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We go Europe - an idea spreading a classroom
Start date: Jul 1, 2015, End date: Jun 30, 2016 PROJECT  FINISHED 

The members of the project group teach at a school in Linz, which is situated in a lower social-economic area. Integration, multilingualism and mobility are known challenges to pupils and teachers in our school. Nearly three quarters of the approximate 290 students are migrants and learn English as their at least third language. Due to this fact they are experienced and competent in language acquisition. Never the less it has to be detected that our pupils have shortcomings concerning languages and fall behind in their attainment. All the members of the group but one teach English for two to five years. One person possesses twenty-five years of teaching experience. The project applied for within the School Education Staff Mobility Program consists of different training courses for the six teachers of the team. The course was intended to improve foreign language competences, to improve teaching competences and to enable communication and exchange with colleagues from other countries in order to gain new ideas and benefit from their experience. The teacher trainings are necessary for career-long professional development and to help to meet the project’s objectives in order to enhance the quality in language class. The objectives of the project were to deal with the diversity of our pupils with more awareness. This includes considering the diverse national and cultural background, the international dimension of our social coexistence („be united in diversity“), as well as considering their diverse basis for learning. We were able to design our teaching to address the different language learning issues in a better way through exchange of experience and new teaching methods. With the use of motivating and effective teaching methods we were able to support those pupils whose parents are unable to do so due to educational alienation or other social reasons. Computer aided learning was employed to develop digital competence in pupils. Our project aimed to combine different levels of lnguage learning. The main object was to support students for getting them talk. Within the project we offered workshops for all students in all different grades to give them new ideas for acquisition of language and we tried to meet the different needs of our pupils. We used the students’ lively interest for digital communication, music, computer games and social environment as an efficient source for langugage learning. Our students could choose among different workshops according to their interests and their language skills. Workshops were offered in morning sessions on special project days on which the regular timetable was suspended. Workshops we offered were: Internet4EnglishLearning • Have fun learning English with pop songs, hip hop and videos; • Create your own quiz, make short videos, and use the Active Board for Online Games. Use your phone • Digital Camera Scavenger Hunt • Create Listening Comprehensions exercises online with favourite songs and share it with classmates • Set up WhatsApp Group for English quizzes • Body swap – use smart phones and make a video of yourself - then do the body swap Language Learning with Digital Videos • Use silent movies and create new stories • Use short news reports for voice-over substitution Bring your favourite song • Songs for language learning – using pop music as a highly accessible source of authentic language. Even beginner level students listen to music with lyrics in English. Pop music in class breaks down barriers. It helps language learners to learn good pronunciation, new words and even grammar and as a stimulus for writing Food & Drink • Learn new vocabulary about food and drinks • Have fun with playing games and make your own colourful poster • Learn new songs and rhymes! English breakfast • prepare a full-size English breakfast • how to lay the table • conversation at the breakfast table Create your game • Learn how to easily program your own computer game with KODU. English stories • Read, listen to and work on English stories. The varying methods and teaching ideas in the workshops were understood as kick-off and are continued in regular Englisch lessons. The diversity of teaching methods especially supports slow learners. The use of digital resources encourages students in their independent learning. The projects are manageable and allow creative work in small learning teams. It enables the cooperation of students with different achievement levels. Language Learning with Digital Videos is a good possibility to choose among different levels of difficulty and complexitiy and offer a wide range of challenge for the students’ own creativity. Social learning connected with projects about British Life and culture (f.i. Preparing English Breakfast) enriches communicative language acqusition. Since our school has recently been equipped with Ipads we have been able to extend our open learning programmes in all English classes throughout the year.
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