Wednesday, 23. October 2019

This day we visited the "St. Catherine's High School". It´s an indepent school so the parents have to pay around 400€ per month to send their children there. 

At first we had some CLIL-training with Catherine. She showed us some "breaking the ice"-activities (e.g.: Who am I? etc.). After that we discussed in pairs what CLIL is and the whole group togehter summarised the knolwedged what we learned already in the past eight days about CLIL. Here are some key points that I will take from the discussion: 

• focus on the four C´s
• pronounciation is very important
• scaffolding
• Blooms taxonomie
• difference between hard and soft CLIL
• CLIL is not a language lesson, the content is important.     
• It´s not necessary to be perfect - we learn a language to communicate! 

 She also showed us to short videos which explain again what CLIL exactly is:

What is CLIL

CLIL: a brief introduction 

After the lesson with Cathrine we met the Headmaster Ms. Sue Midolo and made a tour through the school. The school was founded 1909 and is open to local and foreign students, boys and girls, ranging from the Flutterby Child Care Centre (2 year olds) through the Junior and Senior School (16 year olds), up to the standard required for the Secondary Education Certificate (SEC). 

I was amazed by the atmosphere in the school. The teachers are very heartly to their students and also the building itself with all his decorations gave me the feeling that this is a good place to learn. Here you can see some impressions: 

Very interesting was also a new concept from the school with wich they experiment at the moment: The students at the age of 13 have only some basic subjects (Maths, English, Maltese etc.). In addition to this they have to choose four other subjects, either academic (like geography, physics etc.) or more vocational. When they came to the conclusion that they may have picked the wrong subjects they are even allowed to change them. I think that is the way how it should be so that every student can follow his or her interests.  

After the visit of the school we were driven to the temples of Ħaġar Qim. It´s a megalithic temple complex dating between 3600 to 3200 BC. The megalithic temples are among the most ancient religious sites on earth.