Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group Newsletter 2017 No. 7 | Page 67

Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2017 Newsletter
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Is it real, unreal or surreal? An inspiring
eTwinning project
by Antonietta Bianca Ferrara and Manuela Baptista
“It all began with a book, Une histoire à quatre
voix”, thirteen years old Maria Teresa wrote in her
written essay to get through the junior high school
graduation exams, where she chose to describe her
experience of Lire, comprendre, interpréter,
débattre et créer pour découvrir le monde et
apprendre à se connaître, a French language
eTwinning project based on the reading of this little
masterpiece by Anthony Browne.
The project’s main objectives were to guide the
students of four nations to explore the different
point of views of a story, to find out the hidden
meaning of quotes and connect them to the untold
in the history, to empower the perception of an
experience with the force of imagination, to shape a
new vision through the sharing of opinions and
valorisation of personal contribution.
Inspiring and meaningful, the students of this
project produced argumentations, pictures,
presentations, comments, videos and an e-book,
Our history of a 5 th voice, during a one-year
didactic experience carefully planned by the
teachers in a page devoted to teacher collaboration.
There they shared three fundamental learning
units: orientation to self-discovery, orientation to
the knowledge of the other and, evaluation of the
students to foster meta-cognition.
The discovery of how many point of views there are
in a history prepared the way to the assumption
that one angle of perspective can generate
superficial, limited or even wrong knowledge. This
way, students embarked on a full analysis of
Browne’s “A history in a park”, the illustrated tale of
an episode narrated by four different voices, full of
references to art, literature and cinema. They
explained how Magritte, the Renaissance, Mary
Poppins, the Little Prince and King Kong among
others, colours, seasons, trees with eyes and
mouth, social prejudices, emotional moods and
economic conditions could frame the content of a
short story which only apparently is addressed to
children.
Students shared their works on the project’s
Twinspace, conceived as a tinkering lab where the
results of their researches were being published
during the work in progress, to allow participants to
take advantage from their partner’s work and, to be
free to shape and model findings and opinions.
Teachers carefully chose digital resources allowing
collaboration and democratic choice (open source
writing utilities, social voting apps, online quiz).
Also the choice to assign admin privileges to more
actively involved students, served the pedagogy of
the project to foster their sense of
entrepreneurship.
The literary trip through Browne’s book soon
became a meaningful journey leading to the
interpretation and discovery of the symbolic
meaning of icons (the lamp, the rose, the hat, the
black sea) that gave driving force to debate and
questioning in each classroom.
It is not easy to explain what happened from
this point on – a fundamental passage from
simply reading to taking action.
Creativity is the clue. And, we do not choose the
letter ‘C’ for chance!
Criticism, collaboration and creativity…to
understand complexity and connection and gain
self-confidence. The learning environment fostered
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