As the name suggests “We were neighbors, now we are friends” (English), Byliśmy sąsiadami, now jesteśmy przyjaciółmi (Polish), We were neighbors, now we are friends (Slovak), Byli jsme sousedé, teď jsme přátelé (Czech) the project brought together three countries: Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland, which have common roots of language, history and culture. Even though our ties are so interconnected, we see how little we know about our cultures and our children understand very little about the language. Recently, the English language and the relatively distant countries have been given a high priority, and we forgot about close surroundings, which often play a key role in our lives. Therefore, the aim of this project will be getting to know three languages: Czech, Polish and Slovak, which will be equal in both education and communication activities. We believe that this way, we will be able to engage the majority of teachers and pupils of the school, for whom English still is an obstacle to active involvement in international projects. Pupils from 6 to 15 years of age and their teachers will work together on activities that naturally familiarize all project participants with the languages of each partner, culture and customs. Teachers will jointly share and develop methodological procedures not only in language education but also in other subjects. Thus, the common history and the similarity of languages present us with similar challenges, so our cooperation will have a broad impact on our schools. This project will give teachers the opportunity to engage in intercultural dialogue, share, compare, discuss, test new methods and pedagogy to improve the impact of teaching. We would like pupils and teachers to develop their skills in a natural, creative way. The main activities are writing common stories, reading texts together and preparing activities to test understanding, learning songs, learning about legends through dramatization, and online meetings. Thanks to these activities, methodological materials will be available for future use. During the project we will organize several video conferences. Pupils and teachers will meet to read to each other, talk about their interests and plans, or sing to each other. We believe that this motivates them to communicate more actively and learn languages. Participants will learn how to effectively use digital technology for communication. We will ensure that the materials created in the project can be used by as many schools as possible. We will make them available on the Internet and ensure that we present them among our teachers so that anyone interested in this topic can use them. The main sources of information will be Twinspace and the websites of individual schools. At the end of the project, we organize Erasmus Day to present the project to other pupils, teachers, parents, the local community and the media. This European cooperation will support teachers, students and the school community (indirectly) to improve language skills in order to enable communication. This means that we will have a chance to learn two more Slavic languages through real context and real needs to communicate. The experience that our students and teachers will gain will make them more open to future mobility in Europe, see Europe as a whole, and be ready for further working cooperation with any EU country.
As the name suggests “We were neighbors, now we are friends” (English), Byliśmy sąsiadami, now jesteśmy przyjaciółmi (Polish), We were neighbors, now we are friends (Slovak), Byli jsme sousedé, teď jsme přátelé (Czech) the project brought together three countries: the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland, which have common roots of language, history and culture. Even though our ties are so interconnected, we see how little we know about our cultures and our children understand very little about the language. Therefore, the goal of this project was three languages: Czech, Polish, and Slovak, which were equivalent both in educational activities and in communication. We managed to involve a large number of pedagogues and pupils in the project because foreign languages with Slavic roots were not an obstacle for them. Pupils aged 6 to 15 and their teachers worked together on activities that naturally introduced all project participants to the languages, culture and customs of each partner. Teachers jointly shared and developed methodological procedures not only in language education, but also in other subjects. Common history and language similarity often present us with similar challenges, so our collaboration has had a broad impact on our schools. Students and teachers developed their skills in a natural, creative way. The main activities were writing joint stories, reading texts to each other and preparing comprehension testing activities, learning songs and poems, learning about legends through dramatization and online meetings. Thanks to these activities, methodical materials were created that can be used in the future. The materials are freely available on the Internet. The main sources are the websites of each school. During the project, we organized several video conferences. Pupils and teachers met to read to each other, talk to each other about their interests and plans, or sing. Participants learned to effectively use digital technologies for communication. The project was interrupted at the beginning due to restrictions due to Covid-19 and had to be extended. This showed how beneficial international cooperation is when we could share our concerns and benefit from our experiences. The long-term impact and sustainability of the project results from the cooperation that was established in the partner schools, either from the point of view of the teachers or from the point of view of the pupils who worked on the project, thus gaining new contacts and possibilities for further activities in the future. The project was implemented as an eTwinning project and received the National Quality Label.