Reflection

When we started the GEP-1 2021-22 we didn't have very clear what it could mean. We all knew some things about CLIL but thanks to GEP-1 we could have plenty of new ideas, and we could clarify some concepts related to CLIL such as; comprehensible INPUT and OUTPUT, BICS and CALP, visual organizers, collaborative and cooperative techniques, etc. We could also apply some new ideas or structures taken from 'handy classroom language' sessions and above all, we were offered a great range of activities and ideas to improve our own classroom sessions. Moreover, our GEP-1 trainers always offered us their personal advising, rich feedbacks on each practise and suggestions to improve our tasks which helped us to plan, design and create better activities so, we could reach the objectives of the project.

After the second synchronous session, we were asked to think about some CLIL sessions to be implemented in our school. We had many doubts about it, but from the very beginning we focused our task 1 activities on the secondary grades of compulsory education, but integrating lower levels and younger students into it. Our GEP-1 leadership team is made up of two teachers of secondary education, Mar Saura and Sandra Terradellas plus one teacher of primary education with the English language speciality, Ariadna Pinós. We are sure that this aspect absolutely enriched our CLIL sessions as we could have the perspective of both educational stages.

At the beginning, the project was a bit challenging as we found it difficult to approach the idea of combining content, language and different levels. But after some GEP-1 sessions, we could start focusing on the objectives and the methodology we could use for our CLIL sessions. We planned most of the activities in cooperative groups, as it is one of the pedagogical basis from our school project so, we tried to offer spaces to join and collaborate together with lower grades, as it is 4th graders of primary education.

The best part of this experience for us, as teachers, was having the time to work together with teachers from different fields (arts, biology, technology, and language), to collaborate actively with primary and secondary teachers and, to cope with the difficulties of adapting the content and the language to the different educational levels accordingly. We, as GEP-1 members, had the space and the time to plan, create, reflect and implement the proposal which was so gratifying and enriching for both teachers and students. It was also very exciting to live and guide the creative process of our students, as we could discover some real artists in it. On the other hand, CSE-1 students were very proud of their productions and even more to have the opportunity to share them with other students. They also felt important to teach new content to their schoolmates, and in the same way, primary students felt good to be part of the activities done by secondary students. Since primary students were constantly praised by their older schoolmates, they were really motivated, and consequently they all tried to keep a high level of English language during the whole Cosmic Fair. But this project couldn't have been successful without the invaluable collaboration and involvement of the CSE teachers; Núria Rierola and Toni Breganciano who helped and worked to carry out the project offering their knowledge and using English as the working language in class during the sessions.

All in all, it was a wonderful experience for everybody.

Planning task 2 was not as challenging as task 1 as we already had the experience and the knowledge from task 1. Moreover, as the first task was so demanding for us, we decided to keep it a little bit easier this time. That is the reason why we designed a project only for 4th graders.

The topic of task 2 was taken from the interest of 4th grade students. At the beginning of the academic year, students were asked about what type of science project they would like to work on and the general topic was endangered animals. So, they were very motivated with this task and they enjoyed it very much.

In task 2, students learned to use practical English language by interacting with their classmates while playing a game in class, collaborating in groups to get information or teamworking and investigating about the chosen animal. The general aims of this project were to give students the proper frame to work collaboratively, foster interaction in English, give students strategies and tools to be able to make predictions and to create an expository text and use self evaluation and peer evaluation as tools to improve self-reflection about their own learning process.