Express Winter School 2025, Lviv, Ukraine

I spent three days in Lviv, Ukraine this week for a two-day Winter School event supported by Express Publishing (many thanks to them), and organized by Natalia Liashko and with contribution from Natalia Zachynska.
I'd like to express my heartfelt thanks to both for their organization, commitment and dedication to bringing opportunities like this to the teachers of Ukraine.
Networking, sharing, socializing keep energies high, thanks to you!



Selecting Groups

The background to this Winter School is several years of online collaboration with Ukrainian colleagues with an interest in CLIL. My co-contributors had met me in online trainings for CLIL and step by step this led to a face-to-face meeting in Lviv.

I carried over 60 FACT Journals with me. This is FACT Journal 38. 11 were for Natalia and colleagues who came to Plovdiv in person for CLIL training at my school this past summer (2024). The journal was the product of the work of this group. Now they get their hands on the whole collection in print. Now, that's what I call Putting CLIL into Practice!
The remainder of the journals are for teachers to take in return for a donation to charity work providing for Ukrainian war veterans in hospital.


Facial Features - Primary

CLIL has a clear role in Ukraine’s future education. It’s a clear role because CLIL is about skills first and foremost, where these skills carry the concepts and are facilitated by language. Ukraine will need to be ready with skills in the post-war period. This meeting is a first step to help provide this skills training. Believe me when I say that it is just the start and there will be more. We are discussing a Spring School on CLIL as I write.

The Winter School programme had the dual focus of introducing CLIL and lesson planning to the group of 30 teachers who came together from numerous locations round Ukraine to the beautiful city of Lviv.

Also in the programme were three demo lessons, with time to discuss and unpack the lessons and with a closing plenary on inclusion.

CLIL Lesson on Genetic Heredity

Teaching Writing - Upper Secondary

In the spirit of the Putting CLIL into Practice course we run at Anglia School in Bulgaria, participants were tasked with preparing and presenting their own lessons in smaller focus groups.  

Group Discussion on CLIL

The colleagues were given several lesson plan templates to choose from.

Templates For Planning Lessons


Small Group Lesson Planning

Along the way, we tasted Bulgarian lyutenitsa (tomato and pepper pickle), we sniffed Bulgarian chubritsa (herb used in cooking) and rose oil, we danced Horo to Bulgarian music, we juggled as a way of dealing with post-lunch sleepiness, and at night we walked around Lviv guided by the endless knowledge of Volodya (thanks Volodya!)

The teachers went home invigorated with positive energy, which is the best outcome we could hope to achieve and their feedback was excellent!

Winter School Certificate

20.01.25


You can download the ppt on 'CLIL - Guiding Input and Supporting Output' here.