DISSEMINATION OF THE ETWINNING PROJECT

 

In a world full of lakes we travelled this year with the students of the 6th grade of the 2nd Primary School of Skiathos during the 3 hours of the English Language lesson, participating in an eTwinning  project. We became part of the exciting Community of Schools in Europe through the annual project "A World of Lakes". The project took place on the website of the European School Education Platform from October 2022 to May 2023 and our participation aimed to: 

- to consolidate the grammar structures and vocabulary of 6th grade English and by extension to improve students' oral and written communication in English

- the development of their digital skills,

- the cultivation of skills such as cooperation, communication, critical thinking, imagination and creativity,

- in acquiring knowledge about the natural environment and environmental awareness

- in the cultivation of respect and tolerance of the diversity of people and cultures

-to the experience of participating in a multicultural collaborative project as active members of the European school community.

The students of Grade F'2, as part of their participation in the eTwinning project ΄ A WORLD OF LAKES΄, initially, after watching the presentation of the project prepared by the founding countries of the programme, were informed about the collaborating schools on GoogleMaps , the objectives, the collaborative project implementation plan and started creating their project-themed drawings, which were used to decorate the project pages on the Twinspace platform .

12 countries participated in the project and over 30  schools with children aged 7-14 and was chosen for our team in relation to the 6th grade English language curriculum, trying to give the children the experience of participating in a multicultural school environment like the one attended by the heroes of the 1st unit of our book in the context of a Geography assignment .

As is customary at the start of every new school partnership, our teachers and students, together with their peers from Greece, Portugal, Romania, Poland, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Moldova, Croatia, Italy, Turkey, North Macedonia, Serbia and Albania were invited to introduce themselves, their school, country and interests using the Wakelet & Padlet collaborative tools.

After we met and introduced ourselves, the project plan and objectives were presented to the students through a video, presentation and game, as well as to the parents by completing the consent form for their child's participation in the project.

 

In addition, they were informed about the rules of electronic security and behaviour on the Internet that they must follow. Then they played a Kahoot game about E-SAFETY in class where they learned and had fun.

Later the students participated in a competition to create a logo for the eTwinning project ΄ A WORLD OF LAKES ΄.

Initially, the students of all schools were informed about the rules of the competition and about the deadline for submitting the logos they had the opportunity to create. Creating and choosing the most representative logo for an eTwinning project is an activity that is implemented in all eTwinning projects and activates all students as they are free to choose how to create the logo, what materials to use and the final form that their logo will have. So after the students of all the schools created their logos, they were posted on a common Padlet.

After each school participated with a vote in the online voting with the Google Forms tool to highlight the best logo, which now adorns the home page of our project on the Twinspace platform. Our school's account was created on the eTwinning platform so that students could access all the material from their houses. They were informed about internet safety and the rules of proper digital behaviour and safe navigation through a Kahoot game.

The first exploratory questionnaires were completed and we made with our imagination the first creations based on the title of the project, which school creations were used to decorate the pages of the project in twinspace .

Then we had the creation and selection by voting of the logo of the program, an activity that the children completed with great pleasure.

In November we creatively featured our local lake, we chose Strofilia Lake, first read and learned about it and then depicted its shape and uploaded it to a collaborative Google slides, where we had to add, after decorating, the shape of another school's lake (Lesina lake in Italy) . All the shapes and lakes were made into games using LearningApps, which we played in class to learn and have fun. https://learningapps.org/watch?v=pes6gzt2v22

In December the activity was called Musical Lakes and the children had to sing their lake. https://youtu.be/eK-gQQ2NcJY

The 6th grade students in pairs wrote their songs, sang them and one was chosen to be made into a video for the ebook of the activity along with a drawing for another partner's song (Lake Como in Italy).

The January activity involved the creation of a multilingual dictionary with 8 lake-related words in all the languages of the partner schools. So we had the opportunity to search, find and learn some basic words not only in English but also in other European languages. In a joint Genially, the students wrote and recorded the words in Greek and English.

https://view.genial.ly/63a9eafe12e4fc0018bb5063

In February, as in the previous months, the pairs of schools were made for the activity of the month, we thought and wrote 4 questions for our partner's lake, answered their questions in the project Forum and with them we made a card game in Cram to consolidate information in a playful way.

In March it was time to create the identity of our lake using BookCreator, while the last activity, Time Machine, in April, required the students to investigate the environment of a partner's lake and make a documentary-video with the information about this lake (Fire Lake in Portugal), identity , interview-information, which we had to draw from the previous activities. https://youtu.be/HkCDABx6PnE All videos were used to create a map on Google Earth and a channel on Strimm TV.

All members of our project took part in monthly activities implemented collaboratively in the classroom, at home and in the IT lab. The end result is a collection of the main outcomes of the project uploaded to our Blog . The project ended in May with the completion of the final questionnaire by teachers and students, reflection and a farewell webinar .

Thanks to Mrs. Monica Frigerio from Como, Italy and Mrs. Lacrimiora Sabareanu from Onesti, Romania, founders of the project, who invited us as partners and collaborators in this beautiful journey, to the Director of our school, Mr. Paraskevas Tellidis , to the 6th grade students and their parents!

Our school blog post: http://2odimskiath.blogspot.com/2023/05/etwinning-world-of-lakes.html