Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2014 Newsletter
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The shared model brings two distinct disciplines
together into a single focused image. Using
overlapping concepts as organizing elements, the
shared model involves shared planning, teaching,
reinforcement and evaluation in 2 disciplines. In the
project and kit entitled “Emails from Barney – A
little bear travels the world”, Geography and
Foreign Languages come together as the 2 teachers
in the school have already identified at the
beginning of the project priorities in their key
concepts, skills and attitudes and decided which
contents overlapped. A stuffed animal, the little
bear, travels the world or Europe or a country, and
reports about his adventures with people and
animals in foreign lands by e-mail or blog. The main
gain of this project is seen as the fact that the
"authentic" experiences of the stuffed bear have
motivated the pupils to make progress in their
foreign language and communicative competences.
The webbed model of integration views the
curriculum of the eTwinning project through a
telescope:
The interdisciplinary level is based on keycompetences, and can be centripetal or centrifugal.
The threaded view stresses the use of subjects
when interacting, the integrated view perceives
what the learner learns as being utterly important.
The centripetal or threaded view means everything
is seen through a magnifying glass:
The ‘big ideas’ are enlarged throughout all content
with a metacurricular approach. This model threads
thinking skills, social skills, study skills, graphic
organizers, technology and a multiple intelligences
approach to learning throughout many, if not all,
disciplines. Good examples of such integration are
“Clothing and Culture” and “Cooking and Culture”,
two eTwinning projects and kits where thinking
skills / and social skills are threaded into the
content and teachers ask students: “How did you
think about that?”, “What thinking skill did you find
most helpful?”, “How well did your group work
today?”. These processing questions contrast
sharply with the usual cognitive questions such as
“What answer did you get?”. Both these kits are
extremely liked, used and commented upon by
eTwinners.
The integrated model views the curriculum in the
project through a kaleidoscope:
It captures an entire constellation of disciplines at
once. Webbed curricula usually use a fertile theme
to integrate subject matter, such as the use of
Internet. Once the eTwinning school teams have
chosen a theme, the members of each eTwinning
school team (in each partner school) use this theme
as an overlay to the different subjects. The use of
Internet, for example, leads to a wide range of
activities: reading comprehension tasks, listening
comprehension tasks, multimedia presentations,
virtual communication (videoconferences, forums),
digital recordings. In the project and kit entitled “En
la red, que no te pesquen (On the Net, don’t let be
fished)” pupils dig deep into the problems of the
use of Internet by teenagers around Europe. The
curricular areas involved are: Language and
Communication, Society, ICT and Technology, and
Arts.
Interdisciplinary topics are rearranged around
overlapping concepts and emergent patterns and
designs. A good example of this model is the
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