School nr.17 Botosani is one of the newest schools in Botosani; it opened its gates in 1989. Since 1999, our teachers and students got involved in international projects, having been part of over 40 projects, Socrates, Comenius, eTwinning, Aces, Erasmus+, iEarn, Virtual e-Class. We have been awarded the title of European school 4 times in a row, since 2009 and we received the European Language Label for innovation in language teaching 3 times. We have over 20 national and European Quality Labels for our etwinning projects and in 2018 we became an eTwinning school. At the same time, we have been selected to be one of the 6 European schools that will be part of the Monitoring eTwinning Schools programme. We love integrating projects into the curriculum and are one of the few schools that have a transcurricular etwinning class for 5th graders. The following pages highlight some of the projects and methods we have used in language teaching.
Popa Loredana Project manager eTwinning Ambassador National Geographic Certified Educator
SINGING AND ETWINNING IN THE ENGLISH CLASS
First off, I know you are thinking you have read all this before, using songs during the English class in order to help students learn in an attractive and easy manner; except we are not talking about singing only in English. So let’s start at the beginning. September 2016, planning to celebrate EDL via the usual means, postcards, small sentences, a few videoconferences, something we’ve been doing for years. But this time we add a few twists: tongue twisters, in our partners’ native languages and singing in their languages too. You would think that is so complicated, especially since we are talking about 4th graders and languages that are so different from ours, such as Polish, Slovenian, Greek, Ukrainian. However, the two 4th grade classes at School nr.17 Botosani kicked off a one of a kind eTwinning project entitled Let’s celebrate EDL together with 23 partners from 10 other countries (France, Spain, Italy, Greece, Lithuania, Ukraine, Poland, Czech Republic, Portugal, Slovenia). We had worke on the project for a few weeks before school started, just brainstorming and gathering ideas and tools we would use. We did the usual, sent and received our cards celebrating EDL and recorded a few messages in our language and English and posted them on the twinspace. At the same time, we reckoned it would be great if all the children sang the same song, but in their language. We all agreed on the soundtrack from a cartoon that is popular in all the countries, Gummy Bears, so we got to work. We each sang the version of the song in our language and English, but some of us were even bolder and tried singing it in a few other languages too. It was a lot of fun, especially during our videoconferences. Celebrating the International Day of Education, we (the Romanian team) recorded messages in all the languages, each student choosing at least 2 languages, apart from English and saying a few things about themselves. Some parents were able to help us, because they had been living or working abroad, so we got help with our Greek, Czech, Polish, Italian and Ukrainian messages. Needless to say how happy our partners were to receive such an amazing gift, be it virtual. What came next was only natural – teaching our language to our partners and learning from them during our Videoconferences. Soon, we had Romanian kids counting in Polish, Portuguese, Czech, French, Ukrainian kids learning Italian or Portuguese, Czech, polish, French and Slovenian kids learning Romanian and so on. Our videoconferences were full of songs as well. For every videoconference we would choose a different song in English, as well as a song in the language of the partner we were having the VC with. Somehow the Romanian kids found it a lot easier to learn songs in all 10 languages, in some even more than one song and the joy they would see on their partners’ faces during the VCs was probably their motivation, whether they were aware of it or not. So what did we sing? It is such a long list and I might leave some of the songs out, not on purpose of course. Let’s look at a few examples: -
In English: “Donna Donna”, “Morning has broken”, “Over the rainbow”, “Hello, goodbye”, “Faded”, “Lost on you”, “All of me” In French: “La ballade des gens heureux”, “On ecrit sur les murs”, “Petite fleur fanne” (in creole), “Mon beau sapin” In Spanish: “Feliz Navidad”, “ A la nanita nena”, “Qué Verdes Son” In Italian: “Per fare un albero”, “Carissimo Pinocchio”, “A natale puoi” In Polish: “Kukuleczka Kuka” and “Na Wojtusia z popielnika” 1
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In Greek: “Astro Fotino” In Ukrainian: “Malinkaia strana” In Czech: “Pujdem spolum” and the national anthem
How did we go about singing in so many languages? Let me take you through the process. First we would brainstorm, students, teachers, parents and come up with a few suggestions. We would then listen to the songs and choose one. The students would print the lyrics and look for the English translation of the lyrics so we could understand what the song was about. Next stop, the pronunciation. The students did not have the phonetic transcription of the songs, but the actual lyrics, so without realising it, they picked up some basic pronunciation rules in all the languages, as well as a few words, basic phrases and quite a lot of English grammar (we are talking about past tense simple and continuous in the case of 10 year olds). Why did it work? Because they loved singing. Once they started a song, they couldn’t stop till they finished it, even if that meant they would spontaneously start singing in French or Polish while solving exercises during their English classes. They felt confident enough to create interviews for their partners, mistakes and all, to show how much they had leant about the geography of Europe and to share information about their country. We played mime with Christmas related words during some of our VCs and sang carols to each other and together. Soon enough, my students’ pronunciation skills had increased dramatically, their listening skills too and they had even come to the point where once we had to read a new text for the first time, they would do it on their own, choosing the order in which they would read, like a well-oiled machine. The same with all the other tasks, I never knew which student would start, who would continue, but it felt so natural and they were all engaged and willing and helping each other, correcting each other and serving as translators for their peers where needed. So how come singing in all these languages helped them with their English? Well, it is no longer a secret that each language has its rhythm and listening to it while relaxed helps us actually get in tune with it. But what using several languages also does is rewrite the brain and at such a young age, children learn through music and game. Because they used so many languages and they enjoyed it and felt empowered by being part of the whole process and getting real feedback, they turned their brains into big language sponges, able to learn a new song in less than a few hours and remembering it even now, almost 6 months after the project has ended. Feel free to visit our twinspace and check our videos, read the comments students and teachers left there. If you are a language teacher and you have the chance of using music in your class, do it. But don’t stick to English only. Learn with your students, sing with them, make mistakes with them and let them correct you, because I can guarantee they will be faster than you in learning a new song and they will feel proud to help you out.
