Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group Newsletter 8 Visibility of eTwinning Projects Newsletter 8 | Page 66

Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2018 Newsletter ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ countries: students recreated the art pieces of famous painters, solved puzzles, created an e-book about tangible cultural heritage of our countries. As members of the eTwinning community, the children and we, their teachers, celebrated the eTwinning day together in “Let’s celebrate”. “Challenge yourself” was a page, prepared by teachers, that provided games and online activities for self- evaluation on various topics presented in the project. “Evaluation” and “Dissemination” were included, too. As the project aimed at developing thinking through storytelling, several activities were devoted to that objective. “Where to start from?” was an introduction to the project activities. Students watched and read the original story about the Little Match Girl. Then they mind mapped the information they have found about Andersen and his work. Before writing a new story, children learnt about the art of storytelling: story structure, characters and language patterns in “How to be a good storyteller?” “Six thinking hats” enabled them to make a decision observing the problem from different point of view. “Think, collaborate and create” was a creative area where students voted and decided together how to change the story, whether to involve new heroes, about their appearance, character and names. They worked in international teams, developed the plot, and created the new story with a better ending. We organized many activities dedicated to cultural heritage in order to raise students’ awareness of European cultural heritage and of their partners’ We have seen many tangible results in our eTwinning project. Most notable are the increased collaboration between students, their development of different types of thought processes, and their fluency progress with 21st century skills. As eTwinning schools, we all wanted to develop key competences. With regard to collaboration between students, the children develop ed their communication skills and social skills as they worked together in pairs, groups, and international groups. They interacted by helped each other, including those with SEN, each using their own strengths to complete the task together. They communicated in both their mother tongue and in English as a foreign language. The project improved their communicative skills in both languages. By challenging the children to think in different ways they successfully developed creative, critical, and abstract thinking, as well as thinking outside the box - something that really prepares them for the modern world. Problem solving, positive thinking, and social thinking involved in the project also boosted the children's personal development. 21th century skills played a large role in the projects as children used search, analysis and information presentation skills. A strong focus on digital skills was included in the practical development of Netiquette, Copyright, e-Safety awareness, and online skills. Our project benefited from the participation of parents in the project as they got involved in activities, taught about cultural heritage, and helped to organise events. Non-tangible results include nurturing a love of reading, imagination, empathy, fantasy, and an acceptance of diversity. These transmuted into positive atmosphere in the classroom, increased self-control, and taking responsibility for attaining a common goal, and working as members of small and large teams. These in turn led to the development of real friendship between students in their own classes and with other students and teachers in the participating schools. These friendships, along with the activities, noticeably increased the motivation to study. Presentation of 66