INTEGRATING STEM WITH CLIL Erasmus Project

Project Title

INTEGRATING STEM WITH CLIL

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 Schools Only

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Key Competences (incl. mathematics and literacy) – basic skills; Intercultural/intergenerational education and (lifelong)learning

Project Summary

The term – Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) today is familiar to the language teachers starting from the primary school and finishing with the university, though sometimes it seems that it is rather considered the sphere of general and level education; in adult education, vocational, or professional, language study is supposed to be dominating. CLIL provides a meaningful, purposeful context for language learning. CLIL classroom practice provides a more holistic, purposeful and authentic way of teaching and learning languages, a view and hypothesis central to this initiative.
Linguistic and cultural diversity of the European Union is one of its major assets, but also one of its main challenges. Throughout the last decade, European multilingualism policy has been guided by the objective set by the Barcelona Council of March 2002, which called for the improvement of mastery of basic skills, in particular, by teaching at least two foreign languages from a very early age.

The improvement of quality and efficiency of language learning has become one of the key objectives of the Strategic Framework for Education and Training (‘ET 2020’). The framework underlines the necessity to enable citizens to communicate in two languages in addition to their mother tongue, as well as the need to Promote language teaching and provide migrants with opportunities to learn the language of the host country. Language learning has also acquired a prominent place within flagship initiatives integrated in the European Union’s overall strategy – ‘Europe 2020’ – promoting smart, sustainable and inclusive growth. In articular, language skills, as a means to encourage the cross-border mobility of EU Citizens, play a crucial role within the Youth on the Move initiative and the Agenda for New Skills and Jobs. 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. CLIL has been seen to be a key lever in realising some of the eight key competences for lifelong learning as recommended by the European Parliament in 2006.

Why does CLIL work? The logic lies in the acronym: in delineating that Learning involves the Integration of both Content and Language, CLIL makes explicit the fact that the learning of any content must involve the learning of the language associated with the content. At the level of schooling, successful education in either a first or additional language requires that learners are equipped with the language for thinking about the content. When learning through CLIL, where an additional language is used, language-supportive resources, methods and activities are actively and coherently used to enable learners to use language purposefully.

Key findings:
• In most European countries, CLIL provision is a part of mainstream school education. Pilot projects are operating in around ten countries.
• In most cases, the target languages are a combination of regional and/or minority languages and foreign languages.
• CLIL type provision may generally be associated with any subject in the school curriculum, although in some countries it is mainly used to teach science subjects or social sciences in secondary education.
• The main barrier to CLIL becoming more widespread is the lack of appropriately qualified teachers.

Integrating STEM content with advanced foreign language instruction provides a unique way for students to gain foreign language capacities directly related to promising career pathways. Content and language integrated learning (CLIL), also referred to as content-based language teaching, simultaneously promotes skills in the target language and advances content knowledge, making this a promising approach for students to gain STEM skills in a foreign language classroom (Brewster, 2004; Mehisto, Marsh, & Frigols, 2008; Smala, 2009).

Project-based learning (PBL) in a CLIL classroom fosters foreign language learning by engaging students in important, real-world projects and having students utilize their first and second language knowledge, skills, and abilities to complete the work. Project-based learning integrates all four language skills (listening, reading, speaking, and writing), incorporates collaborative team work, lends itself to clear outcomes, and challenges learners to use the foreign language in different capacities inside and outside the classroom (Stoller, 1997, 2010; Thomas, 2000).

Successfully planning a thematic unit of PBL to integrate STEM topics into a foreign language classroom involves collaboration with STEM content teachers, identifying final outcome goals, creating guidelines for students, assisting students in gathering, compiling and reporting information in a second language, and and reporting information in a second language, and creating useful evaluation tools to assess student work.

Project Website

http://twinspace.etwinning.net/44734/home

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 110240 Eur

Project Coordinator

ST BRIGID’S PS TIRKANE & Country: UK

Project Partners

• Scoala Gimnaziala Numarul 5
• Hazelwood Primary School
• OZEL KIRSEHIR ORTAOKULU(SECKIN EGITIM HIZMETLERI TIC. VE SAN. A.S.)
• OOU “Hristijan Karposh”
• Zespol Placowek Oswiatowych, Szkola Podstawowa im. S. Zeromskiego w Strawczynie