Friday, 18. October 2019

Today were our last lessons at the EC Malta. At first we talked with Sam about very differnt topics relating to teaching. For example about "motivation". How motivated the students (or the teachers) are depends on different elements as the teacher himself, the subject, the topic or on one's mood and state of mind on the specific day. We brainstormed some ideas how we could keep ourselves and our students motivated. 

We also talked about the goals of our teaching. Is it to make the students happy or should they be well prepared for their working life? I think that we as teachers can provide them different materials, give them support and create a good enviroment but the students themselves have to choose what they need to achieve their own, personal goals. Sam had a nice adage for that which brings it on the point: 

"You can take a horse to water, but you can´t make it drink."

Our teacher presented us then "The 4 C´s model" of CLIL, which is a framework for teaching a foreign language. It consists of the following: 

For further information you can visit the following website: https://clilingmesoftly.wordpress.com/clil-models-3/the-4-cs-model-docoyle/

In the second lesson the focus was on learning vocabalury. There are three different ways and all have there pros and cons. So again, it would be good to vary these strategies.

1. high repetition, low focus: read a lot, extensive reading, high frequency vocab is often repeated
2. medium repetition, medium focus: Leitner-Syste
3. low repetition, high focus: write a conversation, story or essay; use the words that you have chosen in a new context

 At the end of our last lesson, Sam summarised the last few days. He showed us on what it depends when it comes to teaching a foreign language/CLIL. 

With Therese we had a very practical lesson. She tried to give us an impression of how a good CLIL-Lesson could look like. Also she (and also Sam) showed us some helpful websites to work with:

• https://www.sketchengine.eu/skell/
• https://www.britishcouncil.org/english/business/apps/sounds-right 
• http://danariely.com/
• https://www.wordandphrase.info/

At the end of our three-days at EC Malta we were invited to drinks and food. We got our certificates and had some good talks about the last few days. The time at EC Malta gave me a good impression of how a CLIL-lesson could look like and how I can implement CLIL in my everyday work.

At 6:30pm we were picked up from Tracy, our guide, at the hotel for our guided tour of Mdina by night. Mdina is a fortified city which served as the capital of Malta from antiquity to the medieval period. It´s a very beautiful city but make yourself an own opinion: