Jesus spoke all this things to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable (Matthew 13, 34).
CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION The theme for this project derives from my personal interest in teaching Religious Education (RE) in English. The first time I attended a Catholic mass in Ireland in the 90’s I found myself being able to communicate with people outside liturgy but completely lost in the Assembly. With no little effort, I learnt by heart all the answers of the mass. This has been a life-long gain, since those expressions containing lexis and grammar points come to my mind so easily any time I need a specific structure. Back in Spain, in collaboration with a colleague, I offered an extracurricular activity for Secondary Students: Liturgy Workshop. Since bilingual education begun gaining popularity in Madrid I’ve been considering that teaching Religion in English would render more benefits than choosing other subjects like Music or Arts & Crafts. Also, Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) methodology is commonly applied for teaching content subjects in English, and RE could follow this methodology. Anytime I commented this with colleagues and other school administrators a positive reaction was provoked. Some downsides were also presented to me: practice of Religion will be in Spanish, not English, and lack of qualified teachers. These, I was told, were the main barriers. Some other argued that it should be allowed by bishops. Regarding this, not asking permission would be enough to avoid a denial. As for the two first drawbacks, is it not the same with other subjects? So I’ve kept considering it plausible and waiting for the occasion to teach RE in English. Time has come. The present project pretends to justify such an innovation and make a concrete, real proposal to implement RE in English in a School in Madrid. The school I have chosen is Colegio Alfonso XII in S. L. de El Escorial. The year we want to introduce this innovation is the sixth of the Primary stage. This school has gained approval for an Own Pedagogic Project to be implemented in the following years. Part of this project includes an increase in the number of hours per week dedicated to teaching English teaching as a foreign language (EFL), from 3 to 5. At the same time, Arts & Crafts and Music will be taught in English from a CLIL perspective. Also, one out of four hours of Ciencias Sociales will be taught as Science: a part of the syllabus of the subject also taught in CLIL. Finally, the administrators of the school have decided to use one of the two hours of RE to be taught in the same way. This project emerges as a response to this initiative. In the case of RE, one out of two hours that this subject had so far will be deducted and passed on to English. Why? Because of the requirements that a RE teacher needs to which we must add the qualification to teach in a foreign language, as we shall show latter. This organization of a Bilingual 3
