School Léon Lin

Presentation of the class , CE1A

Half of the pupils of the class (10/22) were reported at the beginning of the school year as having learning difficulties and many others like: behavior, non-readers, writing difficulties, spelling, concentration, adaptation to the class (poorly organized). The class also included 2 handicapped students without special education or assistant , or with facilities set up late (lack of report of specialists: speech therapists, psychologists).

In January and April, 2 students with difficulties moved and left the school .

Despite of these difficulties , the challenge was to successfully engage the pupils in a cooperative and writing project.

1- From September to December: "How do we live on our Island?"

The school partners had to prepare a presentation of their Island which had to cover geographical , cultural aspects .

How did I work on this part with my young pupils 7-8 years old in School Léon Lin ?

• When I first talked to my children about the idea to have pen-pals in Greece and in Sicily , they were very happy and excited to have new friends abroad . They spontaneously wanted to know more about these countries and islands , even if they had vague idea of their existence .
• On the other hand , for my young pupils, their representations of the world were very limited and most of them , defined these limits at the doors of their city or their neighborhood.

Many questions came in mind :

1- How shall we define our Island from a geographical, historical and cultural point of view ? How shall we introduce our city , our island our country if we don't know them well ?

2-How shall we share our culture if we don't know it well ?

3-What is an Island of legends ? Is our Island an Island of legends ?

4-How are we going to talk and communicate with our pen-pals if we don't speak the same language?

• The pupils collectively did a brainstorming to define the project and to answer the questions . They needed to clear what they knew , what they needed to learn . I first narrowed down the first question by focusing on its geographical aspect .

1st objective : To be able to find yourself in the school and its different places .

2nd : to find yourself in the city of Ducos and its different places.

3rt ; To locate the city of Ducos on the island of Martinique.

4 th: To locate Martinique in the world.

The Final productions:

-->Create a school plan (by assembling together the different models created in groups (2-4 pupils) to create a general school plan.

-->Create a modelization of the main street of Ducos .

-->Make a movie for the penpals : my school, my city, Martinique , my friends and I .

Generally , the work was made with the whole class when the pupils needed to define their projetc :

What ? How ? Who ? Which material ? Which result ?

Pupils worked a lot in pairs or in small groups , with many regulations made by myself .

The final productions were made together by gathering the production made in groups.

From December to March :

"The legends we've read "

This part was divided in several parts . The red line to follow was : How Martinique was born ?

My preoccupations were :

1- To teach my students about the first inhabitants of Martinique : The Arawaks and the Karibs , their ways of life , beliefs and mythology.

2- To read legends about , or from these people , about the birth of the Island .

3- To impregnate and immerse my students in the world of the Amerindians so that they retain a maximum of things and that they can transmit to the correspondents of Greece and Sicily .

4- To produce an interesting document divided in 3 parts : knowledge , legends , and interactive games. This document was created to be a pedagogical resource to share or reuse in class practice.

I had to face many difficulties :

• the age of my pupils.
• the lack of pedagogical resources about the pre-columbian period in Martinique , or inappropriate resources for young pupils.
• lack of legends or books for young pupils 8 years old .
• the poverty of children's books on the Indians of the West Indies.
• confusion between the two people due to the same linguistic basis, land that the two people finally mixed together and adopted the same habits and beliefs .
• difficulties due to the fact that the historical accounts we have of them are reported by the conquerors of the new world (ethnocentricity, prejudice)
• I sometimes had to translate from English or Spanish into French documents or resources from the other Caribbean Islands (Dominica , St -Vincent, Puerto-Rico, Cuba , Santo-Domingo ), to create supportive material and tools that young pupils could read and understand , and that would not create confusion or errors of interpretation , and I excuse myself for some possible mistakes.

Firstly , the discussion with the whole class to emerge the representations and knowledge were very important in this part at the beginning of the work . Despite of their age , some pupils knew things about the first inhabitants of Martinique , because we live in the South of Martinique and we have several historical sites where they often go .

The sites are :

• the city of le Diamant , "The lying Lady and the Diamond rock ": Symbols of Arawak people in Martinique .(as it is a site of occupation and a lot of traces of past have been found there)
• The engraved rocks at the forest of Montravail in Sainte-Luce with petroglyphs .

