Cristina Pérez Sánchez
Co-designer and teaching assistant in the Biology class in French about "Les plantes carnivores"
What did I learn in the course?
In this course I have realised that both CLIL and CRLL really work, and that it is not possible to learn a language studying it just a few hours per week, which means that CLIL and CRLL are essential if we want to help our pupils to acquire language skills, vocabulary development and language fluency.
How has the course impacted my future teaching and ideas? How has it contributed to my development as a teacher?
This course has made me think that in the future I will have to cooperate with other teachers and to adapt my own English classes depending on the contents of the CLIL subject, something that I had never thought about until now.
What have I learnt with the project and how has it made me rethink/reshape my role as a language teacher?
With this project I have learnt that students are able to understand more than they think, but that we, as teachers, have to adapt our lessons to each group of students, taking into consideration their level and other factors such as their age or the number of students that we have in the class. Our “students” had never studied French and they were capable of understanding our text about carnivorous plants, which was quite challenging for beginners. Nevertheless, this activity would not have worked in a class of 30 students, this is the reason why adapting your activities to your specific group of students is indispensable.
How have I participated in the course project?
All the members of my group have participated in the course project. We created a WhatsApp group to talk about it and a Drive document, in order to decide which activities we were going to do and the strategies we were going to apply before meeting to record the video. Afterwards, we met one afternoon in Lorna’s house to shoot and we did not have any problem regarding the content of the lesson, however, our only problem was that some friends were not able to come at the last moment.
I helped to decide how we were going to introduce our “students” to the topic, how to carry out the activities; I printed the texts in the English and the French version (because not all of us speak French); I called a friend to attend our class and I assisted Claire while she was teaching (because her French is better than mine).
