Throughout the ”Celebrate with us!” eTwinning project, my students have learnt to use Web 2.0. actively for different tasks, they have improved their vocabulary about celebrations and they have worked collaboratively with their colleagues from other countries to fulfill certain tasks during our online meetings and our individual work that we shared on the project`s pages.
This project was about Celebrations in different countries. There were four countries involved: Turkey, Romania, Jordan and Poland. The main celebrations of our project were:
- 8th March International Women’s Day
- 21st March Nowruz Festival
- Easter
- 23rd April National Sovereignty and Children’s Day
- Ramadan Feast and Easter.
I consider that children have developed, alongside their digital competence, communication competence, social and civic competence and cultural awareness and expression.
The main educational objective was to improve my students` language and digital skills. This project was the appropriate way to do that because during our work on Twinspace, during the webinars we had to speak English to communicate with our partners. Getting to know other cultures, hearing other students speak English has contributed to increasing my pupils` self-esteem because we have always cultivated the idea that „we are here to learn and we can do everything together”.
Throughout this project we have used group work to fulfil certain tasks (creating a poster with a sportswoman for the 8th of March Activity, creating snap words by painting rocks for Nowruz Festival, joining webinars where we had to express our opinion on creating our online Book for this project). My pupils also enjoyed working individually and creating their avatars on Pixton App, presenting themselves using Chatterpix, etc. We also did independent work, each student wrote and presented Romanian Easter traditions to our partners etc.
I have tried to integrate the project into my English Curriculum and it was an achievable task. First of all we used the language actively, the subject matter was similar to the content of our curriculum (celebrations, traditions, cultural awareness) and the topics offered the possibility to practice new vocabulary items related to Women`s Day , Easter, Nowruz festival. Key competencies and skills developed by my students:
- improve their English and digital skills.
- learn about what holidays are celebrated in other countries.
- understand that all people celebrate special events and holidays.
- learn about the ways people celebrate the special holidays in their family and their community.
- understand the ethnic and geographical differences in holidays and the ways they are celebrated.
- develop their cultural competence, that is about learning to appreciate and respect similarities and difference.
We had a good collaboration and we put a lot of work into this project.
Throughout this project, we have used Web 2.0 tools actively. We used Pixton app to create avatars instead of posting pictures of our students. Padlets were used to post our works. A padlet was created for Welcome Party to let the students and teachers introduce themselves by a symbol. We created posters, logos and banners using Canva. We used Youtube to post our videos, Chatterpix to present ourselves, Google forms to collect data for surveys, Google Meet for online meetings, Powerpoint for presentation of celebrations, Quizziz for interactive games during webinars,
This project helped me discover new Web 2.0 tools that I can use in my activity. It has also enriched my cultural knowledge about the way different countries approach celebrations.
The project outcomes have been achieved because our students` parents consider that their children have gained experience and knowledge form this project. They also think it was creative, motivating and entertaining. Parents value the fact that children got to know other cultures and appreciate cultural diversity.
I tried to get involved actively in every step of the project. I shared my ideas with my partners so as to have a fruitful and beautiful collaboration. I answered promptly to each request and did my best to achieve my tasks. I motivated my students to participate and create beautiful works together. I helped with the surveys, collected data and interpreted it. I tried to create a warm and relaxed atmosphere during my classroom activities so as to deliver great products for our online tasks.
We have already received the eTwinning Quality label for our project and we are very happy to share this with you! For more information about our project and project activities you can visit this page live.etwinning.net/projects/project/365572 .
It was a wonderful opportunity to meet and interact with people from other cultures and I consider that this project has truly promoted cultural diversity. My students were very interested in this project. They were curious to use Web 2.0 tools and they had a lot of fun creating their avatars and participating during the webinars.