Creating an English School Newspaper is an enjoyable, creative and educational process! This project aspires to involve many European learners in the exchange of English school newspapers and the creation of a common Newspaper!

Participant learners will also have the opportunity to interact via Twinspace, improving thus their speaking/typing along with their writing skills! Practising skills simulates real-life communication in a fun-filled project that will help everyone realize the emergence of English as an international language and expand their horizons.

Learners will also have the opportunity to feel like citizens of the world, members of a vast community, outside the barriers of their local surroundings. Using English as the vehicle, this project will provide useful insight on their peers' daily routine, interests, customs and mentality, allowing everyone thus to become more tolerant with diversity.

School Subjects: Cross - Curricular

Language: English

Learners' Age: 8-12

Web Tools in use:

Chat, email, TwinSpace, CryptPad, FlipSnack, EasyPolls, Skype, Messenger, Facebook, Various Software (Powerpoint, videos, photos, drawing, etc), Answergarden, Googledocs, Video Conference, School blog posts, Project Diary, Forums, etc.

Aims and Objectives:

Primary objectives: a) to expand the learners' horizons, b) to develop the learners' writing and reading skills in English, c) to promote cooperative learning, d) to realize the emergence of English as an international language. Secondary objectives: a) to promote cross-curricular learning, b) to advance the learners' familiarity with technology, c) to promote writing and reading comprehension with a real-life purpose, d) to familiarize learners with looking up in dictionnairies, conducting research, note-taking, e) to promote learner autonomy and self-confidence.

Procedure:

Each participating school prepares an issue of their newspaper in English once in 2 months, choosing the topics that have been agreed by all participating teachers and exploiting projects suggested by their course books. As soon as an issue is ready, partners upload or mail their newspaper for other participating schools to read / print as a whole. After that, learners may also exchange comments on each other's newspaper, or chat about it in Twinspace. At an agreed stage of the project, all participating learners will be involved in collaborative editing, in order to publish a common issue! After their first common issue is published, the same procedure will be followed for the rest of the issues.

Expected Outcomes:

Learners involved in this project will have the opportunity to develop their writing and reading skills in English, while being involved in a fun-filled process. By reading their peers' articles, they will have the opportunity to expand their horizons and feel like citizens of the world, members of a vast community, outside the barriers of their local surroundings. Using English as the vehicle, this project will provide useful insight on their peers' daily routine, interests, customs and mentality, becoming thus more tolerant with diversity.