In brief

Cradle is an Erasmus+ project, Action KA2, and stands for 'Creating Activity Designed Language Learning Environments for Entrepreneurship Education'. It is a new teaching methodology for primary schools focusing on the simultaneous development of foreign language and entrepreneurial skills among young pupils (aged 8-12). Through three innovative outputs, the CRADLE teaching methodology uses a cross-curricular activity-based, student-centered, exploratory teaching, and learning approach.

Cradle relies on primary school teachers who support the creation of a foreign-language learning environment. Also, the use of cross-curricular projects fosters entrepreneurial skills. Some of the qualities developed are problem-solving, personal responsibility, social responsibility, curiosity, communication, and cooperation.

Cradle has a triple approach interconnecting cross-curricular and action-focused learning with Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) and Entrepreneurship Education (EE). Teachers who work with the Cradle Methodology attempt to combine these three elements in their lessons.

The implementation of CRADLE places students' interest, curiosity, and sense of initiative at the center of the learning process. It focuses on the intentional development of entrepreneurial skills, which at a basic level, are life skills. The learners choose the topics of the projects. All projects frame activities, where pupils work and learn in a linear four-step process inspired by "Design Thinking" with problem-solving and designing solutions in mind. The four steps are: 1: Prior understanding and research 2: Ideas generation and design 3: Prototyping and actions 4: Evaluation and foreign language selection

Impact and benefits of the Cradle teaching methodologies

The CRADLE methodology relies on ‘generalist’ primary school teachers making use of their own, independently acquired foreign language skills in the classroom, thereby strengthening their profile and enabling schools to make use of this valuable asset.

Through the use of the CRADLE methodology, students have acquired these life skills both in the process of learning, and as a result of their learning – and at the same time they have acquired language skills and increased their understanding of languages as a tool for communication in subject-specific settings.