PROJECT WORK AT TXOMIN ARESTISCHOOL IN LEIOA
Bego単a Garaizar, Claire Wofford, Alaine Ziarreta and Elena Llarena
1. When and why did you start doing project work at school?
Working through projects started at Txomin Aresti officially in 2010-2011, but informally the project has been developed in the school for many school years. This project is a group effort and strategy that is used in this center. Our projects are designed around linking science and social studies curriculum to language arts by working on a genre approach. Each sequence focus on an specific text type in each language.
2. Who and how does the project planning?
The project planning is completed by classroom tutors and specialists. English specialists attend the sessions in Berritzegune to get more ideas and to share information with other schools about the planning of the projects. Through resources on the internet, other textbooks, a little bit of imagination and a lot of hard work, we plan the different project units.
3. How do you articulate the content and the three languageswithin the project?
As English teachers, we are not responsible for the content because the content is covered in the subject classes. We work on the language itself and language that students will need to talk about the topic. We take advantage of the contents learned in L1 and L2 and develop material based around a final product that students will produce. We collaborate in order to avoid repeating types of text. 2
4. Which are the main changes(if any) that doing project work has brought to real classroom learning-life?
Students have a sense of responsibility for their work in the project. They have to stay organized and are also responsible for finding information they may need about the topic. The project allows for more dynamic classroom activity like interactive group work or oral work in pairs.
5. In your teaching context at USA, is project work a real option for schools? Which are the main issuesthat are taken into consideration when planning and delivering a project?
Project work is effective depending on the school setting. In a smaller school with more direct teacher attention and more sessions of the foreign language per week, project work allows for more intense coverage of material between classes. In larger schools with more students and fewer sessions of language a week, project work is less effective, because it requires continuity. In planning and delivering a project, the most important issue to consider is time to implement— sufficient time with the students, sufficient time to create the material, and sufficient time to evaluate the students.
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