Our CLIL project

I have written very little about the unit on learning a foreign language, because all of our group production is gathered in our blog and a website where we present the project we created. It has been a very interesting experience, and I think I can share the self-evaluation that I sent to our teacher here.

Regarding our group’s work, I would say that overall it has been excellent. Ours has been a very solid group, with highly committed partners. In my opinion, one of the keys was that during those weeks when we had two “free” classes we used them to discuss readings, which we all read home. We had really interesting dialogic readings there. Having said that, I think our group peaked at the Zerain project’s proposals, instead of our own project. It seemed as if we employed most of our creativity and energy in the one that was intended to be the rehearsal, and we found it hard to keep up the level, at least regarding the design of activities. We did pay quite some attention to the overall setting of our project, and we thought carefully about how to do the free circulation (first we wanted to mix groups of different ages, and we tied to design that, but we had some doubts, and changed it, etc.). We also took time to have a blog for the process and a web for the outcome of the project, which shows the interest we placed in the unit and our work.

When it comes to my participation in our group, I am very happy with myself. I think that my greatest contribution has been being the “gentle pusher”, especially those first weeks, when we could have lost some precious time that we were not going to be able to recover in the last weeks of what turned to be a quite intense term, regarding assignments. I have also been the one trying to keep up with the readings in the last few weeks. I have been as active as I usually am in group work. But, as I have said, ours is a really good group, and it is always easy to feel good about the contribution of oneself when you are in good company. The only down side has been the feeling that sometimes I was letting one of my group-mates down, because I am a really bad interpreter, and I couldn’t listen and translate at the same time for her. I know she has felt frustrated and hasn’t learnt as much as she would have liked. Many times during the term I wondered if it would have been better to be just the two of us, and do a one-to-one CLIL between two adults, but then again, that raised many doubts: would what we learnt have been transferrable to preschool CLIL? would you have had time to give us support, bearing into account that there were many other groups in class? would we have learnt the same about CLIL as we have? I don’t know. I was very pleased with my presentation on the book “Don’t let the pigeon drive the bus”, but not so much with my part in the last day’s presentation; I was really exhausted, it had been quite a terrible week, and I didn’t have the energy I would have liked. It was a good thing I did the first one.

About my participation in class, I must admit I have felt a bit uneasy. I didn’t want to overshadow anyone or set any standard, and I have tried not to participate too much. It is something I have given a lot of thought about during the term, although I have not reached a final conclusion about the issue yet. And, once again, our class makes a very good group, where I feel accepted the way I am. I took part in the happy class beginning and the classroom journalism, and I think that my attitude has always been positive and constructive, so I am also very happy about my participation in the group.

I think that I have learnt a lot in the unit, not only about CLIL, which I had never heard of before, but about being a teacher too. I found our role playing sessions very inspiring, there was a formidable progression in the whole group, and I really learnt a lot there. I think it has been an attractive and solid introduction for the minor I will hopefully take next year.