My project (“Citizenship and Costitution”) included five learning units, concerning different topics: “the History of the Self”, “Environmental Education”, “Nutritional Education” and “Road Safety Education”.
The content and the degree of detail was calibrated in accordance with children’s age, intercultural and linguistic competence. 

Working with small groups of students and in a different classroom, I decided to use only my laptop.
My students can freely have access to it and use it for our purposes.
Finally, during the year, everyone can check his/her Learning Diary (our portfolio), constantly updated and personalized.

The cognitive and the cultural benefits of a multilingual classroom are evident. 
 Considering the cognitive level, bilingual/multilingual children have high levels of linguistic competence, they focus better on their tasks avoiding irrelevant distractions, they can gain new metalinguistic skills and develop their abstract thinking. Learning a new language or some of its aspects always requires a cooperative and supportive attitude. 

Considering the cultural level, multilingual/bilingual children have the opportunity to discover new cultures (ways of life, thinking and perceiving the world) through the knowledge of different languages. 
In the long run, while an important barrier (the lack of linguistic competence) to mobility is removed, future work oppurtunities increase. 

For this reason, nowadays, encouraging bilingualism and multilingualism has to be considered as a teacher’s duty. 

Furthermore, as underlined by Nell Foster, in a multilingual classroom teachers (who do not master all their pupils’ languages) are forced to switch their roles with their students. 

Making comparisons between the languages they already know, kids and teenagers can start explaining/ teaching some aspects of their languages understanding these elements in a better way, developing their metalinguistc competence and a sense of ownership. 

Thinking about the challenges, I experienced two different difficulties:
 One day, some of my Moroccan students were talking to each other using their mother tongue (they were drawing). I was very happy to listen to them, but when I asked them to translate what they were saying, they started laughing without replying. Maybe it was just a secret, but I experienced a feeling of confusion and exclusion... 

The second difficulty is related to some of my students’ sense of shame. During these two years, I observed that, in a monolingual atmosphere, some Arabic dominant bilingual children tend to avoid speaking their mother-tongue at school, they really do not want to speak it. They always use their second language in front of the other monolingual students, considering their first language as the language that can be spoken only at home or among the other students who share the same origin, culture and social condition. 

Certainly, this phenomenon is related to negative linguistic attitudes, strengthened by the monolingual environment where the children are immersed. In this case, i do not force them to speak their language, but I try to convince them that their mother tongue has to be seen as a beautiful resource, as a strenght,  not as a weakness. 

All my students know that they are allowed to speak all the languages they know in the classroom. 

Thinking about the activities described by Nell, in some few cases I adopted similar strategies: 

-Two years ago I asked three students (a Syrian boy, an Egyptian boy and an Ecuadorian girl), who were nine years old and who were Italian dominant bilingual (the boys)/Spanish dominant bilingual (the girl), to bring a recipe of a typical traditional dish of their homelands. They did their homework, but all of them decided to write it in Italian! I made a mistake, because I did not ask them to rewrite it using the other languages they knew, anyway..we made a beautiful and colourful poster that included all the recipes. 

-Two years ago I asked two girls who were Arabic dominant bilingual (an Egyptian girl and a Moroccan girl) and who were nine years old to translate a short poem using their mother tongues. 
They did it and they prepared two beautiful drawings related to the poem.
It was a wonderful experience and I want to repeat it, absolutely!. 

-Last year I asked one Moroccan student (an Italian dominant bilingual girl), who was seven years old and who was learning to write and to read Arabic (attending the Arabic School in Milan), to teach me how to pronounce the numbers from 1 to 10 in Arabic.  I remember that we laughed a lot because my pronunciation was horrible and I tended to forget what i had just learnt.
 -Two weeks ago, after reading a fragment taken from the Sepulveda’s book “The Story of a Seagull and the Cat who taught her to fly”, I convinced the same student to make a drawing, using the programme Paint. She wrote the word “cat” using all the languages she wanted. She chose six languages: Arabic, Italian, French, English, Chinese and Russian. It was a successful activity!. 

Finally, last week, I persuaded all my students to prepare a poster where everyone had to write one of the Key-Words learnt during the Project “Citizenship and Costitution”. All the words had to be written using all the languages my pupils know. uring the activity, all the children seemed quite excited and happy. 

Thinking about Nell’s suggestions, even though I prepared few multilingual creative projects, I recognize that 

-          I have never provided texts in many languages. 

-          I have never allowed my students to prepare a project using all the languages they know (supporting interactions among people who speak the same language) 

-          I have never asked my students to make comparisons between the languages they know or to reflect about the peculiarity of their linguistic mistakes. 

