European Passport of Languages
European Passport of Languages is an innovative eTwinning Project which includes participating schools from Spain, Georgia, Romania and Slovenia.
The Project is based on the idea that pupils participate in a virtual journey through Europe using a language passport in which they gather information about the curriculum content of the subject area of English. The pupils work on distinct parts of the curriculum and are highly motivated to develop their basic language skills from various perspectives, such as: linguistic communication, digital competence, social and citizenship competence, autonomous learning and personal initiative.
Making real use of the English language as a vehicle for communication, the pupils make suggestions about the development of the Project. They put their ideas into action and use mental processes which increase their creativity and make them assume an active role in their learning. The planning of the Project is based on six activities which the pupils carry out in mixed nationality groups that work in association with a teacher / mentor.
We can find activities, various documents from presentations, Christmas Carol competitions, games, votes, sporting activities, interviews, teachers' tutorial materials and interesting evaluation systems featuring emoticons etc. It is plain to see the use of the tools on the eTwinning platform is combined with the use of tools 2.0, such as: Smore (a tool used for the creation of digital leaflets to publish and organise activities), ooVoo (video conference), Glogster (used to create posters in multimedia), Tripline (useful for locating participating countries), MeetingWords and Padlet (virtual walls for collaborative writing), Goanimate (animated presentations), YouTube, GoogleDrive (were used in order to share documents) and social networks like Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, y Google+ (were used to communicate effectively). The pupils also used email messages in order to get to know each other and to agree on procedures, share documents and distribute tasks.
The participating teachers describe the development of the Project in the following way:
The Project consists of the creation in Smore of a passport which groups together the curriculum content worked on in the subject area of English. It details the various activities which permit the pupils to develop their linguistic abilities.
The majority of the activities required a high level of collaboration. International groups have been created to promote the use of foreign languages in real contexts. The figure of the teacher / mentor has been responsible for the supervision and planning of the international groups.
Various contents have been covered, such as: recipes on Glogster; the city whose activity we complete with video conferences; we prepared detailed interviews for famous sports stars with a diverse range of questions. Thanks to the international groups, the activities were enriched and made more interesting.
From the National Support Service for eTwinning we wish to congratulate the participating teachers and pupils for promoting the European dimension in their respective centres. This Project has given the pupils the opportunity to use the English language in a real context and promoted an active and highly motivated approach to learning.
Source of images: The TwinSpace of the Project
