THE AIM OF OUR PROJECT
Our project's aim was to help students from French and Polish schools in Carcassonne and Rudki get together in an eTwinnig Project, learn about their cultures and try to acquire an understanding attitude towards "the other". At the same time, we hoped to improve our students linguistic and ICT competences, motivate them to work harder and help them understand that these skills are really useful in everyday communication and work - for now and the coming future. Students involved in the project were 11-16 years old. The project lasted 10 months in 2018/2019 school year (from September to June).
HOW WE PLANNED AND ORGANISED THE PROJECT
- In September 2018, we (the coordinating teachers - Monica and Magda) decided to work together in an eTwinning project.
- The project coordinators exchanged ideas and it turned out our needs dictated by the curriculum and students' interests were the same: Students wanted to do a project with writing letters and cards (the younger ones) or working online with padlets (the older ones). Our curricula included subjects such as interests, hobbies and celebrations. The French partner needed to have a task connected with Martin Luther King, racial discrimination, segregation, etc. The Polish team agreed seeing it as an interesting topic for class discussions and CLIL lessons.
- We agreed on the title "Let's get together via eTwinning!", decided to open the project on TwinSpace and systematically report on the completed activities on its platform.
- Both teams proceeded with the project realisation and frequently discussed ideas in classes with students and then via e-mails or the teacher's bulletin. We worked on the platform with students, especially on TwinBoards and in the Forum. The project tasks were performed in class or at home - we discussed the tasks first, then students worked on them individually (e.g. with intro letters or posts), in pairs (e.g. making calendars) or groups (e.g. telling stories about celebrations) and finally the teachers took care of reporting on the task on TwinSpace. We uploaded photos and presentations and wrote descriptions in the Pages. We published the highlights of our project activities in the Journal, too - especially photos with letters and cards exchanges.
- When the end of school year came, we reviewed the TwinSpace, ordered it and now the results of our cooperation can be seen there. Enjoy reading and watching it! We worked really hard to do it all;)
- We published information about the project on the school website of Zespół Szkoł in Rudki, Poland: https://zsrudki.edupage.org/news/ (in the main page) and https://zsrudki.edupage.org/text/?text=text/text7&subpage=3 (in the subpage for eTwinning projects).
HOW WE WORKED
We wanted our students to develop their English and ICT skills.
DEVELOPING LINGUISTIC COMPETITIONS:
We engaged the project participants in a number of tasks including speaking and listening (for discussing ideas at the beginning of every activity, sharing stories about favourite celebrations - Christmas and Easter, speaking about the Civil Rights Movement in front of the group), writing (letters, cards, posts and descriptions of celebrations, comments in the forum and in TwinBoards), reading (presentations, posts, comments, the "madmagz" magazine and quizzes). We encouraged the students to use online tools such as online dictionaries and translators to help them express their ideas and thoughts in English and expand their vocabulary.
DEVELOPING ICT COMPETENCES:
We invited our students to TwinSpace and worked with them on the platform. They were encouraged to set up or update TwinSpace profiles. We organised a series of tasks including writing posts and comments on TwinBoards, or writing comments in the forum, writing posts and attaching images in padlets and searching for vocabulary online. The French group showed us a new tool: madmagz. Students had to do an online research to collect information and photos about celebrations in their countries as well as the American Civil Rights Movement and Martin Luther King.
OTHER COMPETENCES
In addition, students interested in arts could show their skills making handmade Christmas, Valentine and Easter cards. We regularly discussed the project tasks with students to help them organise their ideas and asked them to cooperate - in pairs and groups. In this way they could also develop their social skills.
OUR ACTIVITIES
The activities included eight tasks. Here's a description of every one:
Tasks 1 & 2 were about getting to know each other. Younger students exchanged personal letters. The older students created padlets sharing their interests and hobbies and responding to each other’s questions. Students were also introduced to TwinSpace platform to set up or update their profiles (depending on their experience with it) and participate in creating TwinBoards and comments in the forum.
Tasks 3 & 4 focused on one of the major celebrations in both countries – Christmas. First, the younger students exchanged Christmas cards – beautiful hand made or printed out cards. Then, the older ones prepared online presentations for their pen pals: The French students worked hard on a madmagz magazine presenting the French traditions for Christmas along with the Christmas dishes and local Carcassonne events. They also attached beautiful pictures and a series of quizzes checking the reader’s knowledge on the French Christmas. The Polish students read the magazine with great interest and did their best to solve the quizzes. They also prepared padlets with information and images typical for Polish Christmas.
Task 5 was inspired by Valentine’s Day, which is celebrated in Poland and Polish schools every year. There’s usually a Valentine show about love and shool Valentine mail is delivered to students. That’s why the Polish 6th graders decided to do something extra and send Valentine cards to the French pen pals. The older students made padlets about their Valentine plans or wrote about their attitude towards this celebration.
Moreover, at the last stage of the project the older students focused on the questions of racial discrimination in the USA and Civil Rights Movement along with its leader - Martin Luther King. Students were engaged in tasks to learn about American history and think if there is a connection to the current times. French students continued to prepare mini-speeches expressing their own visions of “a dream” and posted them in a TwinBoard. Polish students explored the subject with great interest, talked about it to their group and contributed their posts to a final Prezi presentation about it.
THE RESULTS
As project coordinators, we are happy to declare we have enjoyed our project throughout the whole school year. We worked and communicated regularly and therefore were able to compelte the planned tasks and report them on TwinSpace.
Our students had a number of opportunities to experience real life communication. They had pen pals to correspond with via letters, cards or online posts. They prepared online materials for real readers who read their texts and responded to them (certainly some students will keep the received Christmas, Valentine or Easter cards as school keepsakes:). They could learn to use ICT tools to work on texts and they could improve their linguistic skills. It increased their motivation to learn and level of achievement in English and ICT.
Our schools could boast of having innovative classes of English involving international communication between students and teachers, working with ICT tools as well as exchanging teaching methods.
ANOTHER PROJECT...
Finally, we realised the last task about the American Civil Rights Movement proved to correspond with problems experienced by our societies. Having worked with our students on this task, we noticed they need to have a wider perpective on what it really means to be free and to have one's rights respected. The legacy of Martin Luther King is an ideal basis for a discussion on the values of human freedom and rights and we are willing to explore it more in another project next year.