Erasmus KA2 “Beyond and Louder than Words”
EI multiplier event February 5th, 2018, Avezzano (AQ) Italy, Liceo Scientifico Statale Vitruvio Pollione
Teachers from Finland, Portugal, Italy
Special guests: Proff. Peeter Mehisto, Tuula Asikainen
The project was born on a basis of finding out what kind of approaches would have been the best one to increase students’ critical thinking and working independence, language competence and cooperation as a way to include. The basic idea was: nowadays there are many methodologies in fashion, but are they really effective? So, when we had the first meeting we decided to try with our students, in our classrooms the theory. It was a kind of research-action activity, where Clil, Clim, Active learning, debate, ICT awareness, were learned and put into practice.
Clil and Clim were the first to be studied in Italy (January 2016) both through a conference held by one of the maximum expert in these subjects in Italy, Mrs. Gisella Langé, Ministry inspector, and also put in practice during the workshops where the Italian experts highlighted the main phases and procedures to be put into practice with students. The partners from countries where Clil and Clim were already used took active part in the training activity, while countries where these two approaches were not so activated studied the necessary conditions to work with them. Partners from Greece and Macedonia expressed their doubts, also referring to the age of students, but in the end, we all decided to try. They also underlined the fact that talking about two different approaches may seem a little wrong because they both are based on the same principles: autonomy, cooperation, effective competence, respect. We all agreed with this vision because CLIL and CLIM aim to the same goal, and what is more important, they are “means” not “goals”.
The Italian school has years of experience in CLIL, also because our colleagues attended courses in Finland (CLILedu) and Island (CLIM), end they underlined that the main positive aspect of using these approaches were two: increased motivation and inclusiveness. Clil more aimed to contents and language learning, Clim more addressed to social skills based on cooperation and respect are the main part of their characteristics as teaching methodology. Students are going to learn how to listen to each other, to share progress in the name of a common goal.
So after a lot of work made by all partners about these two methodologies, we have decided to show the results of our effort to colleagues from different countries, hoping to disseminate the idea of cooperation and inclusion we have noticed after our research.
Carmine Di Giustino, Italian contact person