Visibility of eTwinning Projects Groups July 2019 Newsletter Newsletter 9 | Page 102

Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2019 Newsletter
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personalities, from musicians, sportspeople,
scientists, historical figures, writers, they
discovered Europe’s amazing diversity but also our
similarities. Researching traditions and customs,
they came across interesting facts that stayed with
them long after their tasks had finished. They
worked in teams and learned to distribute tasks, be
accountable, share responsibility, understand and
accept each other. I am not going to say there were
no problems and everything was perfect, but it is a
work in progress and projects help with integration
and tolerance, respect, patience and self-
confidence.
To make sure they would get feedback on their
work, the students also created a Quizizz game with
questions regarding all 5 countries and also played
quizizz and kahoot games on basic phrases in
Croatian, Polish, Bulgarian, Lithuanian. They started
using Duolingo and Youtube podcasts to study basic
phrases in the language of their choice. The
prospect of meeting students from other countries,
something they had only done through
Videoconferences, but never live, was a great
incentive.
We celebrated week of code by playing with Scratch
and creating a small game about cultural heritage
that will keep being developed.
Since creating the trading cards had helped them
summarise information, choose what was really
relevant, rephrase it according to their level, we
started playing with them, coining our own creative
writing method. Each student and
teacher/parent/visitor (and we have even had
school inspectors and headmasters from France do
it) chose one card from each group (recipes,
personalities, places), without looking, cheating,
just drawing a card and then… they would get a
‘surprise’ word, something completely unrelated to
what they had drawn.
Armed with these, they had to put their imagination
to the test and create a story. They could do it in
groups or on their own, in English or their mother
tongue. The story had to be coherent… it would
obviously not make a lot of sense most of the
times, since the cards they would end up drawing
had no connection to each other.
Imagine Picachu, George Emil Palade, Diocletian’s
Palace and a Polish cake or a Polish pancake that
built its own bionic hand out of Nutella to avoid
being eaten by some 14 th century Lithuanian
astronomer or Marie Curie, ‘jumari’, ‘gravity’ and a
famous city in Croatia.
Finding a way to connect these random notions was
the main attraction. Reading the stories to their
colleagues, answering questions (like what was
Lithuania’s first astronaut doing at Salina Turda
participating in “Made for Europe”…?) was
And the list can go on…
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