Etwinning

European Passport of Languages

Project title: European Passport of Languages

Project coordinator: Inmaculada Santos García

School: CEIP Giner de los Ríos (Extremadura)

Prize category: Novice 0-11 years

TwinSpace

European Passport of Languages is an innovative eTwinning project in which schools from Spain, Georgia, Italy, Poland, Rumania and Slovenia take part.

The project is based on the idea that the students make a virtual journey through Europe using a passport for languages made up of the curricular contents of the English language subject. The students work on the different contents from a motivating perspective while at the same time they develop basic competencies (linguistic, digital, social and citizenly communication, autonomy and personal initiative).

Our journey through Europe has aimed to be a study of the most common curricular contents from the different countries. We have worked on, designed and carried out all types of activities to be able to “complete” our passport, with the experiences of every student. We also created the “Smore” magazine, so that we could also share all our experiences and in it we try to connect knowledge, describe experiences and reflect the sense of all that we have worked on.

The aim of our project was not only to learn contents and complete objectives but we also wanted an attractive way to encourage our students to develop their own creativity and use English as a vehicle for communication, recognizing its usefulness when working with international teams where you have to understand the others and be understood by them.

This approach has encouraged empathy, learning to put oneself in the other person’s place, in spite of all the cultural and personal differences. With this project we have managed to work on the different basic competencies which are required by law, fundamentally learning the language. Using as a basis the principles of educational intervention which apply to any form of learning, we began with things that motivate children to re-structure their knowledge, renew it and add more, but never as an aggregate and accumulation of learned elements but rather as a way of connecting them in a meaningful and functional way. We have managed to do this thanks to the multicultural perspective which is involved in learning about other countries and cultures and awakening the students’ interest in getting to know “other people”. 

As we all know, education is a joint undertaking, not the product of just one teacher. All those who have taken part in the project have played a fundamental role, as without good coordination among them all it is not possible to attain positive results. I want to thank my fellow teachers for their participation and involvement in the project where they have constantly worked to their utmost totally committed to what we were doing. It has been a pleasure to get to know and work with all of you. The work has been extremely intense but undoubtedly productive, and the end result has been worth all the effort in every sense.

The support of my fellow teachers, parents and the school staff has helped towards the successful conclusion of the project. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the families for their involvement in the preparatory activities whenever their help was requested. Seeing how their parents became involved in the project and recognized their work has made the children feel that they were important and were playing a major role, at the same time as it helped the parents to collaborate in the education of their own children.

Mi agradecimiento va también para el claustro y el personal del centro que de manera totalmente desinteresada nos han prestado su apoyo. Gracias a todo esto el proyecto se hace realidad y la realidad ha sido positiva, gratificante y satisfactoria.

My thanks also go to my fellow teachers and the school personnel who have helped us in a totally altruistic way. Thanks to all this the project has become a reality and the reality has been positive, gratifying and totally satisfactory.

The school has also benefitted in many ways from the project. The families have discovered that getting involved in the education of their children is fundamental for success and is a way to feel nearer to them. The teachers have discovered that European projects are interesting and although they involve extra work, the end results are extremely positive. Society is obviously changing and education has to change along with it; the new technologies are the proof. We should use them in an appropriate and responsible manner, so that we take full advantage of them; but we are the ones who should control the technology, we should not let it control us. This is something which has to be transmitted to the students so that they use them responsibly.

Putting the students in learning situations in which they need to use a different language from their own, in this case English, has greatly motivated them, but what I want to emphasize most of all is that the students have greatly increased their self-esteem which is fundamental and not easily achieved in primary schoolchildren.

 Perhaps the final success of the project has been the fact of integrating curricular contents in the English area in eTwinning; in this way any school in any country can develop a similar project or use the material produced to play and develop basic learning skills in any language. In fact we have obtained practical materials, independently of the different educational systems.

 I would like to warn you before finishing that as you can imagine it is not all roses. I’ll choose a project and that’s that. The projects take hold of you, especially when they appear at the right moment, both personally and professionally. This is what happened to me, eTwinning appeared at the perfect moment. It has made me feel good, it has taught me a great deal, it has awakened my creativity, it has made me feel alive and active to carry it out, but above all it has satisfied me so much that it has made me feel happy. I am not going to deny that there have been moments in which the extra work has made me think “What am I doing? How did I get into this?” However, at the end of the day, the scales tip in the direction of IT HAS UNDOUBTEDLY BEEN WORTH THE EFFORT (no one said it was going to be easy …).

 All that is left for me to do is say thank you for the recognition of our work, of our project. I don’t know if I have made it clear that, apart from the final recognition, the work has been a success, not only for me as a professional, but for all of us who have taken part in it, and above all for the children, who at the end of the day are the most important and the ones we work for. Without thinking about them first none of this would made sense. I am sure that we will embark on “another eTwinning adventure” to continue to grow as people and professionals, because, recognition and prizes apart, we believe in what we are doing.

Source of the images: Images from the European Passport of Languages project.