UK - LAC NILE

Language Across the Curriculum 2
NILE, September 2006

I was happy to contribute to a course with a wonderful group of teachers in two groups from Italy, China, Bulgaria, Poland and Portugal.  It was the last week of the NILE (www.nile-elt.com) summer courses and despite the fact that many things were winding up the teachers were full of enthusiasm throughout the course.

The teachers were divided into two groups for the Language Across the Curriculum Course at NILE with a large group of primary teachers from Emilia Romagna and the rest from secondary and tertiary education.

My own contribution was only for the second week as I had been participating in the Emilia Romagna Regional Lend Conference in Italy the week before.  The main focus of interest from the teachers was on language and task design as well as resources for integrating content and language.  I presented sessions looking at tasks for ‘processing’ language and task for ‘producing’ language and we investigated language and structure in texts to this end.  We also visited a variety of websites such as Enchanted Learning (www.enchantedlearning.com) for its wonderful section on graphic organisers and the FACTWorld site www.factworld.info and www.groups.yahoo.com/group/factworld/ for networking opportunities.

Teachers presenting their project work

Supporting language in experiments

The presentations were particularly good and reflected the amount of work and energy the teachers had put into them during the course.

Presentation 1 - States of water

Presentation 2 – herbivores and carnivores

Presentation 3 – the weather

Presentation 4 - Domestic animals

Presentation 5 – Observing plants

Presentation 6 – Static electricity

Presentation 7 - Cooking

Presentation 8 - shapes

Presentation 9 – endangered animals

Presentation 10 - cosmetics

Presentation 11 – travel UK

The course closed with hugs and kisses and promises to keep in touch.  Well, I know I’ll be meeting up with some of the Italian colleagues again at the National Lend conference in Bologna in March, perhaps at a seminar their local trainers would like to run in Bologna in November if the dates and content are convenient.