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ETWINNING IN THE CLASSROOM – THE TRUE STORY OF THE NO-WAY STUDENT For me and School nr.17 Botosani, Romania, eTwinning has been a rather new experience, which started in 2010. At first, I wrestled with the same problems all eTwinners must have at some point..poor communication between partners, lack of interest from my students, protests from parents, few ideas of how to keep up with the teaching and work on a project at the same time. So, my first 3 projects weren’t too much of a success and they barely made any impact on my classes but they were the stepping stones that paved the way for the more successful projects that were yet to come. In 2012 a brilliant idea popped up on my etwinning desktop: a project called POST-BOX, where students would celebrate the EDL by sending and receiving postcards written in English and their native tongue. My students jumped at the idea, from the 4th graders to the 8th graders. So we wrote about 70 postcards and sent them to over 50 partner schools. Once we got our fair share of postcards, we couldn’t decide what to do with them…after some thinking we decided some sort of map was in order. And we tried. Not the best one we could’ve done but it was done. A few months later a new idea occurred to us: recording messages in the 19 languages of our partner schools, adding their location on a map, making collages from the postcards we had gotten from each school and creating something unique. Zeemaps was preferred over Google Maps and the fun we had recording was worth it. 4
Mapping Europe
We learnt to work with Audacity for the first time, and how to research and read phonetic transcripts to be able to say things correctly in all the languages. Soon, some other partners joined in with their own recordings, so we thought of a new way to spice things up: a voice card, plain old greeting card containing a chip one of the students programmed. That was an unforgettable experience. Then came Made for Europe, the competition for final products of European projects and we found ourselves representing our city at the national stage of that competition in Bucharest, with our interactive Zeemap. But misfortune struck and technical issues reared their ugly head: the result, all our recordings were muted…somebody had accidentally muted the volume on the computer used for the presentation. So, we learnt a new lesson: always have a backup plan. Of course we didn’t win anything, but then again, eTwinning was barely starting to be present at Made for Europe. With this first experience in mind, we set out for new projects, this time knowing what to expect: but the big problems still remained: how do you please all your pupils with just one project, how do you teach and work on eTwinning. And we were lucky: we found the answer: VIDEOCONFERENCES. In 2013 we started one of our most successful project so far, called YES (Young Europeans Speak) where we partnered up with lots of schools all over Europe and made a project specifically designed for foreign languages. Students could choose one of the 4 topics and talk about it, using any web tool they saw fit. It was just 2 classes working on this project, one where students had absolutely no motivation for anything, where half the class was either asleep or talking about anything else but school. But when they got their own account on eTwinning, that class came alive. They didn’t get all bright and better over night, but there were visible improvements. They wanted to get to know new people, came to the videoconferences, talked about their ideal school, teachers, their hobbies. The other class was more motivated, mixed abilities and all, but linguistically better. What they proposed one day took me by surprise. It was the middle of winter, a lot of snow and a terrible cold outside and they asked we take a walk and film around the city, make a video about their favourite places in town. So, we brought cameras, smartphones and we marched on. It was freezing, we were tired, hungry and nervous like never before. We made mistakes, had some good laughs and carried on. And we put all those recordings on a Zeemap. 5
eTwinning was beginning to gain ground in our classroom…and the fascinating thing was the NO WAY students…those who always say NO, I can’t do it, I won’t do it…they took part in the whole thing and it showed. Once again we made it to the national stage of Made for Europe, but this time we came prepared. We wrote the presentation together, as equals, we created the powerpoint together and the back up plan. We went to Iasi with the website of our project youngeuropeansspeak.eu and we came home with the 2nd prize. The European Quality Label that YES got motivated students even more and the videoconferences were becoming so popular we simply had to involve more students and create more projects.
