First of all, I have to admit that I have never thought about a dream-project I want to conduct at school. Nevertheless, to write about a project where I have all the money and possibilities I like to, sounds very interesting to me.
According to the Hessian curriculum grade 6 (G8), the students shall learn to handle the problems of clichés and prejudices, they shall be confronted with different people from different countries, and they shall be confronted with different ethnical backgrounds. In my opinion, this is a quite good topic to connect it with the new media. Since our school has many different partner schools in Australia, the USA, Canada, and Great Britain I could imagine conducting a video project where the students (the class consists of 25 students) can contact different students from our partner schools. The aim is to talk to them using the English language and to learn something about their culture and everyday life. Therefore, a concrete task can look like this:
- Choose one student of our partner schools you want to talk to (of course the students from our contact schools are always there and have always time to talk to them)
- Talk to him/her and find out how a typical day of a student looks like in his/her country!
- Do you find any similarities between his/her everyday life and yours?
In my opinion this would be a task which can be very helpful for the students because they have to use the English language because none of the students from our partner schools speaks German and therefore, the German students might realize how the English language is used in a natural context. Thus, the task is a good tool to let the students realize what they are able to express in English and where they have some difficulties. Furthermore, the students learn to interact with people from different countries, get to know a different culture, and may find similarities between himself/herself and the other student. Therefore, with the help of this task the students can improve their social, speaking, listening, creative, and, of course, also media skills.
I also could imagine to extend this task insofar as that the students have to talk to our partner school students once a week to have a permanent contact to English native speakers. This could be quite helpful to achieve a constant improvement of their language skills.
What I want to add is furthermore that the German 6-graders are of course very motivated and eager to talk to the English native speakers. There is not even one student who is not eager to do this task and to talk to native speakers of English. (-;
Hey Daniel!
I like your dream project very much – and I think that in a school that is well enough equipped as well as has all the worldwide connections and no tight time regulations due to the curriculum it would be very cool to do this. Especially your point of a permanent contact to native speakers is very good. Do you have any idea how to secure your students’ results (e.g. creating a homepage, blog etc.)?
Nethertheless, the project is very good – it would be a pleasure to work in such a surrounding and project!
Greetings, Rabea