These are certainly weaknesses I have to face. 

The main challenges might be related to the sense of shame some of my Arabic students experience considering the use of their mother tongue at school (negative linguistic attitudes connected with the monolingual environment where my pupils are immersed) and some difficulties related to my students' lack of proficiency (especially taking into consideration their writing and reading skills) in Arabic. Anyway, when I hear my students speaking to each other using their mother tongue, I am always very proud of them (and they know that :-) )!. 

-Two years ago I asked three students (a Syrian boy, an Egyptian boy and an Ecuadorian girl), who were nine years old and who were Italian dominant bilingual (the boys)/Spanish dominant bilingual (the girl), to bring a recipe of a specific food of their homelands. They did their homework, but all of them decided to write it in Italian! I made a mistake, because I did not ask them to rewrite it using the other languages they knew, anyway..we made a beautiful and colourful poster that included all the recipes.

-Two years ago I asked two girls who were Arabic dominant bilingual (an Egyptian girl and a Moroccan girl) and who were nine years old to translate a short poem using their mother tongues. 
They did it and they prepared two beautiful drawings related to the poem.
It was a wonderful experience and I want to repeat it with many more students, absolutely!.

-Last year I asked one Moroccan student (an Italian dominant bilingual girl), who was seven years old and who was learning to write and to read Arabic (attending the Arabic School in Milan), to teach me how to pronounce the numbers from 1 to 10 in Arabic.  I remember that we laughed a lot because my pronunciation was horrible and I tended to forget what i had just learnt.
 -Two weeks ago, after reading a fragment taken from the Sepulveda’s book “The Story of a Seagull and the Cat who taught her to fly”, I convinced the same student to make a drawing, using the programme Paint. She wrote the word “cat” using all the languages she wanted. She chose six languages: Arabic, Italian, French, English, Chinese and Russian. It was a successful activity!.

Finally, last week, I persuaded all my students to prepare a poster where everyone had to write one of the Key-Words learnt during the Project “Citizenship and Costitution”. All the words had to be written using all the languages my pupils know. We haven’t finished the poster yet, but, during the activity, all the children seemed quite excited and happy.

Considering the other suggestions provided by Nell, I intend to design a new project:
Different groups of students will have to carry out research on a specific topic using all the languages they know. 

As Nell said, this kind of activity should promote the use of the mother tongues spoken by the students as a real didactic resource. Furthermore it should support interactions and cooperation among students who speak the same language. 

Finally, in order to improve my students’ memory and metalinguistic competence I will go on asking children to make comparisons between the languages they already know and to reflect about the peculiarity of their linguist mistakes.

The comparisons will concern the key words or particular expressions my students will learn within the project Citizenship and Costitution.
To accomplish these tasks they will be able to use all the translation programmes they want.

If I were a Primary Teacher I really would like to promote Content and Language Integrated Learning in my lessons. I think that, in this case, I would choose a topic and a goal for every group of students who do not attend courses of Catholic Religion within the topics of the Projects defined by the Primary Teachers. I would make explicit the necessary vocabulary, I would plan the whole lesson, choosing coherently two or three activities. I would like to use some visuals too. 
 Finally, in order to assess my students, I would create some quizzes. 

If I had a real opportunity to plan a CLIL activty, I would like to start with one of the largest groups of students I have to teach to this year. It is represented by 9 children who are 10 years old: four Moroccan children (two boys and two girls), two Egyptian children (one boy and one girl), one Italian girl, one Chinese girl and one Romanian girl. Considering the Project, one of the Units I have to consider with them this year is referred to “Environmental Education” in particular, within this Unit, the topic “Water-pollution” has the main relevance. I would love to create a CLIL activity connected with this topic.

My main concerns would probably be related to the first stage of my Planning, concerning the choice of the necessary vocabulary and sentences whose understanding and memorisation might result too difficult for some students. I know the huge difficulties my students and many of their classmates experience in English.. 
From one hand, I know a CLIL activity could help them to face and overcome these difficulties (encouraging them to learn a topic and its coherent vocabulary using this language), from the other hand, in some cases, for some pupils, working on multiple levels simultaneously and autonomously might become extremely difficult. Anyway, also these students might take advantage of CLIL, learning important competences (cooperation), developing creativity, critical thinking and problem solving.

From my perspective, taking the linguistic proficiency into account, some potential difficulties of a CLIL approach might concern the different levels that characterize all the different students of a single classroom. 

