The project comes as a result of my participation in the IVLP Program “Connecting English Teachers with U.S. History and Culture” in the USA in 2014. My colleague Hicham Ait-ouaarab was also one of the participants and the 12 members of the group never lost contact. In September 2017 Hicham and I decided to create a project that involved our students and made them learn more about the culture and traditions of our 2 countries. And so they started to exchange letters from the beginning of the school year: in the 1st term they introduced themselves, shared their hobbies and interests and described Christmas/Prophet Mohammed’s birthday celebrations and in the 2nd term they wrote about their school and region. In the 3rd term, we tried to create an opportunity for them to work collaboratively and so the pairs of students had to write an opinion text about the project using the word processor on Google Docs. All of them had to create gmail accounts and all communication – negotiation of opinions, creating the text, agreeing and disagreeing – was done using the chat and comment options on the document. Hicham and I were always there monitoring the work and guiding them and this e-magazine is the result of this collaborative work. As for the benefits of the project, I let the students speak through their texts.
I hope you enjoy it and this can serve as an inspiration to create similar projects.
Agrupamento de Escolas de Carregal do Sal - Portugal