CLIL UNIPI CA TEACHER TRAINING COURSE April - June 2014

1. CLIL UNIPI CA TEACHER TRAINING COURSEApril - June 2014 Report on the CLIL activitycarried out at Liceo Classico e Scientifico «Euclide» Cagliari May 2014 Teacher: Marco Pani Class: III D Scientifico Students n. 17 Age of the students: 16-17 Title of the project: Relazioni e funzioni – una proposta di modulo CLIL per la Matematica

2. The project that is going to be presented here has been thought as a path through which the students will be led step by step from the basic concepts of a relation between two sets and of a function, to the notion of an analytical function. Starting from the very basic notions above mentioned, the students should acquire the fundamental competences that will make them able to deal with the most common analytical functions. Even though the project includes four phases, only the phase n. 1 (3 hours) has been carried out because of the little time available in the current school year.

3. Classroom setup Before starting each lesson, the classroom was set up and organized in order to make students work in small groups (4 people), since cooperative learning was the main strategy used in this phase.

4. The materials containing examples, definitions, instructions for the group activities and exercises were created and prepared by the teacher of Maths in cooperation with the teacher of English. First of all, a glossary was handed out to the students, who had to match the English words listed in a column with the words in Italian listed in another column of a table. The phonetic transcription of each word was also included in the glossary.

5. Using the IWB, a video taken from the Web was presented in order to highlight the main concepts that had been previously introduced. Then, the teacher started a discussion with the explicit purpose to encourage all the pupils to express their opinions on the topic of the video lesson. Watchthe video lesson

6. The students have been given different exercises to test their comprehension of the concepts they have been exploring, discovering and defining during each item of the activity. The students had to express themselves either in a written or in an oral form, for example doing cloze tests, writing definitions or answering questions asked by the teacher.

7. While carrying out this sort of tasks, the focus has always been centered on the contents. Therefore the communication in L2 among the students and between the teacher and them rose up and developed in a spontaneous way, without paying too much attention to grammar or accuracy. Only on a few occasions some corrections concerning the use of English have been made by the teacher.

8. The class context. ….read more

9. The questionnaires.Students’ expectations and results In the followingslides some graphswill show atwhatextent the students’ expectations of the coursehavebeenmet by the carried out activities. The answers to some questionsthat the studentsfoundboth in the initialquestionnaire and in the finalonehavebeencompared. The numbers on the right in eachgraph express atwhatextent the respondentsagree with the statement in the question, from 1= «I don’tagreeatall» to 5= «I totallyagree». The values in the verticalaxis indicate the number of studentswhoexpressedtheir opinion at the respectiveextent.

10. Initialquestionnaire. Question n. 6: I thinkstudyingthisway is a good idea. At the end of the lessons, more studentsthanthoseat the beginningagreedat a large extent with the opinion expressed in theseitems of the questionnaires. Finalquestionnaire. Question n. 2: I thinkthatstudyingthis way hasbeena good idea.

11. Initialquestionnaire. Quest. 8: I’llhave to face some difficulties in learning a topicthatisgoing to be taught in English. Itis easy to observethat the final situation isbetter with respect to the expectations of the students. Finalquestionnaire. Quest. 6: I encountered some difficulties in studying and in understandingnotionswhichweretaught in English.

12. Initialquestionnaire. Question n. 7: I shall take pleasurein attendingtheselessons. Finalquestionnaire. Question n. 3: I enjoyedthese new lessons. The expectationsof the studentsweregood and at the end of the course the majority of themreallyenjoyed the lessons.

13. Init. questionnaire. Quest. 9: I thinkthatmyteacherswill help me. It can be statedthat the studentsfeltthat the teacherhadbeenhelpingthemduring the lessons, even more thantheyexpected. Finalquestionnaire. Quest. 7: I had help from myteachers.

14. Initialquestionnaire. Question n. 11: my English willgetbetter. The perceivedresultsdon’tseem to be perfectlyin line with the expectations of the students. Finalquestionnaire. Question n. 10: mycompetences in English havebeenimproved.

15. The class context. As far as regards the social and cultural features of the class group, there are not any relevant differences among the students. All of them have been studying English in the secondary school for almost three years, 3 hours a week. As it concerns the competences in the second language, the average level of the students is referred to as sufficient as far as regards their abilities, even though they haven’t still reached the expected results in the skill of speaking. The general attitude of the students towards their teachers’ proposals is mostly positive and cooperative.

16. Added value of the CLIL activity. • As a result of the observation above, it seems that one of the most relevant needs of the students involved in the activity is to improve their speaking skill in L2. • Although there was not enough time to carry out all the planned activities, exception made for the phase 1 (3 hours), it has been possible to notice that the communication abilities and the speaking skill of the students have been effectively stimulated principally by: • using the cooperative learning strategy ; • focusing the attention on the contents of the subject taught in L2.

17. As far as regards the cognitive skills related to the non-linguistic subject (Maths), it may be observed that the practical approach chosen for carrying out the planned activity (use of worksheets, several examples, exercises) have had some important outcomes, since the students have showed: • a good degree of comprehension of the concepts; • a sufficient level of precision and clearness in expressing the ideas and the definitions related to each topic.

18. Conclusions. The first part of the project have been carried out for three hours, as it was planned. Although the students have been exposed to the CLIL method for so little time, some conclusions like those mentioned in the previous paragraph can be drawn either from the direct observation of the activity in the classroom or from the results of the questionnaires that were handed out to the students. The students showed a high degree of participation in the lessons and in the activities. Moreover, they enjoyed working in group and having a quick feedback on their learning, which is definitely a considerable advantage of this teaching method.

19. A part from the lack of time, speaking in general terms, the impression on this experience with the students is positive and it is also confirmed by the students in their logbooks of the course. • In particular, the students highlighted the following points: • learning several words regarding the topic which they deal with during the lessons; • working in group in an organized and effective way; • listening to and watching a video lesson on Mathematics in English; • feeling themselves involved in an English speaking activity regarding Maths; • having suitable materials and support from the teacher to overcome the difficulties that they encountered. • Back to the results of the questionnaires