Innovation in Language Learning

Given the drop in demographics, about 15% percent of the rural schools in Romania have multigrade classes, at least at primary level. Quite often, these schools are (self)marginalized since it is considered that no quality learning is likely in such environments.

Teamed-up within a UNICEF project aimed at quality inclusive education, the authors of this paper looked for solutions to improve approaches in the multigrade classes. The hypothesis was: project work that involves language level-differentiated tasks can engage a multigrade group to develop their communication competences according to their own rhythm.

The research has been conducted during the current school year in two multigrade classes in Versesti Sanduleni rural school that include grade 2 and grade 4 children and grades 0, 1 and 3 students respectively. The research was based on a thorough differentiated planning for each project, basic support materials selection and development by making extended use of internet sources, classroom observation and the teacher’s research diary. The duration of a project was of about a month.

The results highlight: the students’ increased self-confidence, involvement in and motivation for the English class as well as spectacular language progress for the students. Some of them are able to perform at the higher level task despite their lower current grade, sometimes 2 grades above their formal enrolment. Last but not least, the projects, the topics of which were suggested by the kids themselves in the second term, show a lot of creativity: the display of the results brought about a lot of colour and fun in an otherwise grey and uniform shool environment.

The conclusion is that, far from being a threat to quality learning, the multigrade class can provide a remarkable opportunity for meaningful communication competence development within a differentiated approach.