsh et al., 2008), our variant is “Limited English language medium 
instruction, with L1-L2 code switching”. 

4. The Description of a CLIL Lesson - the Framework, the Participants, the 
Procedure 

This CLIL lesson is a part of a double-focused course devoted to reading fluency and 
introduction to world history. Ten authentic poems of British and American writers 
concerning the most important periods of world history became the content base of the 
course. The target audience of the course were the students of the 4th grade of 
municipal school № 171 from Ekaterinburg. The course was validated in the 2020-
2021 academic year and now is being finalized. 

The lesson “Meet Christopher Columbus” was based upon the well-known poem for 
children “In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue” by Jean Marzollo (1948). The 
choice of the poem stemmed from the importance of the event for world history, the 
vocabulary in the poem, and its length adequacy for the age of the participants. The 
proportion of new words for the students was up to ten per cent. As for the grammar 
structure, i.e. past tense, it was also familiar to the students. The poem is meaningful, 
authentic and challenging as it shows one point of view for an essential and 
controversial event in American history. The poem consists of 22 short lines. 

The outcomes of the lesson were presented separately by language and content 
components. By the end of the lesson, the children were able to give the date of 
discovery of America, to define the character of Christopher Columbus and to briefly 
describe his voyage to America (the purposes, the reasons, the route, the means of 
transport, its length, conditions, results). Language outcomes suggest confident 
reading of the names and the words, connected to the topics: history, traveling and the 
Age of Discovery, automatised correct reading of the regular and irregular verbs and 
letter clusters such as ai, ay, oo, ight, wh, ng, qu. 

The lesson was piloted as an additional English class for 13 children, including one 
disabled student as the school provides inclusive education.  

5. Methodology of the Lesson 

The methodological base of the lesson took into account the main CLIL framework for 
developing CLIL materials (including Mohan’s knowledge structures, Do Coyle’s 4Cs 
and matrix 3As planning tools, revised Bloom’s taxonomy) that is used now for 
kindergarten and primary education (Garcia, 2013), as well as some reading strategies 
determined the choice of the exercise. 

The aims of the lesson were developed according to the 4C concept: content, 
communication, cognition and culture aims. The lesson components were planned for 
a particular class. Thus, content aims were set in accordance with the student’ age and 
overall mental level of the class. The communication aims were met by teamwork and 
peer support. The cognition element was realized by means of pictures and questions 
which stimulated a discussion. Culture aims were connected with a multiethnic class 
that consisted of children from mixed cultural and religious backgrounds. 



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With the use of Do Coyle’s Language Tryptych, the poem vocabulary and classroom 
language were divided into 3 parts - Language of learning (Analyzing), Language for 
learning (Adding) and Language through learning (Applying) (Table 1). 

Language of  learning Language for learning 
(classroom language) 

Language through 
learning 

ocean, ship, Spain, night, 
day, compass, go, sail, 
sailor, crew, tree, sand, rock, 
land, natives, spice, gold, 
made, again, bright, brave, 
trip 

settle down please, pay 
attention to, choose your 
variant, compare, you’ve 
worked very well today, 
well done. 
 

a voyage, to discover, to 
change, dangerous, 
pride, Arakawa Indians, 
The Age of Discovery, 
The Bahamas, Siberia. 

Table 1 Division of the lexical content according to 3As by Coyle 

The exercises were structured according to Mohan’s and Bloom’s algorithms: from 
familiar language and content to new content and new language, from 
knowledge/remembering, comprehension/understanding, analysis/analyzing to 
evaluation/evaluating. 

The oral reading skills development was based on BDA Strategies (before reading, 
while reading and after reading tasks) and some specific techniques. The training 
reading model was adopted from L. Urubkova (1980). She underlines that 
effectiveness of reading in class depends on a certain order of tasks: tone marking of 
the text, whole-class reading, reading in pairs, whispering reading and individual 
declamation. The whole class and pair reading were conducted by means of a wide 
range of practices: Neurological Impress method by Heckelman (Heckelman, 1986), 
4/3/2 method by Nation (Nation 2009), some exercises from speed reading technique 
suggested by I. Fedorenko (Fedorenko, 1978) – “the tug reading” when the teacher 
read the text with different speeds and the students followed him with pointing the 
necessary line, “interrupted reading” when reading was stopped by a teacher and the 
students needed to find the line to continue reading as quickly as possible, tasks for 
peripheral vision improvement. 

Ultimately, the CLIL lesson consisted of the following parts: 

1) Before reading activities: checking students’ previous knowledge, revising the 
vocabulary connected to the target topic, historical context immersion (supported 
by PowerPoint presentation) and work with phonics and peripheral vision. 

2) Musical pause. 

3) While reading activities: listening to the teacher’s reading, whole-class reading, 
reading in pairs, individual whisper reading, creative declamation.  

4) After reading activities: the discussion of stimulating questions with short 
assessment tasks. 

