trees | ELT inspired

For all those -mainly non-European -teachers who keep asking me about what etwinning is about:

eTwinning is the community for schools in Europe.

eTwinning offers a platform for staff (teachers, head teachers, librarians, etc.), working in a school in one of the European countries involved, to communicate, collaborate, develop projects, share and, in short, feel and be part of the most exciting learning community in Europe. eTwinning is co-funded by the Erasmus+, the European programme for Education, Training, Youth and Sport.

eTwinning promotes school collaboration in Europe through the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) by providing support, tools and services for schools. eTwinning also offers opportunities for free and continuing online Professional Development for educators.

Launched in 2005 as the main action of the European Commission’s eLearning Programme, eTwinning is co-funded by the Erasmus+, the European programme for Education, Training, Youth and Sport, since 2014.

Its Central Support Service is operated by European Schoolnet, an international partnership of 34 European Ministries of Education developing learning for schools, teachers and pupils across Europe. eTwinning is further supported at national level by 38 National Support Services.

TwinSpace

The place where eTwinning magic really happens is the TwinSpace; a safe platform visible only to the teachers participating in a project. Students can also be invited in the TwinSpace to meet and collaborate with peers from their partner schools.

One of the most important elements of eTwinning is collaboration among teachers, students, schools, parents, and local authorities. In eTwinning teachers work together and organise activities for their students. They have an active role, interact, investigate, make decisions, respect each other and learn 21st century skills. eTwinning projects involve the contribution of each member of the team. Take inspiration and explore these awarded projects.

Finally, in eTwinning, our work is important and deserves to be shared and recognised locally, nationally and Europe-wide. eTwinning recognises the work carried out by teachers, students, and schools through National and European Quality Labels, eTwinning Awards, eTwinning Schools and the eTwinning Portfolio.

One of our school inspiring etwinning projects, this year, was a project about… wishing trees!

In “Our Tree of Wishes”project, teachers and students of about…200 European Schools,worked together ! What an unforgetable experience ,for all partners !

Our “Our Tree of Wishes” project, in a nutshell

Students 7 to 15 created a collaborative Tree of Wishes.
We decorated a real or drawn tree using wishes cards written by our students.
They wrote their wishes ,for a festivity of their choice and hanged the cards on the tree. Then each school prepared a wishes card,to be shared with all partners. The cards from the other countries were printed and they decorated our collaborative Tree of Wishes. Finally we held a ” Best Tree of Wishes Contest”.

Our pedagogical objectives

– The students improve their language skills

– They learn to express their feelings and wishes

– They develop positive thoughts and create positive wishes and send them to Europe and the world

-They develop their creativity

– They get to know other cultures and broaden their horizons

– They create collaborative Wishing Trees

Our project detailed plan

AUGUST

1) We wrote our addresses on the page “Our e-mail addresses” and joined the Whatsapp group of the project .

2) We added a marker for our school on the page ” Our schools on the map”

3) We wrote a brief presentation of ourselves in the project FORUM.

4) On the page ” Organizing the project together” we added our name, school address, number and age of our students.

5) We uploaded our students’ posters, introducing the project to the school community and the Twinboard, in the Pages.

6) We added our expectations ,as teachers, at the beginning of the project, in the page “Survey on the project”.

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SEPTEMBER

1) We presented the project and the TwinSpace, to our students. We also informed them about the netiquette of the project and the e-safety rules by playing the “kahoot” game.

We uploaded photos and/or videos of our students playing the ķahoot game and learning about the e-safety rules, to the sub-page “We learn e-safety in the classroom”.

We invited our pupils, as members of the TwinSpace.

2) Students introduced themselves, in the page “Students introduce themselves”, through a video, a text, or avatars.

3) We joined the project Logo contest: we uploaded our logo suggestions on “Tricider”.

4) We selected 4-5 drawings, which our students had drawn, for the logo contest. We uploaded those drawings to anArt Gallery, made with “emaze”.

5) All teachers joined the Facebook group of the project https://www.facebook.com/groups/415721049072509/

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OCTOBER

We presented our countries, to our project partners.We created trasnational groups ,to do so .

We created a “Thinglink” account for the project.

When our work was ready,we logged into “Thinglink” and uploaded it to the right country link.

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NOVEMBER – DECEMBER

Our students wrote their wishing cards and a wishing letter, and shared them with all project partners.

In particular:

1) Each student wrote a simple wishing card in his/her own language. We helped the students translate the cards ,into English. Students , added a drawing to their cards.

We made a video /slideshow, to present our wishing cards.

We uploaded the video on Youtube or Vimeo first. Then ,we posted the link to the Youtube video, in the twinspace.

2) Students wrote a wishing letter, in English for the project partners, helped by their teacher.

The letter was uploaded ,as a pdf file ,to “Materials”, in the TwinSpace. Then we visited the subpage “Our letters to our partners”,and we uploaded our students’ letters.

3) We printed our students’ wishing cards and all the letters from our partners.We decorated our Trees of Wishes, with them.

4) Finally, we took a photo of our own Tree of Wishes and we posted it, in the twinspace Pages.

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JANUARY

1) We posted all the photos of our beautiful “Trees of Wishes” ,in a collaborative e-book,made with “Book Creator”.

The Book was uploaded to the page “Best Tree of Wishes Contest”. We used the numbers on the pages of the Book, in order to vote for our favourite trees.

2) We posted the wishing letters , written by all partners, in a collaborative e-book made with “Flipsnack”, divided into three volumes: the books were uploaded to an interactive image created with “Genially”.

3) Our students wrote their wishes for all our partners, in the Forum “Our wishes for the New Year”.

4) We completed a survey, in the page ” A survey on the project “

5) Teachers created a common Domino Game using New Year words and pictures, as a nice Holiday gift ,for all student-partners .

6) Project Evaluation

We filled in three easy and quick forms: one for the teachers, one for the students and one for the parents.

7) We applied for the etwinning Quality Label.

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Our own school wishing tree idea,in brief

” Our Tree of Wishes “, our inspiring etwinning project wishing tree ,is a Greek olive tree decorated with origami paper boats !
The idea behind it: during the Festive Season, all around Greece ,you will find Christmas boats (karavakia) decorated with lights and ornaments, which are very traditional and symbolic.
The Karavaki symbolises sailing towards the new life!
According to the Greek Christmas traditions, especially in the islands, kids prepare their own boats with paper and chips of wood, and on Christmas Eve, they use these little boats to collect the treats they receive, when singing the carols (kalanda) from house to house.
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