English Education

The international team is made of Native English teachers specialised in ESL learning. Within the team we have the coordinator, lead teachers, CLIL teachers and teaching assistants. Having a large international team that come from all over the world allows students to become acquainted with the different forms of the language. In addition, it allows for lots of speaking opportunities as each conversation lesson has 2 to 3 native teachers.
Families also have the opportunity to do a cultural exchange piece by hosting teaching assistants, who are new teachers gaining more classroom experience.

Students in the elementary school learn English in a very motivating and engaging way through songs, games and educational activities. They participate in two major projects: a culture project and an English literacy project. The 5th year students conduct their first research and presentations in English. Elementary school students do up to 7 hours of English a week including their Core, Conversation and CLIL lessons.

In the middle school, students become more involved in pair and group projects, where they research, present and/or debate using the English language. These include: Culture projects, a Model U.N. project, an Innovation project, a Science project and a Business project. Students have the opportunity to create and lead their own student clubs based on their personal interests. Middle school students do up to 8 hours of English a week including their Core, Conversation and CLIL lessons.

Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) refers to teaching subjects such as science, history and geography to students in a foreign language, in our case in English. The English native speaking teacher collaborates and overlaps with the Italian curricular teacher to seamlessly integrate the language in lessons and exams. The goal of the CLIL programme is not only to promote contextual language learning skills, but also to give our students the capacity to successfully enroll in English speaking Universities, if they so choose it for their future.

English Clubs are an exclusive innovation of our school. They give our students the opportunity to develop their leadership and organizational skills. Students are invited to develop clubs based on their interests. Once a club has been approved, they nominate a president and meet once a week during break after lunch. Every year the students come up with new and exciting club ideas, but the most popular clubs continue to be radio, movie, reading, photography,
anti-bullism, 3D drawing, choir and guitar club.

The conversation classes use a student centered learning approach. This means the students become active participants in their learning process and learn by doing. Student ideas, preferences, learning styles and interests are considered in the planning and implementation of the classes to create an engaging and enriched lessons.