6. Implementation 



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1) Before reading activities 

As a brainstorming task the students were given a picture of an old compass and 
had to guess the topic of the lesson. The warming up activity was a game in which 
the children had to choose one word from the pair (coffee or tea, America or 
Australia, ship or car, sail or swim, Spain or India, go or run, sand or rock, hot or 
cool and etc.). The presentation gave students some facts about Columbus and the 
idea of the Earth’s sphericity was discussed. For peripheral vision improvement, 
lists of the basic lesson words were shown up quickly on the screen. The task was 
to find a letter or word. 

2) For a musical pause the students listened to the recording of the poem and 
repeated the teacher’s movements to react to verbal input (TPR). 

3) While-reading activities  

“In 1492” poem performance was done in groups: every crew had the name of 
Columbus’ ships - Santa Maria, Nina and Pinta. The students turned their chairs 
into ships and presented their reading while standing on them. 

4) After reading activities 

The students tried to identify words from the poem that were meaningful for the 
historical context. One more challenging task was to compare Columbus discovery 
with Ermak Siberia conquest (the regional history component). The key question 
for the final discussion was “Can one man change history?”. 

7. Scaffolding 

The term scaffolding appeared in the educational sense about fifty years ago (Mohan, 
2020) and meant interactional instructional relationship between adults and learners 
that “enables a child or novice to solve a problem” (Wood, Bruner & Ross, 1976). Some 
researchers connect the term with Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development (Ellison, 
2018). Anyway, today it is an essential part of any CLIL project (Meyer, 2013) as it is 
a possible way of overcoming most CLIL challenges especially in the primary school. 

During the lesson, further scaffolding techniques were used: 

• PowerPoint presentation 

• handouts with text 

• inspiring pictures (Columbus’s ships) 

• comprehension breaks 

• vocabulary key (list of irregular verbs on the desk) 

• translanguaging and codeswitching during the discussion 

• “huddles” trick, with each group sitting next to one another to discuss the poem 
with peers to make the meaning of all words clear, before performing the poem 

8. Criteria Assessment 



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The question of assessment for CLIL lessons remains open. In the recent CLIL 
assessment pilot study, G. Laborda states that brief research on assessment in 
Content Language Integrated Learning testifies to a lack of references that specifically 
address this topic (Laborda, 2020). Concluding that efforts should be made to ensure 
the right combination of language and content in assessment practices, the author calls 
the CLIL assessment a neglected area and opens a line for future research. As Ellison 
underlines, the focus of assessment in any given context will be determined by the 
main goals of the program (Ellison, 2017) 

Taking into account such a specific situation with an atheoretical base, the cornerstone 
for our assessment criteria became the equal attention to content and language 
segments that were evaluated separately. The content segment learning was scored 
on the basis of discussion participation: 2 points for asking and answering the 
questions, 1 point for answering the questions and zero points for non-participation. 
The language learning criteria consisted of several criteria items: accurate reading (0-
2 points depending on mistakes, reading speed (0-2 points compared with reading in 
the mother-tongue), expression (0-2 points) (Table 2). 

Criteria 2 points 1 points 0 points 

Content active participation in 
discussion 

partial participation 
in discussion 

non - participation 

Language 
(reading 
fluency) 

4-5 reading mistakes less than 10 reading 
mistakes 

more than 10 
mistakes 

Expression + 
 

- 

Tempo Comparable with the 
tempo of reading in 
the mother tongue 

Slower than the 
tempo of reading in 
the mother tongue 

Much slower than the 
tempo of reading in 
the mother tongue 

Table 2. Assessment criteria for CLIL lesson 

6-8 points matched the mark “5”, 3-5 points matched the mark “4”, 2 and less points 
were not evaluated as educational purposes were not achieved. 

9. Results and Reflection 

The lesson was a success as the children were active and inspired by it. The content 
and language aims were reached in general. It is important to mention that we did not 
use direct translation of the poem and the context helped the students to catch the 
meaning. The discussion was interesting to children and contrary views were 
expressed. The assessment showed the following results (Fig.1) 



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Figure 1. The assessment results of the CLIL lesson 

But there obviously were some weak points. Regrettably, there were mistakes in 
reading words that had been revised before the activity. Apparently, extra time and 
tasks are necessary for the pre-reading stage. And there were children who proved 
that they needed more individual work. It seems that a mind map or fact box could be 
a good improvement for the content aims. 

10. Conclusion 

The preliminary results of CLIL approach implementation in a Russian primary school 
show a great potential for motivating both students and teachers. The lesson “Meet 
Columbus” with the integration of history and the English language was a positive 
experience. History context immersion and reading aloud mutually influenced each 
other making the learning more meaningful and lasting. 

References 

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Cimermanová, I. (2021) A Review of European Research on Content and Language 
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Coyle, D. (2005) CLIL Planning Tools for Teachers. University of Nottingham. School 
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Author Note 

Maria Pushkareva is a postgraduate student at the Institute of Foreign Languages 
(Ural State Pedagogical University) and an English teacher in service. She also has a 
Bachelor diploma in history. Now her research interests are in primary language 
education though history is forever in her heart. She thinks that history potential for 
young learners is underestimated and CLIL can become an effective way to educate 
new citizens who can speak to the world in one language. 

Email: mariapushkareva2017@gmail.com 


