CLIL for Preprimary Science in Cyprus

Teaching Science through CLIL in Preprimary

I’d been to Cyprus before to work with the wonderful colleagues at the Cyprus CLIL Centre who have been tirelessly developing CLIL and supporting teachers in preprimary and primary. I also hosted experts and inspectors for Erasmus+ inservice training in Anglia School. The trainings offered are here: https://www.factworld.info/en/Bulgaria-Course-Putting-CLIL-into-Practice. 
That was the week that produced the content you can find in FACT 24 (https://www.factworld.info/en/Bulgaria-FACT-Journals-Issue-24) which focuses entirely on adapting the Cypriot preschool science curriculum for CLIL classrooms.
This return visit was planned to be a follow-up on the week of training in Plovdiv. What that means in practice is that I prepared content to share with colleagues where they would see and understanding what we did in adapting the Greek-medium preschool science curriculum for learners working through English. Additionally, with this understanding we then challenged the participants in their small groups to take another branch of the curriculum and develop it for CLIL in using what has already been done as a model.

The two days were extremely fruitful. The 42 degree heat didn’t stop anyone, though we did keep the work to the mornings so that we could miss the peak hours of the heat!

Day 1 was with a group of 23 preschool teachers in the Cyprus CLIL centre in Nicosia

Day 2 was in the village of Agios Athanasios with 18 preprimary teachers from around the Lemassol region. We were based in what was the first school in the village now used as an events centre, and backed on to the largest primary school in the whole of Cyprus!


This is the link to the slides I used outlining our work on adapting the Greek-medium preschool science curriculum to CLIL.
All the examples come from good old CLIL practice at Anglia School.

There is so much more but we only had a few hours together. 

The feedback was very good, and there was an appetite from many for more of the same kind of experience.

We talked a lot about Erasmus+ opportunities for the colleagues to come to Bulgaria for a longer period of professional development.
We were reminded of words from dear Maria (maths expert) – ‘Let’s math the curriculum’. Well, we didn’t math the curriculum, but we did use the emotion to science the curriculum. Future work could take this further into preschool science for CLIL in Cyprus. Why not into other areas of the curriculum too (Maths indeed, Art, Nature, The World Around Us, PE)?
The 8 transversal competencies are a good way to bring different areas of the school curriculum together.
CLIL with its focus on ‘concepts’, ‘procedures’ and ‘language’ is the dynamo which can facilitate this integrated approach.
The truth is that all curriculum subjects have shared conceptual, procedural and linguistic content and what CLIL does is make these dimensions visible and explicit so that teachers can see and work with the areas of their curriculum content which naturally overlap and tie in together in a way which makes a focus on language which is useful throughout the curriculum a very sensible way to go. Bravo to Cyprus, I wish more countries would do the same.

Watch this space, our Cypriot colleagues have a lot to share and offer in this area!
Keith
24.06.06