As with every project, it’s not easy to captivate all your students with just one project. I am still not a very experienced eTwinner so I can’t say I have achieved that goal just yet. When we knew YES would have a follow up, a big brother, called YES 2.0 (http://newtwinspace.etwinning.net/web/p97693 ) programmed to start in september 2014, we brainstormed, evaluated YES and decided that imposing 4 topics was way too restrictive: our solution- no restrictions, our students got to talk about anything they wanted. Since the demand for eTwinning projects was on the rise, we involved 7 classes, not all of them 6
working on YES 2.0, though. But those who did found it unique, fun. Once again, one class in particular posed a challenge. As 5th graders, they had been studying English for 3 years, but typical methods never worked. They were the embodiment of our NO WAY group. Not even working with schools from the USA, Taiwan, Africa, UK, got them focused and motivated for long. But when eTwinning swooped in, it was like a completely different class. Everybody wanted to be at the videoconference, to record messages, to post messages, mainly those whose English was barely even there. But once they decided they wanted to work on eTwinning in class, something unexpected happened. Their colleagues helped them with the spelling, the pronounciation, the technical stuff..I, as a teacher, was staring at them in disbelief. They were all over my laptop, typing, making mistakes and not caring, having fun. And as in the years before, we came head to head with Made for Europe, again, this time in Brasov, and we came back with another 2nd prize, for the same website youngeuropeansspeak.eu. Only this time, there were almost 200 new materials as part of YES 2.0 on that website, materials in English, French, Spanish, Italian and german, but also in our native languages.
But I was saying, talking did not appeal to all my classes. Some preferred to attend videconferences, speak there or just listen but work on different projects, so I asked them to make a list of topics they were interested in and we looked for projects that would suit them. And we did. TRADITIONAL GAMES (http://new-twinspace.etwinning.net/web/p100661) was a fun project, a project we could not carry out outside because of the snow and rain and cold months…so we adapted and played in the classroom. Once again, I was a mere spectator, watching my 5th graders decide on the games, explain the rules, choose the participants, translate the rules, take pictures. We played dozens of games’, ours and our partners’. It didn’t matter we were during the English class, we learnt geography, a bit of history, lots of things about traditions and we put teaching grammar on a back shelf away from our class. We had eTwinning now. And just like before, the shy and the linguistically challenged came out to play and learn in a different manner.
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Finding something suitable for 3rd or 4th graders wasn’t hard, but finding a project that could include 5th and 6th graders as well….so, we joined LET’S GO BLOGGING, where each grade could work on something suitable, using different tools, from Glogster, to Voki, Plotagon, Moviemaker and so on.
eTwinning was now making its way among Romanian teachers, primary school teachers and all the while reintegrating our NO WAY among their peers. Teaching to preschool for the first time, I figured eTwinning could come in handy there as well and MY ALIEN FRIEND (http://new-twinspace.etwinning.net/web/p99291) proved it. Students created avatars of themselves as aliens, imagined their planet, built robots and rockets, introduced themselves, created alphabets, navigating with Google Street view in partner cities. And unexpectedly one of the noisiest preschool classes calmed down and watched, listened, talked and had fun.
