The project "Hand to hand with CLIL" responds to a growing need of teaching content of the lesson with the incorporation of improving language skills. The partner schools have decided to work together on incorporating CLIL method into teaching Maths, Science, ICT and other subjects (Economics, Mechanics, Building) as they want to show the students that before-mentioned subjects, often believed to be challenging or even difficult to learn, may become an attractive adventure, which can both increase their English fluency and their chances for a better and more rewarding future career. We believe the project is needed due to the importance of mathematical and scientific literacy in todays world of employment, as well as the prime role of English language, which cannot be underestimated in becoming a successful European citizen. Learning together what CLIL method consists of and how it helps in everyday teaching is our main goal as we are able to share experience, use peer-to-peer learning and learn from the partners` good practice. There is a great benefit from the international cooperation for the partner schools because we can see the topic from a number of various perspectives, we can practice newly-aquired activities together, analyse them and give feedback to our partners. We have planned 8 project meetings, including 2 teachers training meetings, which enable the teachers to learn about CLIL method, activities useful at the lesson, ways of motivating students and effective lesson planning. 6 students` meetings, organised in each partner school focus on practising the activities, as well as teaching students social skills such as: group work, problem solving, working to deadline, communication in a foreign language, organisig activities and presentation. The meetings will also be a great chance to experience cultures of partner countries, visit places connected with their history, geography and culture. 24 students aged 15-19 from each school, including those with fewer chances, are going to be directly involved in project meetings. Neverthless, a few times larger groups will take part in the project being engaged into organising the meetings and being a subject of the practice lessons with CLIL. Mainly the teachers of: Maths, ICT, Biology, Chemistry, Physics and English will be directly involved in the project but there will also be other subject teachers taking part in the project activitites. Apart from learning, teaching and training meetings we are going to practise all the techniques at the lesson, record them and analyse together during video conferences. These lessons will be based on active, student-centered methods with extended use of ICT tools, such as Moodle platform, Quizlet, Hot Potato and many others. We plan to prepare a digital guide to CLIL, which will include plenty of useful materials, tips, lesson plans and online sources. There is also a project blog, which will be regularly written and published on Twin Space on eTwinning platform. Each project meeting will be followed by evaluation and dissemination of the project results. The final conference is going to be held during the last meeting in Poland. The project will be highly beneficial for partner school as implementing CLIL method into our teaching will: make the lessons of Maths and Science subjects more attractive, show the students that combining content learning with a language can improve their attractiveness in further education and employment, ecourage students not to drop learning these subjects too early through showing them how important they are in their future work career. There will also be countless benefits for the teachers and students such as: increased fluency in English, learning tolerance, open-mindedness, self-confidence, international cooperation and a possibility to meet new people and experience new places and cultures. "Hand to hand with CLIL" is a project which can improve the quality of teaching in all partner schools, make them more attractive and student-friendly, more modern and open to new experiences, as well as more internationally-twisted.
The project "Hand to hand with CLIL" responded to a growing need of teaching content of the lesson with the incorporation of improving language skills. The partner schools had decided to work together on incorporating CLIL method into teaching Maths, Science, ICT and other subjects (Economics, Mechanics, Building) as they wanted to show their students that before-mentioned subjects, often believed to be challenging or even difficult to learn, may become an attractive adventure, which can both increase their English fluency and their chances for a better and more rewarding future career. We believed the project was needed due to the importance of mathematical and scientific literacy in today`s world of employment, as well as the prime role of English language, which cannot be underestimated in becoming a successful European citizen. Learning together what CLIL method consists of and how it helps in everyday teaching was our main goal as we would be able to share experience, use peer-to-peer learning and learn from the partners` good practice. There has been a great benefit from the international cooperation for the partner schools because we could see the topic from a number of various perspectives, we could practice newly-aquired activities together, analyse them and give feedback to our partners. We had planned 8 project meetings, including 2 teachers` training meetings, which enabled the teachers to learn about CLIL method, activities useful at the lesson, ways of motivating students and effective lesson planning. 6 students` meetings, organised in each partner school were supposed to focus on practising the activities, as well as teaching students social skills such as: group work, problem solving, working to deadline, communication in a foreign language, organisig activities and presentation. The meetings would also be a great chance to experience cultures of partner countries, visit places connected with their history, geography and culture. 20-25 students aged 15-19 from each school, including those with fewer chances, were going to be directly involved in project meetings. Neverthless, a few times larger groups would take part in the project being engaged into organising the meetings and being a subject of the practice lessons with CLIL. Mainly the teachers of: Maths, ICT, Biology, Chemistry, Physics and English were directly involved in the project but there were also other subject teachers taking part in the project activitites. Apart from learning, teaching and training meetings we managed to practise all the techniques at the lesson, record them and analyse together during video conferences, real and virtual mobilities. These lessons were based on active, student-centered methods with extended use of ICT tools, such as MSTeams platform, Quizlet, Kahoot, and many others. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic the project had to be postponed reaching the total duration of 35 months. 3 out of 6 students meetings were affected by the pandemic. One of them was not attended by all partner schools, and 2 of them were held virtually. Obviously, there are some drawbacks but also benefits of this situation. Firstly, some students couldn`t take part in mobilities and discover partner countries in reality. On the other hand, more students benefited from virtual meetings. And both, students and teachers were able to develop and improve their IT skills. We prepared a digital guide to CLIL, which includes plenty of useful materials, tips, lesson plans and online sources. There is also a project blog, which has been regularly written and published on Twin Space on eTwinning platform. Each project meeting was followed by evaluation and dissemination of the project results. The final products have been disseminated and popularised among local schools, educational authorities. The final conference, planned in the application stage, was not possible to be organised. Therefore, partner schools did it locally and on the Internet. The project has beeen highly beneficial for partner school as implementing CLIL method into our teaching has: made the lessons of Maths and Science subjects more attractive, showed the students that combining content learning with a language can improve their attractiveness in further education and employment, encouraged students not to drop learning these subjects too early through showing them how important they are in their future work career. There have also been countless benefits for the teachers and students such as: increased fluency in English, learning tolerance, open-mindedness, self-confidence, international cooperation and a possibility to meet new people and experience new places and cultures. "Hand to hand with CLIL" is a project which has improved the quality of teaching in all partner schools, made them more attractive and student-friendly, more modern and open to new experiences, as well as more internationally-twisted.