Secondly , I had to lead the students , in their researches in small groups to answer the questions :

-How and when did the first inhabitants arrive in Martinique ?

-Who where they ?

-Where and how they lived in Martinique ?

Thirdly : Beliefs , symbols on the engraved rocks , mythologies and legends.

It was the most difficult as the documentation is very poor except in the Greater Islands

So we could discover a lot about Taïnos (arawaks ) Gods , not about the gods of Kaibs in the lesser Antilles and in Martinique .

Moreover , in parallel, the afternoons were devoted to reading legends or tales about Arawak life in which students could discover and better understand the lives of Native Americans and represent them by drawing them.

Traditional sailing initiation sessions allowed them to get their bearings in the daily life of the Arawaks and to understand the means of transport (yoles ) used to move from island to island in the Caribbean Sea.

They also learnt basic English vocabulary in connection with the readings of legends and the gods of the Caribbean mythology .

At the end , the works were gathered in a same presentation , divided in 3 parts : Presentation of the first inhabitants, legends we've read , tests . The games were created separately on Learning Apps .

From March to begining of June : "Writing a common book of legend"

After creating a common mindmap (on Coggle) with the other students involved in the project ( together with Sicily and Greece), mine should imagine the first part.

They were very influenced by 2 Caribbean Legends "Kalinago , Birth of a Warrior (Kalinago, naissance d'un guerrier de Cyr Chélim , and Moon- Fish (Poisson-Lune, d'Isabelle et Henri Cadoré ).

The First task was to define the hero and his main characteristics .

Individually , the pupils imagined and drew a character . (It could be a boy or a girl , but had to be close to nature , as the first inhabitants were.

They presented their drawing to the others and defended and argued for their project.

The whole class had to choose the "best hero".

Since they could not choose if the hero should be a boy or a girl , they finally decided together that it would be nice if the heroes were two twins: a brother and a sister called Zandar and Naya .

2-Write the adventure of Zandar and Naya , in Martinique

They also noticed that most of the heroes encountered in the various legends knew a lot about secrets of plants or could have powers like talking to animals or calling and sneaking with invisible characters or animals to help them in their life. The heroes as well were smart , agile, clever and empowered .

It was necessary as well, that the heroes had to improve their knowledge , powers and have initiatory ordeals , such as fighting evil characters (bird-men and snake-men ) etc....

The rest of the story was written day after day , collectively dictated to the adult:Each pupil had to suggest new ideas or a next sentence to write the text.Each time, the ideas , the work of correction were negotiated with the whole class, invalidated or validated .

3- The following parts

were written by Sicily , who had the task to write the second part of the legend and Greece who had the task to write the last part .

4- Illustration of the book

We decided all together (the 3 partner schools ) to illustrate the book like that :

Sicily had to illustrate the part written by Martinique , Greece the part written by Sicily and Martinique the part written by Greece .

So each partner had to wait to the preceding to do its task , it was "the surprise "

5-Reading and recording our voice in the book

At the end it was a difficult work for my pupils, as for some of them their mastery of reading is not sufficiently assured.

However, they all challenged themselves to do it and to read a few sentences, a page or several .

June : publication of the book , evaluation of the project

The book is on the page Final results and evaluation

P.Faliro

The project was carried out with the students of the sixth grade of our school ( 8^th Primary school of Palaio Faliro, Athens, Greece). There were 24 students of mixed ability in the group, their knowledge of English is A2/B1 level of CERF and our aim was not only to cooperate and share the outcome of their works but also accept peers of other nationalities and cultures. The topic of the project was challenging and although we live in the mainland we are close to the sea and of course there are over 2.500 islands (165-227 of them are inhabited) in Greece, most of them with rich mythology. Consequently, we proposed to take part in the project and talk about legends and myths of Crete, the biggest island of Greece.

The cultural background and the richness of the mythology of the two partner –countries (Martinique and Sicily) were so interesting and fascinating that intrigued our participation in this e Twinning project. Thankfully, we were accepted by our partners and our beautiful voyage between the Islands of Legends (Martinique, Sicily and Crete) started.

Communication between the parties was accomplished via exchange of letters (students) , mails , on the padlet , project journal on twinspace (teachers) and skype ( teachers and students).

