CLIL for Children Erasmus Project

Project Title

CLIL for Children

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for school education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2015

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Open and distance learning; Pedagogy and didactics; Teaching and learning of foreign languages

Project Summary

Multilingualism is at the very heart of European identity, since languages are a fundamental aspect of the cultural identity of every European. Language acquisition and language enhancement gets more and more important for an intercultural dialogue in our society and for increasing job chances of individuals. Multilingual language skills are important in a cosmopolitan society and, as children are especially receptive to learning languages at an early age, linguistic competences and a multilingual education should be implemented since primary school and earlier.

The promotion of linguistic diversity in education and training has always received important consideration by the European Commission, for example communication in foreign languages is one of the eight Key competences for lifelong learning (2006).

CLIL stands for Content and Language Integrated Learning. It refers to teaching subjects such as science, history and geography to students through a foreign language. This can be by the foreign language teacher using cross curricular content or by the subject teacher using English as the language of instruction. Both methods result in the simultaneous learning of content and of a foreign language.

Over the past two decades an increasing body of research has demonstrated that CLIL can enhance multilingualism and provide opportunities for deepening learners’ knowledge and skills, however effective use of CLIL requires a specific methodology and specific training of teachers.

The aim of this project has been to support primary school teachers in filling this gap by providing them with a comprehensive training program and a set of 15 lesson plans developed by the Consortium. Materials visually attractive to children and easy to understand connecting subjects such as Science, Mathematics, Geography

The project has carried out a Survey on the state of the art on using CLIL on primary schools including good practices and difficulties experienced by teachers and a census of existing web based Open and Educational Resources for CLIL to be used in primary schools. Based on these the project partners have developled Guidelines on development and use of CLIL in primary schools, a set of CLIL materials and lesson plans for teaching science, mathematics and geography in English in primary schools, a Guide and a E-course addressed to teachers on how to use CLIL methodology in primary schools.

The consortium is made of organizations active in research and/or training of teachers such as The Language Center coordinating the prooject, Giunti Psycometrics, an important and leading publishing house in Italy with expertise in the school world, Instituto Politécnico de Castelo Branco in Portugal, The University of Lodz in Poland, the University of Pitesti in Romania, all active in research and teacher training and with expertise in CLIL. The partnership was then made up with partner schools involved in the development and pitoting of the lesson plans created by the project. Direzione didattica Todi and Direzione didattica Aldo Moro in Terni were chosen as partner by the project coordinator because of previous cooperations on both EU funded and national projects and because they are in the same Region, so easier to coordinate during the piloting.
The other schools were involved by the University partners as being schools with which other projects had already been implemented.

The Coordinator, The Instituto Politécnico de Castelo Branco and the University of Pitesti had already cooperated together in the project Alpha EU, The Alpahabets of Europe (www.alphaeu.org) and the idea of the project came out since these partners decided to continue cooperating in the filed of L2 teaching

Thanks to the project 238.962 people have been informed and reached through dissemination activities as it is detailed in the follow-up session. The goal for this project was 59.000. This number is particularly high in Italy where the Partner Giunti Psychometrics belonging to Gruppo Editoriale Giunti, one of the most important publishing house in Italy and in Europe for the school sector, has been able to exploit its potential for dissemination among teachers, in service and pre-service and with school directors and /or regional school offices.
The website of the project www.clil4children.eu has registered more than 22.500 visits (Google Analytics Data updated at October 20th, 2018) with 34.000 sessions. Page views account for 85.000. 1.800 people have registered to the multilingual online course and 340 teachers have already completed the course and received their certificate.
Other dissemination channel have produced an important impact and this will be futher detailed in the follow-up session.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 364802 Eur

Project Coordinator

The Language Center srl & Country: IT

Project Partners

• Szkola Podstawowa nr 199 im. Juliana Tuwima
• GIUNTI O.S. PSYCHOMETRICS SRL
• Direzione Didattica Aldo Moro Terni
• UNIVERSITATEA DIN PITESTI
• UNIWERSYTET LODZKI
• Scoala Gimnaziala Alexandru Davila
• Agrupamento de Escolas Gardunha e Xisto