eTwinning Project: «A Collection of Short Stories in English»
Our students in 4th grade B and C at IES Nicolás Copérnico (45 participants as a whole), conducted by their English teacher Juan Jesús Aguilar Osuna, have taken part in the eTwinning project «A Collection of Short Stories in English» all throughout this year. They have worked collaboratively, in English, with the following European high schools:
- Germany: HS Eichendorffschule (Schöningen)
- Turkey:
- Sindirgi Anatolian Imam Hatip High School (Sindirgi/Balikesir)
- Erdem Bayazit Anadolu Lisesi (Gölbasi/Ankara)
- Tusba TOBB Science High School (Tusba/Van)
- Kütahya Necip Fazil Kisakürek Anatolian High School (Kütahya/Merkez)
- Hasan Harakani Anatolian High School (Markez/KARS)
- Spain: IES Francisco Agiar (Betanzos, A Coruña)
Therefore, we have been eight high schools (a total of 128 students), working together to write a collection of short stories that we were going to publish in ebook format.
Video editing by Juan Diego Romero Briceno, 4th ESO B
After an initial presentation among the teachers, it was time to introduce our high school and our city to our project partners. For that purpose, we shared this video with them.
Later on, our students introduced themselves to their international peers, whereas the German, Turkish and Galician students did the same. Some of them wrote their presentations and some others recorded an audio using the image of an avatar (for privacy reasons).
During the month of December 2022, all students participating in the project were invited to desing a logo which represented our common activity. Students and teachers voted their favourite among the nine logos proposed and the winner was the one you can see above, created byManuel Valseca Prat (4th ESO B).
That month, we also suggested some topics as keywords for the short stories, by using Mentimeter. The summary of the different keywords propose is the one you can read below, “Friendship” and “Nature” being the most recurrent ones. That’s why we decided that every short story should reflect them, along with four other keywords chosen by individual groups.
At the beginning of 2023, we made the international teams, each of them containing three different nationalities working together on the same short story.
We made 21 groups, which meant 21 future short stories for our project.
Our students began with a brainstorming and they planned their short stories using the MyTwinspace platform. However, it was too slow and there were many difficultes to upload material (the platform has changed this year and need some time). Therefore, we offered students to coordinate their work using Padlet.
In this way, the different teams drafted the beginning, middle and ending of their short stories before writing them.
And during the following months, under the supervision of teachers, all the short stories began to grow, until we harvested this great ebook, thanks to the joint effort, illusion and creativity of 128 European students working on a common project: «A Collection of Short Stories in English».
There were also several covers suggested by students for the ebook.
After voting by means of a survey, the winner was that proposed by Álvaro Marín Hidalgo, 4º ESO B.
VIDEO VERSION
After voting among the 21 short stories, three of them were chosen as favourites. Their authors recorded their audio versions and you have them here, in case you feel like listening to them
“Trash Labyrinth” (by Manuel V. Ángel, Irmak, Fatma Nfkal, Devin and Kiara)
“The Night When Everything Changed” (by Amira, Amada, Julia P., Berat, Mustafa Can, Hüma Nfkal)
“Everything is Better Twice” (Gema, Martina, Baris, Sumru, Arda)
Thank you very much to all the students of our eight schools and to the teachers involved in this project. It has been an enriching experience in every sense: linguistic, academic, literary and creative, interpersonal, and that related to the use of IT.
Apart from this, thanks to this project we are much more aware of our condition as European citizens and of the fact that we can work together in any common project.
It has been a great pleasure to have completed this «Collection of Short Stories in English».
And, finally, this is a photo of all the participants in the project on the day they received their eTwinning diploma. Well done!
