The ability to speak English is one if the main factors which influences achievement and satisfaction fundamentally in professional and personal life. Our project LET US SPEAK (L.U.S.) reflects these needs in order to help and give students the indispensable skills to shape their future and succeed on the job market. The project has chosen to develop the language level of our pupils as it is one of the most important priorities in EU. Most of the schools miss the direct contact with the real English and suffer from the lack of native speakers in the field of education. In our project, we want to show that by regular communication with the peers from abroad and carrying out certain project activities, we will develop pupils´ speaking and communicative competences, foster their positive attitude towards long-life learning and let them feel the notable achievement. We present our project to ´increase students´ speaking and communicative competences and lower their fear and shyness´. Other objectives are to create a new and efficient "Progressive speaking and communicative method" which will lead to more interesting and motivating learning, to develop methodology which will help to assess and test student´ speaking, to prepare team-building games which lower pupils´ fear of verbal production and to bring CLIL method into cross-curricular activities. Our project includes four countries: the Czech Republic as the coordinator, Romania, Turkey and Bulgaria as the partners. The Czech school, The Primary School of Peter Bezruc, is located in the centre of the urban area of Třinec, which is an industrial town. The school provides general education and because of its small size the school is considered to be a "family school“. The Romanian school, Scoala Gimnaziala Berchisesti, is a public school situated in Suceava, in Bukovina region, a place on the northern slopes of the central Eastern Carpathians, in Romania. It offers full education to their students. The Turkish School, Akşemseddin Bilim ve Sanat Merkezi, is a public school in Niğde, which is a city in the middle of Turkey, and it gives gifted students education. It is based on special practices, procedures and theories used in the education of children who have been identified as gifted or talented. The Bulgarian school, St. St. Kiril and Methodius” in Chelopech, is a public school 75 km from Sophia, the capital city. Based on an implementation plan we have a clear vision of sharing duties and taking responsibilities. All the action for management have been planned accurately with agreement with all the partners. We want to create an innovative learning method focused on increasing speaking and communicative skills - Progressive Speaking and Communicative Method (PSCM) - based on regular transnational communication via the video-conference and verification of how effective the method is. We have found out that there are no standardized speaking tests in any partner countries. We will make such a new unified assessment system of speaking skills for Primary Schools in accordance with the CEFR for Languages where teachers will get the tool to rank their students into the appropriate speaking level. In L.U.S. we will prepare a long term activity such as video conferences between paired students in which they will speak on the chosen topic once a month for 2 years. All other project activities strengthen students´ speaking and communicative skills. Students will create video-cards for foreign peers, they will make an audio story, record TV news about the life in their towns, prepare The Video Recipe Book. They will play Collaborating Geo-caching Hunt prepared by teachers. Three public speakings will be held where students will present the results of the project in each school. Four one-week mobilities - Team-building camps - will be organized in each country focused on lowering students´ fear of speaking by plying team-building games focused on communication, problem-solving, cooperation and creativity. As a result the "Mega Book of Team-building Games" will be made. The teachers will participate in a one-week training event and take part in 2 seminars about CLIL method and assessment of speaking. The teachers will prepare 3 intellectual outputs - Assessment Guide of Speaking, 20 speaking tests for level A2 and Video Tourist Guide and Town Tourist Maps using QR codes. Four Multiplier events will be organized in each country to disseminate the results. Four channels to share all the project outputs will be designed and outputs uploaded - open and eTwinning websites, Facebook, youtube. We believe that our project will help students to share, cooperate, enrich their knowledge. In addition, it will help them to support integration and respect. For the teachers, it will bring the chance to compare and share their various educational approaches and cultural differences of other countries.
The ability to speak English is one if the main factors which fundamentally influences achievement and satisfaction in professional and personal life. Our project LET US SPEAK (L.U.S.) reflected these needs in order to help the students and give them the indispensable skills to shape their future and succeed on the job market. The project chose to develop the language level of our pupils as it is one of the most important priorities in EU. Most of the schools miss the direct contact with real English and suffer from the lack of native speakers in the field of education. In our project, we proved that by regular communication with the peers from abroad and carrying out certain project activities, we developed pupils´ speaking and communicative competences, fostered their positive attitude towards long-life learning and let them feel the notable achievement. We realized our project to ´increase students´ speaking and communicative competences and lower their fear and shyness´. Other objectives were to create a new and efficient "Progressive speaking and communicative method" which lead to more interesting and motivating learning. We developed a methodology which helped to assess and test students´ speaking, to prepare team-building games which lowered pupils´ fear of verbal production and to bring CLIL method into cross-curricular activities. Our project included four countries: the Czech Republic as the coordinator, Romania, Turkey and Bulgaria as the partners. The Czech school, The Primary School of Peter Bezruc, is located in the centre of the urban area of Třinec, which is an industrial town. The school provides general education and because of its small size the school is considered to be a "family school“. The Romanian school, Scoala Gimnaziala Berchisesti, is a public school situated in Suceava, in Bukovina region, a place on the northern slopes of the central Eastern Carpathians, in Romania. It offers full education to their students. The Turkish School, Akşemseddin Bilim ve Sanat Merkezi, is a public school in Niğde, which is a city in the middle of Turkey, and it gives gifted students education. It is based on special practices, procedures and theories used in the education of children who have been identified as gifted or talented. The Bulgarian school, St. St. Kiril and Methodius” in Chelopech, is a public school 75 km from Sophia, the capital city. Based on an implementation plan, they have a clear vision of sharing duties and taking responsibilities. All the actions for the project management have been planned accurately in agreement with all the partners. In Let Us Speak project we created an innovative learning method focused on increasing speaking and communicative skills - Progressive Speaking and Communicative Method (PSCM) - based on regular transnational communication via the video-conference and verification of how effective the method was. We created standardized speaking tests and presented such a new unified assessment system of speaking skills for Primary Schools in accordance with the CEFR for Languages. By that, the teachers got the tool to rank their students into the appropriate speaking level. In L.U.S. we implemented a long term activity such as video conferences between paired students in which they spoke on a chosen topic once a month for 2 years. All the other project activities strengthen students´ speaking and communicative skills. The students created video-cards for their foreign peers, they recorded an audio story, produced TV news about life in their towns, prepared The Video Recipe Book. They played Collaborating Geo-caching Hunt prepared by the teachers. Three public speaking events were held, where the students presented the results of the project in each school and learnt to speak in public in front of their parents and otehr school mates. Four one-week mobilities - Team-building camps - were organized in each country focused on lowering students´ fear of speaking by playing team-building games focused on communication, problem-solving, cooperation and creativity. As a result the "Mega Book of Team-building Games" was made. The teachers participated in a one-week training event and took part in 2 seminars about CLIL method and assessment of speaking. The teachers prepared 2 intellectual outputs - Speaking Assessment Guide and The Book of Speaking Tests, a set of 24 speaking tests. Four Multiplier events were organized, one in each country, to disseminate the results. Four channels for sharing all the project outputs were designed and the outputs uploaded there - the project website, eTwinning website, Facebook page and youtube channel. We believe that our project helped the students to share, cooperate, enrich their knowledge. In addition, it learnt them to support integration and respect. For the teachers, it brought the chance to compare and share their various educational approaches and cultural differences of other countries.