Despite of the great choice of textbooks and the latest methods, it is still one of the greatest challenges for teachers to teach students to communicate effectively. We are often faced with the fact that students doing well in the classroom dare not say a word outside the class. The aim of this project is to find a solution for this problem. Objectives - Developing communication in English with the help of the methods of competency-based teaching, cooperative workforms and using ICT - The biggest possible number of students pass the language exam - Methodology and ICT training of the involved teachers - Developing communication in the mother tongue - Making students acquainted with their own and the partner schools’ history and culture - Developing the digital competency of students Participants - Students with a minimum A2 level of English according to CEFR at the beginning of the project who turn 14 no later than the finishing year of the project. - Teachers of English, ICT, History and mother tongue - Members of the project management – school leaders, colleagues with project experience - Parents - Maintainers of the schools and local governments - Local and regional media Activities At the beginning of the first year we measure the English knowledge of the students, the groups join a virtual classroom, and the website of the cooperation will be created in 5 languages. Parallel to the exam preparation there will be 10 one and a half hour long skype lessons taught by the teachers of all five schools, so there will be 2 lessons taught by each school every year. These lessons will prepare the students for the interview and short conversations parts of the exam. The syllabus will be prepared together but making the lesson plans will be the responsibility of the involved teachers. The video recordings, the vocabulary lists, the lesson plans and the syllabus will be uploaded to the common website so that other teachers and students have access to them. The children will put together a presentation about their schools in any digital format for the students of the other schools. As a complementary activity, the students will be prepared for the reading part of the exam. The activities of the second year will follow the path of the first year, only the topics will differ. During the skype lessons pupils will practice for the transactional dialogues, picture story and making notes parts of the exam. The digital presentations will be about the towns where the students live and the complimentary activity will be preparing children for the writing part of the exam. In the third year the children will prepare for the discussion and radio programme parts of the exam in the skype lessons. The topic of the presentations will be the participating countries. Instead of practicing for the written part of the exam, the students will register on the website of Euroexam and take part in the e-learning course available there. The transnational project meetings will be realized together with the short term learning/teaching/training activites and the main tasks to be carried out will be project management tasks such as planning, determining responsibilities, assessment, compiling, analyzing the doccumentation of assessment, planning necessary changes, etc. There will be training for teachers twice during the project, onme in Hungary in autumn 2018 and one in Greece a year later. The topic of Euroexam training will be the methodology of preparing students and training evaluators of oral exams. Both will be available for English teachers in the region and for those meeting the legal requirements, they will be accredited. The topic of the second training will be methodology of teaching English and using ICT in teaching English. These will also be open for other teachers. The students will meet three times and take part in activities based on the topics of the skype lessons. They will work in mixed nationality cooperative groups in lessons, take part in individual competitions based on the tasks of the exam and they will share their digital presentations with the other students. The third meeting will be a sample exam as well, and it will be followed by the real exam in May. Methodology of the project - Thinking together - Constant contact - Careful and well thought out planning - Continuous assessment - Planning the necessary adjustments Expected results and impacts - At least 70% of the involved students pass the (sample) exam - Syllabus, lesson plans, wordlists, video recordings connected to the skype lessons - Digital presentations of the students - Students’s communication both in English and the mother tongue develops - Students and teachers’ digital competency and creativity develop - Techers will renew in terms of methodology and will be ready to use ICT in their lessons effectively - Students and teachers’ self evaluating ability develops - Students will be able to cooperate, make decisions, organize and keep deadlines for a common goal
The main goal was to develop English communication and we succeeded. The realized objectives - English communication developed with the help of the methods of competency-based teaching, cooperative workforms and using ICT - A large number of students passed the language exam - The involved teachers got trained in Methodology and ICT - Communication in the mother tongue developed - The students got acquainted with their own and the partner schools’ history and culture - The digital competency of students developed Participants - Students with a minimum A2 level of English according to CEFR at the beginning of the project who turn 14 no later than the finishing year of the project. - Teachers of English, ICT, History and mother tongue - Members of the project management – school leaders, colleagues with project experience - Parents - Maintainers of the schools and local governments - Local and regional media Activities In the first year we assessed the English knowledge of the students, and they joined a virtual classroom. Parallel to the exam preparation there were 10 skype lessons taught by all five schools. These lessons prepared the students for the interview and short conversations parts of the exam. The syllabus was prepared together but making the lesson plans was the responsibility of the involved teachers. The video recordings, the vocabulary lists, the lesson plans and the syllabus were uploaded to the project pages of the websites of each school so that other teachers and students have access to them. The children put together a presentation about their schools in any digital format for the students of the other schools. As a complementary activity, the students were prepared for the reading part of the exam. The activities of the second year followed the path of the first year, only the topics were different. During the skype/messenger lessons pupils practiced for the transactional dialogues, picture story and making notes parts of the exam. The digital presentations were about the towns where the students live and the complimentary activity was preparing children for the writing part of the exam. In the third year the children prepared for the discussion and radio programme parts of the exam. The platform of online preparation was changed to google classroom and we used MEET for the digital lessons. The topic of the presentations were the participating countries. Instead of practicing for the written part of the exam, the students were to register on the website of Euroexam and take part in the e-learning course available there. Because of the COVID-19 situation it was impossible to organize the "international" exam in Poland so this step was left out for all partners except for Hungary. The transnational project meetings were nor financed so the planned tasks such as planning, determining responsibilities, assessment, compiling, analyzing the doccumentation of assessment, planning necessary changes, etc.were realized together with the short term learning/teaching/training activites. There was training for teachers twice during the project, once in Hungary in autumn 2017 and one in Greece a year later. The topic of Euroexam training was the methodology of preparing students and training evaluators of oral exams. Both were available for English teachers in the region and for those meeting the legal requirements, they were accredited. The topic of the second training was methodology of teaching English and using ICT in teaching English. These were be open for other teachers. The students met only twice instead of the planned three times and took part in activities based on the topics of the skype and MEET lessons. They worked in mixed nationality cooperative groups in lessons, took part in individual competitions based on the tasks of the exam and they shared their digital presentations with the other students. The third meeting was to be a sample exam as well, and it would have been followed by the real exam in May. Because of the COVID-19 situation we had to leave out the training and the sample exam instead the Hungarian school compiled a sample exam and it was conducted by the participant schools. The methodology of the project - Thinking together - Constant contact - Careful and well thought out planning - Continuous assessment - Planning the necessary adjustments The realized results and impacts - 13 B2 complex exams, 2 B2 oral exams, 43 B1 and 20 B2 "sample" exams - Syllabus, lesson plans, wordlists, video recordings connected to the skype/MEEt lessons - Digital presentations - Students’s communication developedboth in English and the mother tongue - Students and teachers’ digital competency and creativity developed - Techers renewed in terms of methodology and are ready to use ICT in their lessons effectively - Students and teachers’ self evaluating ability developed - Students are able to cooperate, make decisions, organize and keep deadlines for a common goal