Europeans
Schools: Zespol Szkol Gimnazjum i Szkola Podstawowa nr 13, Poland Royal Grammar School, United Kingdom
Teachers: Justyna Kukulka (Poland) Alan Crease (United Kingdom)
Age range: 12-16
Duration: 2 years or more Themes: Foreign Languages
Language: English
Tools: Email, chat, MP3, audio and video conferencing, PowerPoint, video, pictures and drawings
URL: http://atschool.eduweb.co.uk/rgshiwyc/etwin/index.htm http://www.engpol.edublogs.org/
Description
The project aims to explore the culture of the partner school through exchanging information about both schools, regions, countries and national recipes.
Pupils do research on learning foreign languages in Poland and the United Kingdom.
The use of ICT allows them to strike up new friendships and to improve English in real communication. The task of the project also increases mutual respect among pupils, bringing young citizens of Europe closer together and teaching them tolerance in accordance to other cultures and faith. The pupils collaborate on devising and conducting a project that involves surveying hundreds of fellow pupils. They then collect their results through a website and blog.
Interview: Justyna Kukulka
I have been an English teacher for 6 years. As a young teacher, I like trying new things and developing my personal and professional skills. Working in an eTwinning project, I found the work very interesting and challenging. I teach classes of about twenty-five pupils from the ages of 12-16. The eTwinning project was conducted by a mixed age group of twenty pupils in optional extra curricular sessions. These were held twice a week in a computer classroom.
During these sessions, they communicated with their English peers by writing emails, chatting and collecting and preparing material for the project. Thanks to that, they break stereotypes concerning, for example, the British who talk a lot about the weather or the Polish who come from a communist country. At first, they exchanged information about their schools and regions. The pupils prepared PowerPoint presentations about their schools, invitations to visit their countries and descriptions of their cities. They also exchanged group photos and a lot of material connected to the project.
While working on the project, pupils have been engaged in active and innovative research. They have investigated the role of foreign languages in their countries and schools. They have also gained valuable knowledge about the contemporary world, discovered factors influencing the interest in language learning as well as the level of language learning in both schools and the types of exercises used to improve teaching methods. By conducting research, pupils develop their creativity and at the same time make the project creative and innovative. As a teacher, I had to learn to become a facilitator rather than an instructor. The project required the pupils to set the pace and develop the content of the project on their own. The project was inevitably pupil-led to a large extent and involved peer work in teams. I found this was an approach that produced good work from pupils and I have incorporated it increasingly into my normal teaching. The exchange of teaching and learning ideas between teachers has been valuable and is on going as well. Innovation in the project can also be seen in video filming and editing as pupils acquired and developed new ICT skills, beyond the Internet and email.
Certainly! In an increasingly networked and globalised world, pupils will need to communicate with partners abroad in a foreign language using ICT. By learning to use blog sites, wikis and visual media alongside the more familiar email and chat rooms, they have extended their ICT skills and of course the eTwinning project set their communication within the framework of
a purposeful interchange of ideas rather than a sterile classroom exercise. The project obliged them to devise, execute and take responsibility for a project over a number of months and thus developed their long-term planning skills.
These valuable opportunities are not normally available within the classroom-teaching environment.
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The project offered real and relevant opportunities for linking with native English speakers in all four skill areas (reading, writing, listening and speaking) in ways that would have been impossible before. It also provided increased motivation for my pupils to learn and use a foreign language. Furthermore, the project is interdisciplinary as it combines pupils’ knowledge of different subjects, such as English, ICT, Citizenship, History, Biology, Geography, Religion and Math. Pupils communicate in English and use ICT tools as a means to communicate, but they also write texts and express opinions concerning different issues, e.g., environmental issues, historical events, the impact of religion and current affairs concerning citizenship and politics. They use mathematical skills to compare and analyse data. In this way, it fulfils curricular requirements but at the same time eliminates routine day-to-day learning.
As a language teacher, I have learned that using ICT in teaching creates opportunities for pupils to interact and use the target language meaningfully.
It can bring the culture and language of the target country into the classroom.
It does not replace the teacher and textbooks but it supplements them and enhances the learning experience. The project has made using ICT an
indispensable and irreplaceable tool in my teaching. Developing ICT skills, using the Internet, PowerPoint, Front Page, Word, Excel, Video Studio, recording a film and using ICT as a way to communicate among pupils has allowed pupils to incorporate it into their everyday learning.
It does not hurt to get in touch with a teacher in another country. Take that first step. Inspire each other to develop a workable, achievable project.
Be realistic. It has to have relevance for your pupils. We found working on the project to be an enjoyable and valuable experience. It is something new that makes your work challenging and exciting. But the most important thing is striking up new friendships. As the title of our project states, “English is a factor integrating young Europeans”. We realise now just how true this is.
So do not hesitate to create an eTwinning project. It is really worth doing!