Hairdressing and cosmetics (IP101A) year 1 VET is composed of a total of 20 students, 16-22 years old. All of them come from medium-low purchasing power families. In terms of language skills, students in this class do present different levels of understanding and speaking competences. Most of the students have a basic knowledge of the language; few of them showed a rather excellent level of competence; some students believed their level of English hinder their active participation instead. However, the majority of the students showed a fair knowledge of the fundamentals of marketing in L1. This helped me to move ahead with the materials I have designed in order to pursue this course’s objectives in terms of content and language as well.

Module 1

We reviewed the essentials of CLIL, mainly what we remembered from GEP, the main characteristics of PBL and differences with a plain project. An interesting finding is that PBL and CLIL share lots of features and when combined we will enable our students to be more motivated and willing to be part of a challenging and meaningful project.

To sum up, it was very interesting learning about PBL (lots of resources and materials available) and undoubtedly we could have enjoyed it more if we had had more time to carry out our tasks.

Module 2

An interesting feature of this module was how to plan meaningful tasks and meaningful questions. The importance of asking good driving questions, in order to get the students involved in the project.

At first sight, it was difficult to grasp the backwards planning steps, but with the help of of videos and activities it finally helped to better understand the idea.

Module 3

One of the main tasks of this module was to classify academic content into knowledge and skills. Thanks to a video we could better understand the differences between the two concepts. The original idea was to “begin with the end in mind” which is the opposite procedure to follow when dealing with a project and its development stages.

Another interesting feature was to learn about the awareness of integrated language and content in CLIL-PBL projects. Some very interesting examples were availabe in this module.

The Wizer interactive activity was a good example of an enjoyable learning tool.

We had to choose the appropriate discursive verb for each CLIL assessment criteria which made us aware of the specific language used in this context.

Module 4

An interesting module where we teachers had to change our roles and for once pretend we are students dealing with a task given by our teachers.

The description and comparison of two pictures, which apparently should be easy, entail difficulties especially if the vocabulary and sentence structure knowledge is very basic.

Therefore the importance of language support for the students is vital, predicting any

difficulties they may encounter and this is directly linked with COL – Content Obligatory Language.

Module 5

More information on PBL features and the differences with plain projects. We learnt how to connect our project with the Catalan Curriculum, which will help us to fill in the dimensions and competences part of the template.

Ideas on how to build up projects step by step and assessment tools which will help us to design our project.

Module 6

Main concepts revision learnt in GEP1 about PBL and assessment.

Very interesting and self-explanatory video Austin’s Butterflies highlighting the importance of “meaningful feedback” and how the students’ performance can be improved.

The 3-2-1 strategy as a formative assessment tool. It can be helpful for getting students to organize their thoughts, and promote reflection and metacognition. This activity provides an easy way to check for understanding and guide student interest. It is also an effective way to promote, discuss or review material.This activity would traditionally be introduced toward the end of a lesson.

3 things that you have learnt in this module: assessment methods presented in a different way/ digital resources / games, etc.

2 questions you still have about assessment: Is assessment a never ending task? Should students be allowed to redo their activities as many times as they need?

1 important idea about this module: self-assessment and peer-assessment essential in the students learning process

Module 7

We learned about CIC (Classroom Interactional Competence). How to achieve a high-quality CIC, the different types of talk, how to create meaningful interaction, how to shape learners’ contributions and many other resources on S-S and T-S interaction.

It was interesting to watch the video of a CLIL lesson and check the strategies used by the teacher. A detailed video analysis checklist help identify the different aspects of the teaching process.

Only when implemeting a project one realizes that time is precious and some activities needed more time than we had previously planned, but the final result is fine and we appreciated the students committment and hard work to achieve the objective.

All in all we are satisfied with results, despite the difficulties encountered and the tight deadlines, we would definitely do it again. It’s really worth the effort!!