Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group Newsletter no. 5 - July 2015 | Page 8

Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2015 Newsletter -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Firstly, students carried out most of the activities and tasks with the partners using the TwinSpace. Mainly in small groups, they had to reflect and give their opinions, ideas about their character strengths and traits, optimism, gratitude, selfconfidence, self-compassion and the importance of an affective education at schools interacting in English though the Forum by using several ICT tools. They created different products that shared and compared with the other European mates. They had to listen to videos, read comments and replay to them writing simple sentences or texts, but also to interact with the partners during Skype meetings so they needed to improve their knowledge about new lexis and to recycle structures developing communicative skills and then their competence in Communication in foreign language. During the Italian language classes learners were asked to read short stories about the project topic and reflect on them expressing their feelings and ideas. Then, they were asked to make up and write stories exploiting some of the teenagers’ common character aspects applying skills and competences correlated to Communication in the mother tongue. The Art teacher engaged students in adorning all the tales with drawings that illustrated some chapters. Social and civic competence was improved during both Italian and English language activities when learners were invited to reflect on the different aspects of their characters and how they influence their relationship with together adults and mates. They shared their emotions and thoughts but also expressed empathy and tolerance while comparing them with the partners from different social contexts and cultural identities. Always with regard to them and their habits, learners had the chance to improve their social skills understanding and appreciating the diversity. Working in groups each student got a role and respected the others collaborating during the project work to reach common goals. They looked for specific information, collect and select materials such as articles and pictures, then organized and planned them in order to create final products to be shared in the TwinSpace of the project. The key competences Sense of initiative and entrepreneurship and Learning to learn took place constantly in most of the tasks because students had to recycle their previous knowledge, skills and competences to acquire some new ones interacting and cooperating firstly with pairs in class and then with the partners in the TwinSpace. Students showed to be more concerned and encouraged while working to reach the final product and particularly to receive partners’ feed-backs. As the previous competences The Digital competence occurred during all the activities and students had the opportunity to know and use new tools. A part from Power Point Programme that they mainly used in class to show the results of the group works, students became familiar with other programmes such as Padlet, Isuu, Youblisher , Animoto , Smilebox, Photopeach etc… to make their task products. They had constantly to communicate and share materials exploiting the Forum or the Blog always being responsible and aware of their roles in the project. Students enjoyed this opportunity a lot because they had the chance to enrich their knowledge and built up competences effectively cooperating through innovative activities and ICT tools that stimulated their motivation and creativity in some subjects at the same time during the school year. Once more eTwinning platform has given my students this challenging occasion to learn in a different way developing competences useful to interact and communicate effectively with other students and teachers in order to reach common aims so as it has encouraged some of my 8