Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group Newsletter 6 2016 | Page 98

Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2016 Newsletter -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The result has been very satisfactory. 3 projects have already been agreed and set up between Italians and Spanish, and a follow-up of the course/project is going to take place next school year. You can see all the work done in the TwinSpace of the project: https://twinspace.etwinning.net/17187/home Marta Pey is currently working as Coordinator of Foreign Languages Programmes for the Department of Education in Catalonia (Spain). She has been an eTwinning Ambassador since 2011. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ School Libraries Can Play a Key Role in Building eTwinning Projects by Manuela Maria Baptista The eTwinning project “Express Yourself!” was boosted by librarians teachers (Manuela Baptista from Portugal and Jasna Sojer from Croatia) in partnership with teachers curriculum and special needs teachers (from their schools and from German and Turkey schools) focusing on methods and techniques of bibliotherapy and dramatic expression, involving students in the regular curriculum and also with special educational needs, with the goal of providing children and young people the opportunity to develop communication interpersonal, to extend the life experiences to enrich the skills of reflection, decision and choice and provide creative problem solving (such as the difficulty of self-acceptance, peer acceptance, insecurity, conflicts, etc.) and the adoption of an appropriate social behaviour. Throughout the school year, each month has been selected and worked one problem in the daily life of children and young such as stereotypes, prejudice, virtue, empathy, friendship, conflict resolution https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlKae5NGxK4 Students had the opportunity to work collaboratively not only within their group as well as children and young people from four European countries involved, creating strong emotional ties afforded by the frequent moments of reflection and sharing documents (videos, drawings, texts, etc..), by conducting joint exercises and even drama together and the possibility of interaction through videoconferencing. They understood that children and young people in different countries face similar situations found shared values, such as acceptance of differences, tolerance, knowing the virtues privilege regarding defects, the value of friendship, how to solve conflicts, etc. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gA1A3STnGQ In our project we used literature of authors from different European countries but also the national ones. We chose books that deal with contemporary children’s problems, analyzing them and discussing the problems, searching for possible solutions in the acts of main characters. In that way children developed their language and verbal skills, critical thinking and learned from those experiences. They used both, mother tongue and English, developing in that way foreign language skills. Playing through theatre they learned to express their feelings, communicate with others, improve 98