True colours 2015 - 16

an eTwinning Project

Final eBook

Escola Secundária Emídio Garcia, Portugal IX. gimnazija, Zagreb, Croatia Escola Básica e Secundária Gonçalves Zarco, Portugal Zespół Szkół Ogólnokształcących Nr 1 STO, Poland

TRUE

colours FRESHLY PAINTED

True Colours is an e-Twinning project. It involved teachers and students from four different schools in what can only be described as a journey into Colours and how they influence every aspect of our lives.

Our goal was to help our students become aware of how colours were tied to cultural differences, how they could be used as an important communication tool.

This e-book is our way to share our adventure. We hope you enjoy it.

THE PARTNERS

We started the project with four teachers - Alexandra Francisco; Anna Tobiacelli; Arjana Blazic; LuĂ­sa Lima - and about one hundred students.

As the project developed we were able to capitalize on our schools’ resources and got more students and more teachers to take part in it. Some by actually joining the project on the e-Twinning platform, others simply by sharing their expertise with us and our students. To all of them goes our heartfelt thank you for their support and help in making our project richer.

Activity Plans In order to keep our activity plans organized, up to date and easily shared between us, we used Google Drive. You can check all the plans by clicking the coat of arms.

Activity Plans

Twinspace Like all e-Twinning projects we had our own Twinspace. A place where we could post and share our students work and keep our Project’s Journal.

Activities In our online meetings we tried not only to determine what we wanted our students to accomplish, but also what would be the most beneficial for their learning and their personal growth.

Keeping in mind that for technology to be successful, we, teachers needed to make informed choices relating to pedagogical approach, students' needs, and our learning objectives, we set up a series of activities that we thought would give them the opportunity to put into practice four essential skills: to collaborate, to communicate, to connect and to create.

Activity 1

"If I were a colour"

In this activity students were asked to introduce themselves by writing a short text starting from the prompt “If I were a Colour”. Afterwards they transformed their texts into a digital presentation of themselves.

Poland

https://issuu.com/antosto/docs/blue_by_magda.pptxt https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nT6YTt2xjIw&feature=youtu.be

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEnzxQwU4GE

Portugal ­ Bragança

http://bit.ly/1SjIR17 https://goo.gl/TYkmzw

https://goo.gl/xZIOq6

http://bit.ly/1QGWz8C

https://goo.gl/9aLREO

Portugal ­ Madeira

https://slate.adobe.com/cp/sJ3pg/

https://youtu.be/MzrmZXx6yD0

Croatia

https://spark.adobe.com/page/iZwLs/

http://goo.gl/SZhW9J

https://animoto.com/play/WWCd7X8qi8Awb7QdTI3Pvg

Activity 2

"Survey"

Students conducted a simple survey to find out what were people’s perception of “colour”. This survey was created so we could have an idea as to how each country, each partner related to colours and what role they played in their everyday lives.

Afterwards they analysed the results and drew conclusions about it. An all partner presentation was created to share everyone's results.

https://youtu.be/dOBUdkCK4Wc

Activity 3

"Colour Masters"

Students were divided into groups. They were free to choose their team - Writing Masters; Science Masters; Video Masters; Music Masters; Painting Masters and Game Masters.

Teams created their own products within their topics. They also had the chance to work collaboratively with their partners in different schools giving their contribution to a common product.

Painting Masters This team looked into Art and how colours could be used to convey different meanings.

Poland

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lICSX4LUw4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRCwGjphr­8

Portugal ­ Bragança

http://www.calameo.com/read/004016710cd3a2942f906

Portugal ­ Madeira

http://en.calameo.com/read/00447756888fa62d2d954

Croatia Croatian students came up with the idea to recreate works of art.

They chose The Scream by Edward Munch. Jan painted the background of Munch’s painting on his iPad and then we projected it on the big screen in the classroom. All the students screamed in front of Jan’s painting, they took photos of each other and made a video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWl_Nd6h8sc

All the partners liked the idea and soon they joined their Croatian peers in recreating the painting

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLofSiREE3E

Music Masters The Music Masters team explored colour in music; how words and colour could create mental pictures. Students were free to explore. Like the Polish students cleverly put it “hearing colours, tasting music�.

Poland Portuguese students created the lyrics and Polish students dazzled us by not only coming up with the music for it, but also by putting together a wonderfully colourful video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRwL2YLzsU8

Portugal ­ Bragança

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRwL2YLzsU8

Portugal ­ Madeira

https://youtu.be/vr9uhTglF7M

Writing Masters Braganรงa created story cubes and sent them to all the partners who worked together to create a story book.

http://en.calameo.com/read/004477568ff5ea1857ad4

https://madmagz.com/magazine/812734#/page/1https://goo.gl/2DXlzY

Poland, on the other hand, wrote a story called Big Grey Cave and Tinter. It was up to the other partners to create and share new versions of it.

https://youtu.be/CQI5zTlm9mc

https://en.calameo.com/read/004016710a200536d1dad

https://youtu.be/aVGbWxEe4EM

Game Masters This team was all about designing games and using colours either as an element of the game or simply as something they could use to bring more depth to the game. Students had to think of a storyline that held the game together.

