Cristina Puigdollers Mayo
Co-designer and camera operator of the History class in French (La Révolution Industrielle: Cal Vidal)
What did I learn in the course?
I have learned a lot of things in this course. Even though the course has only lasted for five sessions, I have changed my mind completely as regards CLIL and CRLL. As I had some students who were in schools where CLIL had been implemented and their opinion was negative, their comments prejudiced me against this discipline. However, I have changed my opinion thanks to this course and the final project we had to design and put into practice. I have learned that the teaching-learning process is much more successful when content and language are combined, and when both English and CLIL teachers work together.
How has the course impacted my future teaching and ideas? How has it contributed to my development as a teacher?
In my opinion, the course has given me the opportunity to see the advantages of implementing CLIL or CRLL. Consequently, when I finish my master’s degree, I want to take a CLIL course to learn more about this educational practice. Since CLIL and CRLL are clearly the future, I want to be better prepared. I would love to work in a school where CLIL is brought into the classroom and get a chance to put into practice everything I have learned in this course.
What have I learnt with the project and how has it made me rethink/reshape my role as a language teacher?
I first thought that it would be impossible for the students to learn all the parts of the colony and be able to explain what each space was used for. However, I was pleasantly surprised by the students’ responses. After the implementation of the activity, I have realized that CLIL or CRLL classrooms are worthy and the way students acquire knowledge is much richer, since they learn both content and language.
I strongly believe that the visual support we had prepared together with the mimics and facial expressions our teacher used during the intervention helped our students carry out the activity successfully. Therefore, I will try to include visual support in all my classes from now on. It is easier for the students to follow the class if two different types of channels are offered: visual and auditory. Apart from that, our CLIL teacher used positive reinforcement, which helped the students gain confidence and hence, participate more. So I will definitely take all that into account when teaching in the near future.
How have I participated in the course project?
All the members have actively participated in the final project. Concerning my contribution to the course project, I have participated in the elaboration of the objectives as well as topic and activity description. I have also included a part of the bibliography and added some strategies to help students understand and produce. I think that we have worked cooperatively to design a simple but great activity.
Since I am hopeless at French, I have not been able to participate in the prediction of the language needs to carry out the activity. As I was not able to take part during the presentation because of my level of French, I recorded the whole teaching intervention.