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One thing I have noticed over and over again. The first students who embrace any eTwinning project are almost always the trouble makers. Maybe that should get their parents thinking, their other teachers too. If they can work collaboratively and successfully within eTwinning, who cares if they don’t know what present perfect is, as long as they can say I’ve never been to Spain. Some parents, some teachers expect learning and teaching to be done using the old ways, writing exercises, copying texts…but would they prefer to watch black and white films and study by candle light when they have modern TVs and electric light. I suppose they wouldn’t. And that leads us to our next problem: mobile devices. They are banned, excluded, but they are of so much help in class. As proof we joined VIP, a project meant to identify problems teenagers encounter and create comics illustrating the solutions. So, what we did was: we brought laptops, tablets, smartphones, installed Apps and spent a few hours working in groups. Students were permanently talking, asking, trying to figure out things, helping others. It wasn’t quiet and it wasn’t sitting behind desks…it was noisy, it gave me a headache, made me trip over cables, go from one place to another to assist..but it was one of the best experiences eTwinning brought to the table. As a conclusion, I would like to give you a few impressions, written by some young eTwinners: “For me,the eTwinning project is the best thing that has ever happened to me. We all know how it is to do your homework...or not to.With eTwinning we have learned a lot of online instruments that we can use to write our homework or learn a lesson. I personally love English and French and with this project I improved my linguistic abilities. I met a lot of 9
people and I even went to a national competition, twice (Made for Europe). I will never forget the videoconferences and the pupils that I have seen. At the videoconferences we have talked about everything:from food to sports and animals. (Suceveanu Iulia - 7A)” “During one English class, we had to present our own restaurant. We divided into groups, some brought their own food, others made posters, others the menu, some took pictures and we uploaded everything to the twinspace. It helped us with our pronunciation. (Crina – 5th C)”
ETWINNING PROJECT THE MAGIC CREW 2017 – 2018
The project was meant to engage students into an intercultural journey, learning cultural and linguistic facts about the partner countries while playing and competing against each other just like in Harry Potter, on which the project was based. All the classes read and saw Harry Potter, 1-3 and competed on them as well. We even developed an offline version of the games, with bilingual questions for each country, which can be used when access to Quizizz and Kahoot is not possible. The project brought together students with different abilities, as the teams were divided using an online wheel. We had carols, presentations in our partners' languages, a mannequin challenge, Christmas and Easter cards exchanges, celebrated EDL and Europe's Day with Skype and learnt from one another. Our partners came from Italy, Ukraine, Poland and Spain. You can access some of our products and activities through the following links or by scanning the QR codes. twinspace: https://twinspace.etwinning.net/46095/home
sample of our offline game - https://youtu.be/I1Zs9-IflXo Christmas cards- https://youtu.be/IANLpqm8_7E
Mannequin challenges- https://youtu.be/-socJ3RJKyI https://youtu.be/CPKsgYZL3po carols- https://youtu.be/41m3qg0_aBY Digital presentation for Made for Europe, national - https://youtu.be/UvYGKhCEyJE 10
Presentation of the twinspace at Made for Europe https://youtu.be/fTygpmba4nw VC - Spain- Romania https://youtu.be/oHuxGL8W9pw https://youtu.be/t9alkgGX1NE Vokis introducing ourselves https://padlet.com/loreuab/ghnyz042iqmd Posters to be matched with Vokis https://padlet.com/loreuab/magiccrew Quizlet game - food and countries https://quizlet.com/280120861/match Quizlet game - personalities and countries https://quizlet.com/280126642/the-magic-crewpersonalities-flash-cards/
Students worked mostly in pairs for the duration of the project. The teams were randomly selected using an online generator. In each team, students assigned roles and divided the tasks. each team had to work together and come up with a name, a logo, a song, a virtue and own colour combination. They had to find information on each partner country, linguistic, cultural, historical, gastronomic so on and then use that info to compete first with the other teams in the school, then against their European peers. They also had to compete in teams, regarding Harry Potter. They got scores for each task. Individually, they created introductory Vokis and posters which had to be matched by the other countries. They also tried to match the Vokis and posters from their European colleagues. Individually they designed Christmas and Easter cards. As a class, they conceived and directed the Mannequin Challenges and decided which carols to record for their peers. Doing research and being able to discern valid information came as an addition to our esafety activities, so investigation was the main method used. The project took place during our compulsory optional course entitled Transcurricular teaching using eTwinning, as it allowed the students to learn ICT, Geography of Europe, other languages, songs in different languages and esafety. Team work, collaboration, respect and tolerance were some of the most important skills we worked on. Knowing how to research information, how to use everyone's strengths so the team wins, critical thinking and mutual respect were also valued greatly. Linguistic and ICT competences improved a lot and so did communication in the mother languages. We communicated using our WhatsApp group, the twinspace and emails if necessary. We also used Skype to setup detail, google forms to exchange ideas. The students had VCs and interacted with their peers' posts, padlets, but also in the chat, where we created threads so they could get to know each other better. Every task was discussed via skype and google forms. we designed the activities together and included our students too, as they brainstormed on possible tasks too.
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Both students and teachers worked together on the offline and online Quizizz an Kahoot games we created, and each country added its own questions. The final products, mainly the offline and online games, as well as the trading cards meant to help them learn more were created after an exchange of ideas, after the VCs and by sending questions and links back and forth and testing what worked and what not. Technology was used extensively, mainly as some students (the Romanian ones for example) were the ones who filmed and photographed the VCs, created short games, competed online. Movie Maker, Genially, Kizoa, Smilebox, Quizizz, Kahoot, Quizlet, Pazera converter, Skype, Whatsapp, Emaze, Padlet, Voki, answergarden, Quiver - these tools were used for making video presentations, creating and playing games, editing long video files, from .mov to .avi, meeting online, creating dashboards for vokis and posters, creating avatars, offering feedback and creating Augmented Reality cards. For 2 of my classes, this was their 4th etwinning project, but the 2nd with some of the same partners. However, for my 3rd class it was their first taste of etwinning and international cooperation and their desire to get involved and their enthusiasm, combined with impressive amounts of work in their teams to make sure they gathered more points and knew more information on the partners were exhilarating to watch. They have embarked on new etwinning projects for this year and are eager to get to know more schools. This project got the national and European quality label and the 2nd prize in the National Etwinning Prizes competition. Below you can see some images from the activities and some of the sample questions/quizizz games we played as well as some of the trading cards we created to help with the offline version of the games.