Portugal ­ Bragança

http://www.sploder.com/game7.swf?s=d00508ws&cs=1%5b/flash

https://gamestarmechanic.com/toolbox?game_id=6192505 Username-gameswork; password-gameswork1

Portugal ­ Madeira

http://goo.gl/4Kh1dH

http://goo.gl/O2k2Kl

http://goo.gl/MABpTl

Science Masters This team was in charge of looking into colour through the eyes of a scientist and coming up with experiments that showed the scientific side of colours.

Portugal ­ Bragança https://youtu.be/9qGCSHHMJtY

Portugal - Madeira

https://youtu.be/KyzL9Y3LIVI

https://youtu.be/E3pvt5ddxXE

Video Masters The Video Masters teams were to create video presentations about colours and their use. Some teams, rather than creating something from scratch, just worked in close collaboration with the other Colour Masters teams, helping them document their work.

SIG NM EU P!

EXTRA

ACTIVITIES Besides the three main activities set on the project, a number of extra activities were developed alongside.

Their goal was to complement the main activities and provide more personal development opportunities to our students and ourselves.

It was up to each teacher to consider learning goals, possible time issues and then decide whether or not to take part of them.

"Colours Lesson" Braganรงa held a Colours lesson which seemed to please everyone and a lot of vocabulary was elicited. They also had some paper T-shirts pinned to the wall where their names were written according to the colour of their choice.

"Hearing Colours, Tasting Music" One of the lessons held at Warsaw school about colours.

"Skype Calls" Our students got in touch with one another over skype. Our goal was to give them a chance to finally come face to face and find out a bit more about each other but also to allow them to exchange ideas on the work they had developed throughout the project.

"Expectations" Students shared their expectations regarding the True Colours project. It was a good way to see what they hoped to accomplish and what they thought we would be working on.

"Selfie Challenge We challenged our students to share a selfie that would portrait them and their colour. We also asked them to write a short message about it.

"Know your partners?"

In order to spark curiosity about each partner, Madeira created a video in which students answered, to the best of their knowledge, some questions about the other partners, who in turn created videos to help them get the right answers.

"Visit to a Contemporary Art Centre" Bragança, Centro de Arte Contemporânea Graça Morais On the guided visit through some of the rooms and works the students learned about the importance of colour and the recurrent themes in Graça Morais’s paintings. They were then to choose one of the works in display and prepare an oral work on it.

"Visit to Arte Sacra Museum" Madeira students explored the museum led by Martinho, our guide, who helped them understand how colour can be used by artists to convey different meanings, different feelings and emotions.

Workshop on “Colour in Art” In Bragança, teacher and artist Manuel Trovisco came to our room to talk about colour, how it is formed, what it means, how it influences our life and how it was used by painters throughout the times. It was a great experience and we were able to share it with our Madeira partners through Skype.

ASSESSMENT STUDENTS & TEACHERS ""Grade less. Assess more."

John Spencer

etwinning.net

ASSESSMENT STUDENTS

When we first started the True Colours project we asked our students what their expectations were ­ some were a bit wary of the way the physical distance could make it hard to work together; some were a tad scared with possible communication issues; others were just looking forward to the opportunity to make new friends and the chance to actually use English in real life situations.

Now, as we wrap the project up we asked them to assess the project. It was a real pleasure to hear their enthusiasm as they looked back on the work they did and proudly talked about it.

They were aware of the “simple things” like: Yes, it was a fun way to learn and practice English; Yes, it was great to skype with other students; Yes, it was really good to work collaboratively.

But what was truly amazing (what eluded most of them) was how the project had sparked their creativity, their ability to make new things; how they had been able to accomplish individual learning and contribute to the learning of others through the use of digital media.

ASSESSMENT TEACHERS

The True Colours project brought together students from primary, middle and secondary schools, proving that these type of projects can and do work across age and grade spectrums. We had the opportunity to witness, first hand, how the younger students were thrilled to be working with older students, looking to do their best and contribute to the tasks; how the older students showed awareness of their responsibilities towards their younger colleagues, and felt proud to be a part of an international peer group that was doing something interesting and important together.

It is true that assessing is never easy, but one thing we are sure of: we all tried to start from our curriculum and made learning our goal, adjusting the activities to our own educational context. So, as we weigh our choices and look at all our students accomplished in such a short period of time, we couldn’t be prouder. We believe we have improved our professional practice and contributed to the effectiveness, vitality, and self renewal of our school.

All in all, the outcome of the project is clearly positive, and we are walking away from it more aware of our own capability to cooperate and compromise.

True Colours 2016 eTwinning Project

THANK YOU