Visibility of eTwinning Projects Groups July 2019 Newsletter Newsletter 9

Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2019 Newsletter ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1st February is World Read Aloud Day (WRAD) and I challenged my students to read out loud some excerpts so that I could record them. This challenge was then extended to our European partners and what we got in the end was a mixed video, compiled by one of the project founders, the Spanish colleague, in which students read excerpts from “The Boy At The Top Of The Mountain” in different languages. To sum up, throughout the project, collaboration was excellent – between teachers and students alike – very professional and always effective, which resulted in the high quality of the several creations and final products. In fact, if there were any doubts, this etwinning project showed us that we are doing it the right way and very successfully, on the one hand, in providing the opportunities students lack at school for the development of the traditional and the so-called 21 st century skills; on the other hand, in hooking students as readers by engaging them in conversations about actual books, books of their choice. As Veronica Henry claims in her novel “How to find love in a bookshop”, “there's a book for everyone, even if they don't think there is. A book that reaches in and grabs your soul.” Hope you, too, can find at least one book that grabs your soul this summer. Happy readings and happy projects! 23rd April marks World Book and Copyright Day (WBCD) and the ubiquitous mobile phones “caught” some students reading in our school. I created a video and as students enjoyed the idea and then shared some more photos taken by their relatives at home, we ended up with not one but 3 short videos. For the 3rd Trimester, and due to time constraints, the methodology was different: in the drive, a working document was shared with students so that they could fill in with their choice of short story and build multinational working groups. After that, in the forum, the teachers created 11 threads corresponding to the 11 titles / 11 groups (with at least 3 narrators and 1 editor each), and the exchanges among some of them were really intense. As a result of this commitment and true collaborative effort, 8 amazing videos were created and shared in a padlet. As before, besides these collaborative videos, my young eTwinners shared audio files reading excerpts from their short stories and one even recorded a video. Here are some examples: - from The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury: http://bit.ly/2Gpf1HV; - Edgar Allan Poe's (in)famous short story "The Tell- Tale Heart": http://bit.ly/2Jz8Ra1; - Yet another learner reads an excerpt from "Tuesday Siesta", by Gabriel Garcia Marquez at: http://bit.ly/2NVscGF; - And a short shared by a student reading Julio Cortázar’s House Taken Over at http://bit.ly/2Y6GjMY. References Adler, J. M. (2002). How to speak, How to listen. Retrieved July 15, 2019, from http://cyberspacei.com/greatbooks/h2/speak_listen /sp_listen_001.htm Atwell, N. (2007). The reading zone: How to help kids become passionate, habitual, critical readers. NY: Scholastic Inc Gallagher, K. (2003). Reading reasons: Motivational mini-lessons for middle and high school. Portland, Maine: Stenhouse Publishers. Gallagher, K. (2009). Readicide: How schools are killing reading and what you can do about it. Portland, Maine: Stenhouse Publishers. Juliani, A. J. (2017). 21st Century Skills have always been “needed” skills, but now we need them more than ever. Retrieved July 15, 2019, from https://medium.com/future-of-learning/21st- century-skills-have-always-been-needed-skills-but- now-we-need-them-more-than-ever-2dbd5e44ffda Kearney, C. and Gras-Velázquez, À., (2017). Summary Report. eTwinning Twelve Years On: Impact on teachers’ practice, skills, and professional development opportunities, as reported by eTwinners. Central Support Service of eTwinning - European Schoolnet, Brussels. Krashen, S. (2004). The Power of reading (2nd ed.). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann Mitra, S. (2013). Build a School in the Cloud. Retrieved July 15, 2019, from https://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_build_a_s chool_in_the_cloud National Education Association. (2014). Preparing 21st century students for a global society: An educator’s guide to the Four Cs. Retrieved from 11

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