Description
Very often, educational environments are a bit reluctant to introduce strategies that could better prepare students for real-life situations and modern-day jobs.
Nowadays, educators should link curriculum topics to real-life situations, making learning more meaningful, and guide students in the acquisition of competencies and life skills (including critical thinking, effective communication, and language fluency) in order to meet learners’ needs.
In this course, participants will find out the good news: effective teaching strategies can be easy to learn! With an appropriate mindset and tools, such as PBL (Project-Based Learning) and CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning), everyone can provide meaningful, useful learning experiences to students.
PBL offers students an opportunity to be more engaged in learning, providing them with a tangible goal, in order to work on both content and competencies.
CLIL is a methodology for designing lessons that integrate learning of subject-specific content and foreign language skills.
Course participants will explore these two meaningful learning approaches, PBL and CLIL, as well as the assumptions, ideas, and strategies that come with them. They will also have the chance to develop easy, clever, tailor-made solutions for their subjects and groups of learners, using PBL, CLIL, or a combination of the two (PBLL).
PBLL (PBL+CLIL) provides opportunities for communication in the target language and for the application of accurate vocabulary while working on the specific contents (art, sciences, history, etc…). PBLL can improve students’ willingness to speak and the authenticity of their experience.
By the end of the course, participants will have learned about PBL, CLIL, and PBLL frameworks, the steps to design an effective unit, how to facilitate learning of contents and skills, how to scaffold teamwork, and the production of learning deliverables by students and, last but not least, practical strategies to guide students in a 360-degree growth process, which includes the acquisition of 21st-century skills and which boosts the level of engagement.
Learning outcomes
The course will help the participants to:
- Implement motivating activities from (and for) the real world;
- Design manageable project-based learning activities suitable for their subjects and school environment;
- Foster 21st century skills;
- Feel confident when teaching an academic subject in a foreign language (e.g., English);
- Engage students in collaborative and communicative activities appropriate to their level;
- Scaffold projects, also when teaching content in a second language;
- Teach contents and skills which will make a difference in students’ lives and in job searches.
Tentative schedule
Day 1 – Introduction to Project-Based Language Learning (PBLL)
- Introduction to the course, the school, and the external week activities;
- Presentations of the participants’ schools;
- Defining CLIL and PBLL: Similarities and intersections;
- Reasons to use PBLL.
Day 2 – Project-Based Learning (PBL)
- PBL and other methods;
- PBL Examples;
- Designing PBL.
Day 3 – PBL ideas and CLIL examples
- Presenting PBL ideas;
- CLIL Examples;
- Designing CLIL.
Day 4 – Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) ideas
- Presenting CLIL ideas;
- Teamwork strategies;
- Assessment Rubrics;
- Useful tools for innovative teaching.
Day 5 – Integrating PBL and CLIL > PBLL
- Integrating PBL and CLIL;
- Designing PBLL;
- Presenting PBLL.
Day 6 – Course closure and cultural activities
- Course evaluation: round-up of acquired competencies, feedback, and discussion;
- Awarding of the course Certificate of Attendance;
- Excursion and other external cultural activities.