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ACES PROJECT DIFFERENT BUT THE SAME 2015 – 2016
Our partner in this project was 2 Osnovna škola "Kralj Petar I" , Niš, Serbia and the students involved were 7th and 8th graders. The project was funded by the Interkulturelles Zentrum in Austria. The project was meant to increase students' motivation for learning by allowing them to be the teachers and hold workshops on chemistry, maths, history, biology, music, drama, art, languages physics. Students with low grades and little motivation, as well as students with special needs benefited from these workshops. We wanted the contents being taught to bridge the gap between curriculum and real life, as well as between traditional teaching and ICT empowered teaching, modern evaluation and interdisciplinary approaches. Since real life situations were used to teach various school subjects, students connected the dots between formulas and real life, for example and understood the need for collaboration as opposed to competition. The project started with the Kick-off ACES Academy in Sarajevo, where all 100 schools met, students and teachers, got to connect and understand what ACES is about, equal opportunity, solidarity, thinking outside the box. ŠKOLA "KRALJ PETAR I", NIŠ implemented the following workshops led by students for students: Biology workshop (extracting pigment from leaves),Chemistry workshop (masks of chemical elements),create masks of jobs and singing in 3 languages, teaching fractions to younger students using pizza, building tree houses for the birds, Physics workshop, Language workshop - learning Romanian, Evaluation. SCHOOL NR.17 BOTOSANI did the following: Biology, chemistry and art workshops posters of chemical elements from nature, human body, food, medicine; chemical elements masks; learning serbian; math workshop in the park; creating new illustrated periodic table; writing rap songs for the elements; creating funny descriptions of elements. The project consisted of 2 mobillities. The Reunion in Niš, Serbia was from 28 March to 2.April and included drama, art, math, history, chemistry workshops. Thus, students taught fractions using pizza, created games to evaluate exercises, talked about love in music, films, enacted Romeo and Juliet, measured ph, took part in a regional Science Fair where they attended an electronics and chemistry workshop led by older students and had an outdoor geography workshop on the formation of certain landmarks in the area. The reunion in Botosani, Romania was from 7 to 12 April and it consisted of journalism, geography, history, math, two chemistry and biology workshops; egg painting, measuring the ph of various drinks using red cabbage, creating the illustrated table of elements, making
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videos on various chemical elements, using funny and catchy poems and descriptions, had outdoor math workshop, a music and dance workshop as well as a linguistic one. All the workshops were based on peer education, students did all the teaching. The project ended with the ACES Academy, in Senec, Slovakia, where 2 students (one from each school) rapped together and presented the project in front of an international jury, answering questions, offering examples of their work, exchanging ideas. The culmination was the awards ceremony, an authentic red-carpet event, broadcast live, where the winners were announced, and all the schools got their ACES certification. We linked the project to an etwinning one and the twinspace is the most important product because it contains all the materials we created and is accessible to anyone with the link, no registration required, so everyone can use our ideas and make students the centre of teaching. We were all teachers and students, equal and this meant increased self-esteem and motivation mainly for the students, who felt heard, understood and creative. We worked as a big team and this meant solidarity with one another, relying on our strong points and helping each other overcome weak points, learning together and from each other. Everybody was equally important and unique. The project gave everyone a voice and made sure we all listened. By making our products visible on social media and etwinning, we also made sure any student or teacher can be inspired to change their way of thinking about peer education and evaluation in the 21st century. Below I have included several statements from the teachers and students involved, such as they were presented to the evaluators of the project. I have always imagined myself as a teacher getting together all the subjects I had liked as a student. I have tried to instil this passion into my students, the passion for chemistry, for science, languages, communication with everyone, no matter their skin colour, age, religion, social status or ethnicity. Getting involved in European projects made this dream come true. With our students, as a great TEAM, for school, for life, for personal and professional development, we managed to engineer activities that made it obvious that borders have no place in the classroom or between people, except on paper. Both Serbian and Romanian participants had the same thirst for knowledge and eagerness to share, whether it was a maths, biology, geography or chemistry workshop. We all were both teachers and students at the same time and our products, such as the unique periodic table of elements, created in collaboration, will endure and keep making us proud.(Scarlii Daniela - chemistry teacher, Romania)
This project gave me the chance to see pupils at the forefront of education, immersed in teaching and evaluating, planning, choosing ICT tools, contents, working together and having fun, bonding in an amazing way. I have coordinated over 20 projects so far, but never have I witnessed such strong connections and friendships as the ones built during this project. (Loredana Popa - coordinator, Romania)
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In my opinion, this project was unique because we've learnt so much about ourselves and our Serbian friends. We have developed our personalities and worked as a team. This brought us closer and we managed to understand each other. I hope we will see our friends again soon because working with them was incredible. (Murariu Georgiana, student, Romania).
