It is common knowledge how important the support and recognition of the school administration, colleagues, and the students’ parents all is in the work of the teacher. In order to get this support, you need to inform all the groups listed about what you do. On the one hand, conducting an extracurricular activity course based on the Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) is an innovative activity. On the other hand, the CLIL represents an interdisciplinary approach (not a method or technology, but an approach). Both innovation and the use of cross-curricular technologies are what is now required from schools. This course can be a “perk” for a particular educational organization, since there is nothing similar in other schools. A teacher needs to use every opportunity to advertise his/her innovative activity: pedagogical councils, parents’ meetings, seminars and conferences, - to invite the administration, colleagues (foreign language teachers, science teachers and elementary school teachers) to classes open for the public, to conduct master classes and explain what CLIL is, what is at its core, its advantages and the huge potential for the cognitive development of students, and to help them understand the goals of learning foreign languages in relation to other school subjects. The Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) is effectively used in many countries to educate underachieving and immigrant children who are not native speakers of the language used in instruction.
Students attending courses can speak at school science days and conferences at various levels. Intensive awareness-raising activities will change the attitude towards German in the educational organization and the activities of the German language teacher, which are highly innovative. Confirmation for this assertion can be found in some reports from teachers who participated in piloting the course over the 2018-2019 academic year: “After the open classes, foreign colleagues learned about this project. The subject teachers expressed a desire to use the proposed materials and experience of our work in their lessons,” “I often heard words of gratitude from parents. At the request of the administration, several times I held open lessons that were attended by a large number of my colleagues. I spoke at a republic-wide seminar, telling about an interesting and very motivating way to learn German.
We wish you and your students good luck, and joy as you make your discoveries together!
