There’s just one work left for this 3rd term, 4th Eso students must do a movie maker homework.

I’ve enjoyed doing this Project and working with different ICT activities that we have learnt in Sonia’s course, during the Project I’ve seen my students asking me if we will go to the Computers’ Room, what activities are we going to do…I’ve also watched some of them trying to escape from the activity and visiting their photologs, others doing a lot of writing or speaking, deeply involved in the activity, cooperating with their classmates, a few profiting from the fact of working in group work and doing practically nothing ( working when I was looking and relaxing when I turned over) I obviously do these activities because I think that with them students learn better. BUT…

WHAT DO THEY THINK?

Do they have a good time when doing this type of activities?

DO THEY ALSO THINK THAT THEY ARE IMPROVING THEIR ENGLISH?

 

About 54 students have participated in this Project, I’ve included a survey in my blog and my students are still voting ( some of them vote in pairs, because they can do it in the Computers’ Room) . At the moment 18 students have voted and the results are the following:

 

What do you think of this Project?

 

 

 

• I’ve enjoyed it ( 33 %) ( 6 people)

 

 

• Quite Good ( 38%) ( 7 people)

 

 

• Not bad ( 16 %) ( 3 people)

• Boring (11%) ( 2 people)

 

 

Do you think that group work helps you to learn better?

 

 

 

• Yes ( 27%) (5 people)

 

 

• Sometimes (50%) ( 9 people)

 

 

• There are people who don’t work ( 22 %) ( 4 people)

 

 

• No ( 0 %)

 

 

Do you think that your writing skills have improved?

 

 

 

• Yes ( 50%) ( 9 people)

 

 

• A little ( 38 %) ( 7 people)

 

 

• No ( 12%) ( 2 people)

 

 

Would you like to chat or video chat with people from other countries?

 

 

 

• Yes ( 79%) ( 14 people)

 

 

• I don’t mind ( 16 %) ( 3 people)

 

 

• No ( 5 %) ( 1 person)

 

 

If more secondary schools have participated in this project…

 

 

 

• it would have been more funny ( 63%) ( 10 people)

 

 

• it would have been the same (25%) ( 4 people)

 

 

• I’m not interested in blogging ( 12%) ( 2 people)

The first three questions are related to the Project , the main purpose of the other two is to get more information about their interests for a future Project.

Jan, who has seen our ” Let’s Take a Tour” blog, sent me information in my eTwinning desktop about a project his doing with another teacher and which involves people from all around Europe. The Project invites students to write two different compositions , the first one reflecting on facts they think everybody should know about their country and another about Europe. I invite you to visit their webpage

I’ve decided that this will be a compulsory activity for all those students who are very good or good at English, as a way to help them improve their English knowledge.

Before starting this project I’ve read some comments in the eTwinning forum, some people complained that it had often been difficult to continue their project due to different school timetables, lack of ICT facilities or teachers quitting from the Project without saying nothing and with the Project unfinished. This has happened to our Project, at first it happened with the teacher from Portugal who started writing her own blog but never wrote any blog or comment with her students. During the second term just some of the students from Italy wrote something on their blogs and since February they haven’t written anything else. My students complained about this fact, they like writing in their blogs and having created them- they are quite proud of them- but they are willing to interact more with students from other countries. Moreover, this was the real purpose of this project, make communicating in English real.

Now I encourage my students by saying that this blog will also be the beginning of their Portfolio. Some of them have included additional information from their 4th ESO travel, which was optional.

 

During the second term my students had to do a Power Point Presentation about Salvador Dalí, the famous surrealist painter who was born in Figueres. This was a homework activity which they did  during Christmas’ holidays. I wanted them to read carefully Dalí’s biography, so I included in my blog some important instructions to follow . I also wanted to prevent them from copy and paste, something they usually did during the first term. I had to revise all their blogs and make them write the essay again.

Then , we also wrote about Carnival in Catalonia and our main traditional food. We wrote some comments to the Italian girls, saying what was our favourite Italian food, and then we talked about our favourite Catalan food.

In October the students from Novara and from Figueres created their blogs and introduced themselves, including some photos. All these had been hard work. I do a lot of classes with my students, but Maria, from Porto, and Catherine, from Novara, do not see them quite often. So, they spent more weeks creating their blogs and writing the introduction. Catherine’s students and the students from Figueres also wrote about their own cities.

During this term they seemed quite interested in doing the project and they always asked me to go to the computer’s room and write in their blogs again. They love reading their classmates’ blogs and writing comments on them. They do it in English. So, in this way, without noticing it, they are working with two skills: writing and reading.

Creating their blogs was a bit difficult at first. Some of the students, as always, forgot their password and they had to create the blog again.

In November we included another group of students in our project, the students of 4th C, they are weaker students with low motivation to learn. From now on, their English teacher, Maria José is going to work with their blogs once a week, and we will try to do the same than in the other classes. During this month MªJosé and I worked together and I helped her with some aspects of the blog. Her class enjoyed working in the project and sending us comments.

In December we decided to include a writing about Grease because our students went to Barcelona to see it and they also performed some scenes of the musical on Friday, before the Christmas’ holidays. They rehearsed with their music teacher and the performance was amazing!

Our Italian partners explained interesting things about their food.

WHICH WERE THE MAIN DIFFICULTIES??

• Make them WORK!! ( no photologs, no copy and paste, no translator!!!)
• Get them used to WRITING and THINKING!!!
• Share their work and LEARNING TO COOPERATE ( not just one of them working!)
• Challenge them so that they get interested in the activities.
• Make the GOOD students work! (some of them go to out-of-school classes, they have a higher level, but they do the activity in five minutes and that’s it! No interest in improving their English with open activities like that!)
• Make the WEAKER students work. ( Grouping them is sometimes difficult weaker with weaker may find the activity too difficult and weaker-stronger might end in a lazy one doing nothing!!)

When you start a project with  eTwinning you must fill in a Progress Card at least once in a month to inform your tutor about how the project is going and what type of activities you are doing at the moment.

I think that this is a good idea because the Progress Card is useful to reflect on your work, besides the tutor also gives you different ideas and activities that other people have done and which can be useful to you.

 

Last year, in July, I thought that it could be interesting for my students to do an Project with students from other countries. As I had been working with blogs before I thougt that this tool could be an easy and motivating way to exchange information. I decided to enter the e-Twinning space where everybody can include their projects to look for partners in other countries. A lot of people answered but the first difficulty was finding good partners. Some of them had students aged differently than mine, others were interested in doing other things…At last, I found two partners: one from Portugal,Maria and another form Italy,Catherine. Maria, Catherine and I exchanged e-mails during August and September to plan our project. We decided that we were going to work with blogs. Our students will create their blogs and then exchange information through them, writing about their countries: customs, describing cities, geographical situation, important munuments , famous people…They will also add comments on their blogs to make the exchange more interesting. In september we first waited for our timetables and groups, and when we started classes we decided which classes were going to participate in the Project. At this moment we are just creating our blogs . The next step will be reading the blogs from the other countries and adding comments on them, as well as adding more entries to our blogs, of course!!! At the moment students can see everything at my own webpage http://www.xtec.cat/~ehugas. We thought that grouping all the blogs together would make things easier for our students. We will also add them in our e-Twinning website.

My name’s Eva Hugas. I’m 35. I work as an English teacher in IES Olivar Gran. This year I’m teaching in 2ndESo, 4th Eso and 1st Batxillerat.

This portfolio is meant to be a reflection on the eTwinning project which I’m doing , together with the teacher of a Secondary School in Novara, Italy.