Amity, Contribution, English, Solidarity - ACES (Teona, Denisa, Dorinel, Madalina, Cosmina - students, Romania).
This experience has helped me improve my English. We have overcome our fear of speaking in English. This project is unique and we are very proud of it. (Tiliuta Catrinel, student, Romania).
In my opinion, this project was the best I've ever taken part in. I met lots of sociable, creative children and sweet and patient teachers. I'm very happy because I could work in teams and get to know our partners better. Even if we are from different countries, we are the same, wonderful children. (Adumitracesei Diana, student, Romania).
It was a really nice project,we all learned something new.We had a lot of fun here in Serbia and in Romania.We hope to see you again and keep in contact.To that day,we hope you have fun and become great people. -Stefan Mitrovic, student, Serbia
The most difficult thing for me was when we were going home saying goodbye to our new friends. But for me it is not goodbye for me it is "see you again" because I will come to Romania again.- Luka Radivojevic, student, Serbia
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THE STORY OF YES, YES 2.0, YES 3.0 (YOUNG EUROPEANS SPEAK) 2012 - 2015
The first YES project started based on the idea that students are not motivated to talk in a foreign language because they are not asked to talk about things that interest them. So we decided to let them choose the topics, format, language they were going to use. At first the topics included where I live, my city, who I am, my hobbies, my school, the ideal school and the students had the opportunity to create content, film, edit, comment, offer feedback, have Skype sessions and ask each other questions. But as YES was nearing its end, we thought it should have a young brother, YES 2.0, which meant more topics, more languages, podcasts, a website, more school subjects, more web 2.0 tools. This time our students used interviews, sang, chose more challenging topics, like my favourite videogame or fashion, equality, deforestation. The project kept growing, adding to its vast collection of international prizes for innovation in language teaching, for the use of technology; more and more European quality labels, more prizes at the Made for Europe competition, more students willing to take part. YES 3.0 came with a twist, integrating Augmented Reality, Layar, Aurasma, creating ebooks, acting, celebrating 10 years of etwinning, interviews about the impact this series of projects had on the students, suggestions, what they loved and what they found challenging. We had our own YES ambassador, Iulia, a student who worked in YES for 3 years, who brought prizes from national competitions (Made for Europe), who presented it in front of various juries, local authorities. It was sad to see YES 3.0 end but more adventures and projects awaited us in the etwinning realm.
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MYSTERY SKYPES FOR LANGUAGE LEARNING
In case you are not familiar what Mystery Skype is, allow me to explain. It is an opportunity offered by Microsoft, in which classes connect on Skype and try to guess where each is from by asking YES/NO questions, such as: Are you in the northern hemisphere? Are you in Europe? Do you have a president? Are you near an ocean? Are you neighbours with‌.? Do you use euros? Do you celebrate Easter? So on. The purpose is to engage the students and help them learn geography, how to read a map, an atlas, how to use Google Earth, how to do research, critical thinking, as they clearly have 31
to correlate the information they gather after each question and decide on the next one, which would bring them closer to their goal. Usually, the class is divided in various teams: those running point on Skype, those in charge of the atlases and answering questions about their own country/city/school, those doing research to figure out how to piece together the clues their skype partners are giving them, the cameramen, those who keep track of all the questions that have been asked. Although it may seem difficult, with 3rd graders, who barely know their own capital city, let alone continents, islands, longitude, currencies, oceans/seas, once they have their first go and get a hang of the questions, they will love it and look forward to the next one. It can be adapted to include mystery animal sessions or so much more. It is basically a kind of 20 question version over Skype, except we don’t count the questions. Over the years, I have tried this with primary and secondary school students and we have talked to classes all over the world, from Turkey to UK, Poland, India and what I can say is that the students’ language skills improve considerably, mainly because their motivation and involvement are increased. They are getting real feedback and they ask questions about real people, real places, and somebody answers back. Below you can see some images from various sessions, old and new. Do try it! Your students will thank you!
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TEACHING ENGLISH THROUGH CREATIVE STORY WRITING
We all know that nowadays children would rather spend time online than read or write, which makes it that much harder for English teachers, like myself. Students no longer feel motivated to read a short story, to write a few paragraphs and the reason why had eluded me for a while…but when it did reveal itself, it was like a friendly slap on the back of my head. Now, would you write something if you knew the only feedback you were going to get would come from your teacher and your peers? Would you read a story just because…when you are not invested in it? No, you wouldn’t.