Implementing all his/her CLIL activities, a teacher decides what kind of material he/she intends to create/to find and to provide, what kind of vocabulary and specific sentences intends to present. Doing that, she/he has a specific level of linguistic proficiency in mind. This level might be the level of some pupils, but not of all the pupils. Furthermore the expressions or the structures a teacher usually adopts must be functional (communicative strategy) and can be completely new, in other words, not related to the structures or expressions previously taught. For this reason they might not be immediately understandable/easy to memorize for all the students.
I know that someone might object that the best ways a student has to overcome his/her own difficulties (in a language or in a subject) remain cooperation, involvement, motivation and dialogue and that these elements are certainly promoted by CLIL activities (all of them have a crucial role). 
Anyway, I think it’s really important to be sure that all the resources given to our students can be effectively accessible. Sometimes I become aware of the fact that an activity that I thought to be adaptable for all of my students turns out to be extremely difficult for some of them, these students can work with others very well, but they find a lot of difficulties when they are asked to reflect and to focus on their task individually. 
Finally, it's vital to develop activities that take into consideration all the aspects implied by the linguistic competence (writing, speaking, listening and reading), giving to them the same importance.

Finally, working in a Primary school, I am familiar with Drive, Google Classroom, Padlet, Pinterest and Scratch. At the beginning of this year, I decided to prepare a small semiotic game consisting of two small quizzes, in particular, I used Canva and Nearpod.
All the children were asked to identify and to describe (in different ways, according to the age) the activities that were represented by three Flashcards selected from a large group of 100 Flashcards (!). After that all the children were asked to answer to some questions (true/false, multiple choice/open questions) related to the images I had prepared at home using Nearpod. My students really loved this activity!. In the future, I hope to have time to prepare other quizzes, using the new tools I discovered today.

A) Content, Context, Creativity, Culture

B) Content, Communication, Cognition, Culture

C)Content, Context, Communication, Creativity.

2) It is not possible to create a flipping CLIL

A)     True                 B) False

3) In order to prepare quizzes you can use

A)  Quizlet and Wordwall

B)  Wordwall, Popplet, Kahoot!

C) Quzlet, Wordwall, Rubistar

-A short quiz in order to use the new relevant vocabulary (I would use Wordwall), followed by questions made by the teacher to different students (in order to elicit individual answers).

-A short coding game (found on Pinterest, but modified by me): students have to decipher a short message using our alphabet, considering two other different codes simultaneously. 

-Preparation of an “ancient papyrus leaf” using vinyl glue, gauze, vinyl glue plus coffee.
Example :
YouTube video link: https://youtu.be/LWZx1mqtS1c

-Choice and reproduction of Hieroglyphics with their meaning on a piece of paper, followed by a short individual presentation of the artwork.

Finally, considering the Evaluation, every student should compile a self-assessment form (I would use Rubistar). 

My father’s family was quite poor; my grandmother did not work and my grandfather was just a male nurse who worked many hours every day. Futhermore, my grandparents’ education level was quite low… my grandmother loved to read, to write and to tell wonderful stories, mixing freely the Italian language and her dialect. 

When my father was a child and started attending his primary school, he could only use Italian; every dialect was strictly forbidden. The Southern Dialects, even the Southern strong accents, were  condemned by the teachers and judged negatively. They were considered as a distinguishing mark that, in general, revealed a low and problematic socio-economic situation. 
 At school, my father often felt ashamed and embarrassed, he did not like his teachers at all. 

From the beginning, his story taught me that, as teachers, we need to allow our students to use their languages or dialects in the classroom without judging them. The knowledge of another language/other languages has to be acknowledged, valorized (especially at school) and considered as an advantage, a real strenght. 

From one hand, It is important to promote a multilingual environment and to develop language/cultural awareness, from the other hand, it is vital to explicit the weaknesses and the limits that characterize a monolingual environment. From my perspective, the next step should be represented by the official use of these beautiful languages in real tasks, school exercises and tests. 
Creating a multilingual dictionary is an amazing idea!

I really liked this project because it is related to an essential topic, “Water”, that plays a relevant role within one of the Learning Units, Environmental Education, I have to prepare every year (in particular, water pollution and water wastage). This is one of the Units included in the project “Citizenship and Constitution” (addressed to 23 children of different ages [6-10], who do not attend courses of Catholic Religion) I could develop in a Primary School near Milan where I have worked since 2016. 

The evident link between my actual project and this project is the first reason why I decided to choose this topic. The second reason is represented by the large number of target Languages (8) that characterizes this project (among them there is also Irish [Gaelic]!), an effective sign of its multilingual context. The third reason is represented by its multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary aspects, as well as, its ideal focus (Europe). Finally the fourth reason is represented by the final real outcome of the project “a Water audio dictionary” that could benefit my students in many ways.