As our project was practically divided in three parts I am going to present our method of work (pedagogical methods, students’ involvement, use of technology, evaluation) accordingly.

Part 1: From September to December

The students were informed about the project and were called to decide which of our islands would be interesting for them to present to our partners. The students narrowed down their options to three islands (Crete,Santorini and Naxos) and after voting we all together decided that Crete was a very good choice as it’s an island of exceptionally rich mythology. (whole class activity)

The next step was to get to know each other. We had to define and introduce ourselves, our country, our school and our island. Firstly, the three teachers in charge introduced themselves on a project journal (padlet available on twinspace) and tagged our schools on a map using Thinglink.

The students formed rotating groups throughout the project and undertook responsibilities.

The first thing was to write a letter (group of three) to our partners and draw pictures

(individual work). We exchanged them and we prepared a notice board at the main entrance area of our school and therefore we notified the whole school community of our project.

(evidence is available on twinspace)

One group of five was assigned the task to prepare a presentation of our school. They filmed different areas of the school and with the guidance of the supervising teacher and the technical support of the I.C.T teacher made a video. (vimeo)

Another group of five prepared an ebook (flipsnack). They took a photo of the school and prepared a poster and talked about their teachers, subjects, hobbies, sports, favorite singers, actors, movies.

A third group prepared a ppt presentation (available on our twinspace) with facts about our country.

A pair of students was assigned the task to film their fellow students presenting themselves. Then with the help of their supervision teacher and the technical guidance of their I.C.T teacher prepared a video. (vimeo)

We also prepared ppt presentation of our national holiday, celebrated in October, and when Christmas time was close we wished to our friends through a video. We sang and showed them our Christmas tree.

Before Christmas break the class was assigned the task to collect information about the legends and myths they would like to talk about in the second part of the project. They were given guidelines and suggested websites to search for information. (individual work)

Part 2: From December to March “The Legends we’ve read”

The students came back in class with information about the island of Crete and legends connected to it.

All students presented their information and the teacher collected their written work and spent time discussing what should be included in the presentation and what tools could be implemented. We decided to use genially. (We liked the tool previously used by our partners and we adopted it).

In our presentation a variety of tools were used such as popplet, pixton, google ppt presentation, youtube videos, audio books. Students prepared drawings and came up with the idea of preparing two games for our partners to familiarize themselves with our mythology in a funny way using Learningapps. (see on our twinspace) They were also taged on the collaborative mind map we created on Coggle.

The final product was prepared with the participation of small groups of students in the different stages.

Part 3 : From March to beginning of June : "Writing a common book of legend"

The work of our partners from part 2 was presented.

The teachers in charge agreed to work collaboratively using storyjumper. The idea was for each partner to write a part of our final legend, to illustrate one another’s part, record with our voices (both teachers’ and students’) and translate our legend in all three languages.

When we received the first two parts of the common legend (Martinique’s and Sicily’s) we read them in class and there was a brainstorming activity as to how we could continue and end the book. The students proposed two possible endings for the story. One required the heroes to be dying and the other to be living somehow happy.

Therefore the class was divided in three groups. Two groups of five students each undertook the role of the authors. They had the task to come up with two different versions according to the endings they had proposed. The requirement they should meet was to involve elements of the legends and myths of the other cultures, too.

The students of the third group actually worked individually as they were the artists and should illustrate the part of the legend written by Sicily.

Two teaching hours were devoted in this procedure. When the two versions were finished we read them in class and decided to mix some parts. So representatives from both groups of authors wrote the final version in in Greek. The teacher edited the final version. The translation of the book in English was attempted by the students who tried in small groups to translate one page per group and the final version was edited by the teacher.

We send our partners our drawings for the second part of the legend.

Then we recorded the parts of the legend in Greek. Two teaching hours were spent. In every step of the procedure the students were updated by the teacher. Finally, there was a contest in class for the cover of the book. I asked students who wanted to participate to bring in class a drawing to be the cover of the book. We voted the best and sent it to our partners. We exchanged drawings and all three partners decided for the final cover.

Our book was ready.

Final part : Evaluation and dissemination.

--> The evaluation is here , in the page Final results and evaluation