So, there it was one day, at the beginning of October 2015…an invitation to an eTwinning project called Let’s write a story. After discussing the idea with all my 6th graders, that is 3 entire classes, we decided to take a leap of faith and try it out. We would work during the classes, after school, from home and put all our talent to the test. Each school would send one list of 20 words monthly, 10 nouns, 5 verbs and 5 adjectives and all the other schools would write and illustrate stories with as many lists as possible and post them online. The best part was that the lists we would send our partners contained words the students had come across in class or outside it during that month.
And so it began…a project that would alter our take on reading comprehension, writing and teamwork. 23 schools from Poland, Czech Republic, Greece, Georgia, Spain, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Italy, UK, Latvia, Romania, Ukraine, Netherlands and the Republic of Moldova got to know each other first by means of videos and pictures. Next, each school created the teams that would work together on the stories. Each team had between 4 and 8 students. Finding the ideal team configuration was a hard one to crack.
We all have those students who prefer not to get involved but get credit, and those who do all the work so their team wins, those who like bossing people around and those who would love to work but lack the confidence. No matter how you create the teams there will always be complaints. So, we had to change the teams as we went along. First, I let my students pick their own teams, made sure they all understood that each one had a specific role in the team, according to his/her strengths. I also asked them to write a sentence or two on what every member of the team did and give that to me together with the story at the end of the month.
As expected, some did, some didn’t, some finished their stories, others were struggling. It was time for an intervention and an honest discussion on what worked and what didn’t. The main problem was getting everyone involved, invested, trusting everyone to be their best. There was no room for egos, they had to push everyone just as hard and praise everyone the same.
It was time to get them out of their comfort zone, so we changed teams. We put all the names in one hat and did it the old fashioned way. The first response was: “I don’t want to work with X, he/she does nothing or he/she is good for nothing, barely knows any English”. That stung since I thought all my students were above that. But I explained that there were 34
simple tasks that could be assigned to those whose level of English was low, tasks such as translating the lists into Romanian, or illustrating the story, keeping tabs on what the team members do, documenting the work with photos. And then of course, everyone has ideas, everyone is creative and incredibly good at making up stories, so brainstorming became part of their routine. Every time they would present a story I would add more questions to it and sometimes the new elements they added to their story as a response to my questions were absolutely stunning.
But how do you make this kid of a project work in class? Well, first of all, you can’t do it during every class, but once a week, for about 25-30 minutes they could move the desks, take out their phones, use my laptop, their tablets (just 2-3 but still enough) and get creative, inventing a world of their own. It was never quiet, dull, they were on their chairs, on the floor, at the window, in the adjacent room (our Comenius room) using the computer. Sometimes, they would mingle and borrow gadgets from another team or negotiate who uses the laptop. It was a matter of trust. Trusting them and empowering them. I trusted that they were working on the stories and not playing games, although sometimes that happened too, mostly when they had run out of ideas. I never nagged, threatened or took their devices away, because they were doing a bit of teambuilding, learning from each other, exchanging ideas, getting to know each other better. That is vital in a team and sometimes a team that is really in sync can achieve more than any hardworking team could. Playing and working go together.
Soon, we began reading other stories in class. Our English book is not appealing or modern, so we gave it up completely. Instead, we read our partners’ stories, sent our feedback, enjoyed their feedback, revised grammar by correcting mistakes we found in the stories, revised vocabulary by creating new lists. Slowly, they gave up Google translate, writing the stories in Romanian first and started thinking in English. It was a joy and the most amazing part was that they were aware of their improvement.
Since children like to improvise and assert their creativity as much as they can, the next episode will probably not surprise you. During one of the classes, a group of students decided to be reporters and interview the teams while they were working on their stories. One student was the reporter, one was the camera man, one was holding an improvised prompter just in case and the teacher was following them around in disbelief. The first time they did this, there was a lot of laughter, many students refused to talk, others barely said a few words. But we all shared a good laugh when we saw the footage. And they were all extremely proud when the partner schools praised them for their courage. A few weeks later, we did it again, this time with two different teams of reporters, one interviewing the teams and one evaluating the progress and the project by asking their colleagues several questions. This time around, more students talked, some even volunteered to answer questions, corrected themselves as they spoke in front of the camera and smiled realising how fluent they had become.
But that was not all. At the end of the 6th grade, they were supposed to have a national evaluation of sorts, which would assess their reading comprehension skills as well as their writing skills. So, it goes without saying, we used all the stories our partners had written to practice. Some were really short and simple, others more complex and with lots of new vocabulary. There was something for everyone and that gave them confidence. They 35
enjoyed offering feedback to real people in real time, knowing those people would read their stories as well and send some impressions and thoughts. And that kept them motivated. We created ebooks for each month and a website where they could comment and read all the stories, as well as see what their peers thought of their ‘creations’ ( http://letswriteastory.strikingly.com ).
