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Character-based learning as pedagogical innovation..
Character-based learning as pedagogical innovation for CLIL teaching and Inclusive Education
Start date: Sep 1, 2016,
End date: Oct 31, 2018
PROJECT
FINISHED
Throughout this project, as far as our staff and school community is concerned, we mainly aim to get to know different angles from which we can approach CLIL and innovate in Inclusive Education, learn and come up with an innovative inclusive approach bearing in mind the principles of Character-based learning which can on the one hand deal with children with learning difficulties more efficiently and on the other hand, be able to cater for a wider range of learning styles and focus on learners´ particular needs. We also want to analyse to what extent we have been carrying out a successful Inclusion policy so far in our school and enhance the quality of our current teaching practice in CLIL and the rest of the curriculum subjects.As for our children, we want them to work closely with other European pupils in an actual European network through a website we will create and our project "twinspace" where they will play an active role exchanging assignments, uploading tasks, etc. We would also allow them to practise their English in real context where they can actually make use of the Foreign Language (FL) with an actual communicative purpose. What is more, we want to boost up their confidence towards other cultures, increase their sociocultural competence, make them more broad-minded in their lives and autonomous when approaching their learning process. Consequently, we want to provide more stimulating materials in class which can help us achieve these goals and suit all learners´ needs regardless of their potential differences.To be able to do so, we have built up a partnership with Nebrija University from Spain, an English school which has great expertise when it comes to approaching Character Education (Redhills Primary school) and Competence-based learning, an English school which is specialised in multi-intelligences teaching (Offwell Primary), an Academy Trust from England which will organize University support and research for future work in conferences and workshops with other schools up and down the country, a Latvian school which has been using CLIL for years very successfully as well as Inclusive measures and a Italian school which is specialised in dealing with SEN students and suiting all learners´needs including those ones with learning difficulties when approaching CLIL and other curricula areas. Within that partnership, we will design a set of 18 didactic units (9 per school year) during the lifespan of the project to teach English Literacy in Year 5 & 6 through CLIL and aimed at making classes more Inclusive through a Character-based approach. These didactic units will be designed using a model which will be provided with the Spanish University in collaboration with staff from the University of Exeter. These teaching units will be done in English but also, translated into the first language of the countries whose mother tongue is not English. These didactic units will revolve around a different competence-based project (one for each term, so three per school year) which will allow us to integrate content when teaching English through CLIL.During the stays with pupils, some pupils will be representatives of the all the others and will accomplish the final task of each project. A workshop will be arranged on returning where they share their experience with the classmates.Apart from these teaching units, we will also design some other materials for the rest of the curriculum subjects through a new Inclusive approach we come up with as a result of the collaboration and close cooperation with our European partners. All these materials will be assessed by the Spanish University and the consultants and University staff who participate in this project through the Academy Trust. They will both carry out research for further work in articles, talks, etc. for dissemination purposes around Europe.During the development of this project, all the members of the school community from the 5 schools as well as students and trainees from the Spanish University will participate actively when designing materials, preparing visits, etc. and teachers and lecturers with great expertise in their own corresponding field will carry out some of the academic work of this project eg assessment of materials prior to being uploaded on the website, publication of articles, participation in talks, etc. Apart from various dissemination activities eg news releases in local newspapers, radio programmes, etc. we will also arrange a conference in each country to publicize our project and spread out the results to other schools and teachers. It is worth stating that pupils and families will play an active role in all the dissemination activities we organize. We will also use "School Education Gateway" to offer our school and our partners´ schools for future job shadowing opportunities.Before bringing this summary to an end, I would like to stress the important experience this project will mean for our children´s lives.