eTwinning workshop at Stockton CLC

eTwinning

Today, I was privileged to be invited to our local CLC to speak to Stockton’s GTP (Graduate Trainee Programme) trainee teachers about our school’s eTwinning experiences.  It was nice to work with Jenny Compton of the British Council and Val Brooks, Deputy of the Stockton CLC and fellow eTwinning Ambassador as well as to meet some of the new talent coming through from our local LEA Graduate Trainee Programme.

I promised that I’d upload my presentation onto this blog for the participants to look at in more detail at their own leisure and thought it would also be good to put down some of the areas that I ellaborated more on, as I spoke.

I covered how I got involved in eTwinning initially, as a part-time teacher to give me some focus and how now it has become an integral part of my teaching life.  I think it’s important to stress, particularly for Secondary teachers who don’t seem as widely involved in eTwinning across the UK as they are in the rest of Europe, that it is quite easy to mould your eTwinning projects into the curriculum without it being onerous and without it impacting negatively on exam results.  Infact, I firmly believe that eTwinning can enhance exam results as well as enhancing enjoyments of subjects.  It is also something that is ideal when thinking about ways of delivering the new KS3 curriculum and it can be cross-curricular and be something where pupils really can try out their creativity and love of the internet and all things computer-based.

I think that the presentation probably speaks for itself.  There are links to our highly successful prject from last year, Je blogue, tu blogues…let’s blog! as well as various projects that our pupils did whilst involved in the project.  In addition there are links to one of our current projects that involved no MFL at all “How green is your world?” .

I think it’s really important to remember that, whilst ideal for the MFL teacher as a way of stimulating real contact with native speakers of a similar age, eTwinning can be used in many creative ways using English as the means of communication (just about everyone wants to got their pupils practising English if at all possible).   One of our most successful international projects is one with a school in the Netherlands that covers Victorian England and the First World War through our History department and doesn’t involve the use of Languages at all.   Also, a little idea I have in my head for cross-curricular links…to work with a department in school on a project from that curriculum area but work in French or German or Spanish (maybe with schools from across Europe, whose language learning is on the same level as our pupils).  That’s just my sneaky way of getting pupils to use the language they learn without even knowing that their doing it!

Here is the presentation…

I have also add this presentation to my Langwitch Wiki  and you can find it here.

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Off to Holland

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The Dutch have arrived!

My biggest nightmare of the past 9 months has been our Dutch eTwinning project. Maybe it’s because I don’t speak Dutch, or maybe it’s because I’m not a History teacher but I’ve really struggled to get a handle on this. However, after the nightmares of having to increase numbers from 15 to 20 hosts and telling parents arrival and departure dates had changed they arrived this evening without a hitch! All day I had images of being left with 2 Dutch children too many, or them having decided not to bother due to our disorganisation and us all standing at school waiting for people who weren’t going to arrive. The only fly in the ointment now is the Head of History is ill and will probably not be able to go to Beamish tomorrow – I think we have a backup now! My only role now is to get us all bowling tomorrow evening and arrange a “social event” on Tuesday.
I must admit, I’ll be relieved on Wednesday evening!
I’ll be blogging with the kids on Our Victorian Adventure all week.

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