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Making it to the national phase of the competition for final products of European projects, Made for Europe, in 2015 and getting in 2nd place was a recognition of their dedication, creativity and imagination. If you want to see our videos, the tutorials to the web tools some schools used for publishing their stories, or our interviews, you can check our twinspace page called “Videos – tutorials and students’ videos”, available here http://bit.ly/1fyavXa . This was the story of our project, which put a new spin on learning a foreign language through writing stories, all thanks to eTwinning, which for us has come to be a way of life. Speaking of which, some of the students even made up stories about how eTwinning came to be. You can check them out by accessing these links (http://bit.ly/1fyeO4O , http://bit.ly/1D0B6qQ ) or scanning the two QR codes below.
And just to give you a taste of how this project made use of students’ imagination, here is the Glogster on the origins of eTwinning:
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Recognition for the success of our project came in an unexpected way: the European Language Label for innovation in teaching languages (2015).
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Erasmus+ and eTwinning project “Learning Differently” 2018 – 2020
The project started with an idea of improving students’ writing and reading skills, their linguistic, communication, critical thinking and collaboration skills through innovative methods and instruments developed by mixed teams of students and teachers, parents. The coordinating school is from Klaipeda, Lithuania and the partners are from Bulgaria, Poland and Croatia. Creative writing is something that all teachers should include in their lessons, whether it is about STEM or history, languages or ICT. It fosters critical thinking, responsibility and involving the students in the creation of the materials is highly motivational, increases their self-confidence, improves the quality of the classes and encourages autonomous thinking. We tried to learn as much as we could about each other, creating trading cards and videos to present ourselves, posters and linguistic survival kits, Quizizz games, Scratch games on cultural heritage, comic strips about stories from the partner countries, board games and math games.
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The first meeting was held in Lithuania, in December 2018, where we familiarised ourselves with kinaesthetic methods, iMo cubes, Bluebots, various evaluation techniques that students had created together with parents, as well as the 4 learning styles, how to identify them, what kind of activities are suited for each one and how to adjust our lesson plans to make sure everyone has the same chances. The last day ended with a competition between mixed teams of students, teachers and parents, transnational teams, regarding all the countries the Lithuanian schools had had projects with. Between rounds, we danced traditional Lithuanian dances.
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The first short-term exchange of students took place in March, in Botosani, where 21 students and teachers took part in the creative writing and transcurricular workshops, working in transnational mixed teams of teachers and students. They created trading cards which can be used for any topic at any school object. Then they were randomly divided in teams and chose a random topic they had to work on. The stories ranged from a future sport – volleyball with peanuts, to Jijou and the black hole, the friendships between a comet and a mammoth, a new constellation and the legend accompanying it, a child adopted by a family of aliens, a family of Yetis looking for proof humans exist, stories on lists of words, telling a story from a bird’s perspective, special talents, from teleportation to super speed and the dragon who turned every picture into reality through his singing.
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Then they wrote fables, created their masks and acted out. They also learnt how to offer first-aid, how to create decorations for their parents and their homes and how to say basic phrases in each other’s language. The stories were recorded as videos, just like the linguistic survival kit and can be accessed by scanning the trigger images below with the
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Aurasma app (now HR reveal).
Music was another way of ensuring we learnt more about each delegation, their language and country, so we sang in our languages, in English, any song that crossed our minds: from Shallow to Perfect, from lost on you to the Croatian anthem (which teams of students and teachers played using tuning bells). Creating games for the teachers and parents to play was another fun workshop. Teams of students created Quizizz games that teachers played, while the teachers created Quizlet
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flashcards and games the students competed in.
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The treasure hunt we did the next day combined famous inventions and physicists with biology, maths, geography, European flags, the Morse code and was also done in transnational mixed teams. The last day together brought with it chain stories of kittens and spaceships or the mysterious storm. The students had fun jumping from one story to another every 5 minutes writing a new paragraph ended in an open sentence. They included words in their language, making it even funnier to put the fragments together. The traditional dances and customs concluded our activities, as did the interviews we gave to our colleagues, teachers and students. To make it easier and more fun for us to create stories, we have developed trading cards on several categories: personalities, places, recipes, moods, gadgets/objects, time adverbs, basic phrases. Each student or team of students chooses one card from each category and creates a coherent imaginary story. All the stories have started to be published on Calameo, as an e-book and will form an almanac of creative writings.
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The delegations from the 4 partners countries, 12 students and 9 teachers, during the shortexchange of students, at School nr.17 Botosani, Romania, in March 2018
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