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Svitlana Dyka, a Teacher of English as a Foreign Language,                                                          Educational Complex # 31, Kropivnitsky, Ukraine                                                                                                                                                                                        

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Svitlana Dyka, a Teacher of English as a Foreign Language,                                                          Educational Complex # 31, Kropivnitsky, Ukraine                                                                                                                                                                                        

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Learning English with eTwinning
eTwinning, one of our most successful actions at EU level,  provides a platform to connect classrooms through ICT across Europe. This generates a huge number of innovative projects.”
Androulla Vassiliou, a European Commissioner for Education

Classroom management is one of the top issues for each teacher because to create well-managed classroom is very important for effective teaching and learning of any subject. It helps to optimize students’ learning and achievements. There are usually four general components of classroom management that affect the students’ learning and their success in it. They are rules and procedures, disciplinary intervention, teacher-students relationship, and mental set.                               Here we’ll take a look at ways to manage a classroom effectively and some helpful methods and techniques that are going to come in handy if you are faced with managing your classroom with the help of an eTwinning teaching and learning platform.

First of all, it should be mentioned that the participation in eTwinning projects can be useful for each school and each classroom. It opens the boundaries of the classroom and becomes an extension of learning on the base of a curriculum which is more relevant to the students’ life.

Thus, for example, during the previous academic year my students and I had initiated a project “Let’s Give Peace a Chance!” It united 8 countries, 15 schools and 15 teachers with their students who were advocates for peace. The project gave its participants an opportunity to discuss such an urgent global issue as Peace and Peacekeeping on our planet Earth. It gave an understanding that the notion ‘peace’ means not only absence of wars and conflicts between people but also a peaceful co-existence of a man and nature.

The participants of the project shared their ideas about Peace and their thought how they could create it together. They expressed their ideas in essays, poems, songs, paintings, drawings, and other creations. They had presented them in their final Learning Outcome such as a Weebly website “Let’s Give Peace a Chance!”(See the link: http://etwinning-let-give-peace-a-chance.weebly.com.)

As a teacher, I fully agree with a famous  psychologist Lev Vygotskii who stated that pedagogy     should focus not on the yesterday’s child development but on the tomorrow’s one. I also consider that to be more successful in their future life my students need Collaborative Problem Solving  Skills as an example of complex but relevant 21st century skills.  And they should possess 8 Euro-pean Key Competences as well.

The project “Let’s Give Peace a Chance!” has developed in its participants such competences as ability to communicate in English, digital  literacy, learning to learn, social and civic responsibility, iniative, cultural awareness, and creativity.

The teams carried out an extensive work together and had the effective results. The  participation  in the project gave an opportunity to use English as a mean of intercultural communication and as a tool in the dialogue of cultures of the modern world. This is required by our state curriculum. The project helped students to master skills and ability to communicate orally and in writing in accordance with the motives, goals and social norms of speech behavior in typical areas and situations.       Thus, thanks to the participation in the project the main purpose of learning  English  was realized. The project helped to build students' communicative competences and deepen their sociocultural and sociolinguistic knowledge and skills.

Finally, the participation in eTwinning projects helps our students to become more IT-competent and confident. They willingly mastered the new web-tools which helped them to find necessary information and memorize it better.The Web 2.0  tools were at the heart of communication and  collaboration.

For the work of this project my partners and I tried to choose the most suitable technology. First of all, we used the instruments of Project TwinSpace and eTwinningLive. We tried to use most of them and to keep them well organized. On our Project TwinSpace there are such pages as: Welcome Page, List of schools-participants and their presentations, Project Plan, Songs for Peace, Brainstorming "What is Peace?", What PEACE means for me (pupils essays), Students Forum, Peace Imagery, Chernobyl Quiz,Learning Activities, Feedback and Evaluation, School Collaboration, The Project Products.

Teacher Bulletin and Project Journal were actively used for the teachers’ communication. On eTwinningLive  I  created On-Site Event "A Peace Bell'', devoted to the International Day of Peace. That Event was devoted to the celebration of International Day of Peace on September 21, 2016. My partners and I shared our experience of celebrating this important holiday with our students. See the link: https://live.etwinning.net/events/event/13112

Such a popular web  instrument as a padlet was widely used in the project because most of students were  familiar with it rather well,  and they easily were able to create the various project’s outcomes with its help.  Thus, it was used for the Presentation of schools and cities of participants of the project and for students' brainstorming on the issue "What is Peace?" When my students shared the information on celebration of the 30-th anniversary of Chernobyl Accident in our Educational Establishment, we also used padlet.

For  Vocabulary Learning Activities I used such a web tool as LearningApps.org.

See: https://twinspace.etwinning.net/18086/pages/page/141898 or Full Screen Link http://LearningApps.org/watch?v=p6c0zapsc16

Google Forms were used for the creation of the Feedback and Evaluation Form for the Participants of a Project.

The schools-participants have created a lot of videos, various presentations, slideshows and documents which you can watch on  our Project’s TwinSpace.

And at last, our website “Project “Let’s Give Peace a Chance!”  on weebly.com http://etwinning-let-give-peace-a-chance.weebly.com ,  which have made  the life of our project longer and more available in the Internet.

This project has had a very positive impact both on me and my students. Participation in the project and the use of technology motivated my students to study English with more desire and interest. The project had created an environment of active and involved learning for its participants. As a result they have improved their English language and ICT skills. At the end of the school year they successfully passed their English tests on the high and sufficient levels.

The project’s participants have also improved their social skills. They have become more friendly and tolerant to each other and have learnt to communicate and collaborate more effectively. And they have become to be more interested in skills they should have for successful life in the future. Their interest in the life of their peers in other European countries and to their cultures has rather increased. Now they want to have more friends there. They believe that together they may act more efficiently as the advocates for peace.

As for me, I became to pay more attention to issues of the interpersonal skills of my students and their intercultural awareness. I was very glad when I had been chosen as a participant of thematic conference on citizenship in Italy. The participation in the conference has broadened my knowledge and understanding of the mentioned above issues. All this became possible due to our participation in this project.

Thanks to the participation in the project my school had an opportunity to use new methods of Peace and Citizenship Education with the help of new technologies and English. And our pupils had a chance to practice the key European competences which they should possess for their successful future life. Moreover, our educational establishment became a part of the European educational net eTwinning Plus and it opens new vista for it.

The project has a number of interesting outcomes created both by the teachers and pupils. But, to my mind, the most important result of this project is the positive emotions and feelings of its participants and their desire to collaborate as the peace advocates together with their peers in Europe.               Interactive, participatory and cooperatively-structured teaching methods, which had been used in the process of project, gave the opportunity to its participants to improve their 21-st century skills. This is also very important.
To conclude I would like to mark once more  that eTwinning platform is an effective modern  tool  both in a classroom and in a project management. It is an effective tool in teaching and learning English that is widely popular in Europe.