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

Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2018 Newsletter
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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
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