VoiceS - Integrated competences for European Teachers. Giving voice(s) to professionalism and citizenship in school networking.
De Regenboog - The Netherlands
HAALBOOM Maarten (VoiceS Member of the Netherlandish national group)
De Regenboog belongs to the foundation MarCanT. MarCanT has 11 schools in Hengelo, Borne, Markelo, Delden and Goor. All villages and cities are located in the east of the Netherlands.
De Regenboog is a small school. We have 140 pupils in the age 4 -12 years. That means we have 8 grades. Our eighth grade joined this project. The children are all 11 or 12 years old. More than 95% of the children at De Regenboog have a Dutch background and most of the parents are well educated. Many of these children are or will be involved in European activities through sport, family, work, holidays, exchange programs (we live close to the German border) and encouraging a broad perspective on being a european citizen, the school joined VoiceS.
Maarten with pupils
The teacher of this group, Marlies Berteler has been working together with Ellen Olthof to create this project at De Regenboog. Ellen is a student teacher and takes part in a Honours program. This program is connected with VoiceS as a part of the school's international orientation.
De Regenboog is an academic professional development school with a specific orientation on research. Each year five students of the Honours program are trainees in this school and they combine working with research. For Ellen, this project was part of her research question:
What is a good way to use an international platform in relation to English language teaching to stimulate European thinking with 11 and 12 year old children at De Regenboog?
Introduction
The work sheet that we made during the in-service course in Graz has been used to tell the children about the project and the ideas which were created. The children were invited to think about ways they could use to tell or show children in participating countries about the four topics:
- Home rituals
- Going to school
- At school
- After school
Poster
Also we introduced ourselves on the blog, just as did all the other children in Spain, Turkey, Portugal and Belgium.
Structure
Marlies Berteler and Ellen Olthof looked at the four topics and prepared introductory lessons for each topic. They studied the English language methodology that is used at De Regenboog to be clear about which items connected to the topics were already taught. As an example: Going to ………. was introduced by listening to the song ‘I’m going to Ibiza’ and the children thought about all the different means of transport possible for so doing. They used vocabulary they knew and added new words to it. From there they looked at their own situation in daily life: how do you come and go to school.
In all cases small wordfields / mindmaps were made to collect what came up as main items.
This wordfield was created when talking about ‘home rituals’.
Home rituals
Work
After the introduction of the four topics and using the vocabulary the children knew, the class was divided in groups. Each Group tried to make clear, in relation to the topic, what it is that they do in daily life.
Workplan
Sharing results
Pictures, powerpoint presentations, short videos and experiences were placed on the blog that was created for this project.
Conclusions
After looking at the results of the participating schools, we collected similarities and differences between ourselves and children in other countries. Short video’s were made and shared on the blog.
Video screen
Evaluation
It has been a challenge to work on this project and to persevere over time. The most important conclusion we found was that for our pupils it is difficult to use English to express themselves. About 75% of the children in this class lacked confidence to talk or write English as a way to communicate with others. Their language skills are not developed enough and the freedom of speech is limited. This has influenced the motivation to create material. Sometimes it looked as if they were not interested in their own daily life or the life of others, as if they see European Citizenship as something far removed from their personal lives. But, when it became clear that we were not able to organize a video conference, they also felt so disappointed! They wanted to meet the others! It was clear: the language skills have to improve to make it possible to communicate with others.
Talking about this conclusion with a the team of teachers, we concluded that we have to think about the way in which, and period of time allocated to the teaching of English. Only the seventh and eighth grade pupils learn English in a structured way. Knowledge of language teaching shows that to create freedom of speech, we have to start at a very young age. A future task for the school to change the curriculum!
De Regenboog learned a lot, found many things in which it can improve its education provision and we will continue our participation in VoiceS.