Description of the activity:

In this activity, 6 students and 2 teachers from each partner country came together to produce the stories overlapping with the aims of the project. The partners came together in Romania. The students formed 10 mixed pairs consisting of two students from two different countries, decided the topic of their stories regarding the data they gathered from their refugee interviews and started writing their stories. The Italian partner couldn not join the meeting in Romania due to the pandemics and took part in all the activities online. The Romanian parteners provided the necessary tools in order to make sure the students work together in mixed groups, including working online with the Italian partners in real time. Before they came together for this LLT, each partner country was expected to achive a number of preparation tasks in their own country including: looking into the children’s books, making a video of a children’s books reviews, inviting children’s book author and making a seminar on how to write a children’s book, makingn interviews with the refugees, making a qualitative content analysis of the interviews and finding the most striking points in the interviews in the mother tongues of each country including the results of interviews.

On the first day of this LTT, each country presented its findings about the refugee interviews, which helped the groups to find a proper topic and plot for their stories. While doing this, the students were part of a multi-national team. In the following days, they worked together so peerlearning was accomplished in this LTT. Working in pairs involved sharing of knowledge, ideas and experience between the participants and it enabled each student to take responsibility and communication opportunities as well. During the last day of this activity, each pair presented their stories and ideas orally. They also informed the whole group about their submission date. They were also given a deadline to upload the stories in twinspace.

The key competences, and skills that were planned to be developed were specified as an initial step of the project. Before this LTT, the writing skills in both mother tongue and foreign language were developed to some extent. To achieve this, a plan was done with the support and guidance of a school leader. The topics related to Literature curriculum and foreign language curriculum were integrated into the curriculum of each partner school and the topics were covered during interdisciplinary lessons. The findings were shared with the other partners in twinspace by the coordinator. A checklist was prepared to guide the partners during the first meeting, thus they had enough time to integrate the topics into their curriculum.

The expected benefits

The virtual exchanges are one of the key points in this project, as it is based on Stories to be Told e-twinning project. The platform is a complementary tool of collaboration. Before this LTT, the in-school activities had been shared on twinspace, such as the children's books review videos, the photos of the seminar about how to write a children's book. The Potugese partner made a blog page with the interviews of the refugees. The link was shared on twinspace. The analysis of the interviews was also uploaded on twinspace. All the preparations to ensure an effective LTT were done and checked through e-twining. The coordinator country informed the partners about all the necessary skills that the students needed in order to achieve the tasks properly. The rubrics checking whether the students had gained these skills was shared with the other partners in twinspace by the coordinator. A checklist was prepared to guide other partners at the first meeting, thus they would have enough time to integrate the topics to their curriculum. There had been a live event before this LTT reagarding the preparations for the meeting, the details of accomodation, transportation and the necessary precautions about health, the currency. Two teachers from each country partcipated in the meeting and the photos of this live event were shared on twinspace.

Benefits for the involved participants

Knowledge and basic skils are necessary, but no longer sufficient for today’s demands. In this LTT some key Competences were developed with the preplanned activities. These competences are: communication in foreign languages, social/civic competences, sense of initiative/entrepreneurship, and cultural awareness/expression. Mixed groups were formed accordingly. Students had to negotiate on topic, story line, plot, genre of their story. They communicated in foreign languages .They also worked in a group and had to overcome different points of view and reach a consensus. They were individuals participating in a multinational society and participate in a constructive way, which improved their social & civic competence. It involved sharing of knowledge, ideas and experience. It can be described as a way of moving beyond independent to interdependent or mutual learning. They got benefit from each other’s literature knowledge, creativity and interview results. The sense of initiative and entrepreneurship was another competence that was improved in this LTT. It refers to an ability to turn ideas into action. It includes creativity and ability to plan and manage projects to reach objectives. Students had to analyze the results of interviews, they had the responsibility to achieve the final form of the story. In the previous STBT e twinning project, this writing task was not conducted within mixed teams. The students of each country wrote the stories - with no international communication, collaboration or negotiation. So, we tried to rectify these shortcomings in this LTT. At the end of the LTT, cultural knowledge and expression was developed. It included an awareness of national and European cultural heritage and their place in lives. It was a step for them to understand the cultural and linguistic diversity in Europe. Also, the participants gained personal experience by raising awareness towards the refugees, developing empathy regarding their difficulties.