Category: Selected News in English

Open call for partners:

Period: 1 November – 5 December 2020

Aim

To provide an international context for 14-17 year old students to improve their English language skills, by reading online news articles and participating in online discussions and follow-up activities with students and teachers from 5 countries, reflecting on their differences and working fruitfully together as a team united by common values and learning objectives.

Objectives

1 To use the flipped classrooms approach and distance learning opportunities not only to foster students’ autonomous learning skills and allow students to master content at their own pace, but also improve their team working skills by enabling them to collaborate with peers from the other countries while getting ready for the activities as well as during the online sessions.

2 To give examples of teaching and learning fruitfully in mixed-ability groups by providing a choice of news articles on different levels which enables the students who have recently started reading news articles to learn in an confident way and challenges the ones who are reading above grade level.

3 To diversify the content the students read by recommending articles on topics related to culture, education, health, life style, historical events, science, money, and sports.

4 To help the students improve their vocabulary by playing vocabulary games and quizzes.

5 To practice reading and speaking skills and raise awareness about the national, international and global issues by reading news articles and presenting a brief summary of news published by British and American media resources, educational platforms and blogs but also stay current with what is happening globally and locally by exchanging insights about their own experiences.

6 To encourage the students to develop their reading comprehension and critical thinking skills by asking and answering questions from different levels of Bloom’s taxonomy in the context of the flipped classroom where the Qs from the levels of Remembering and Understanding are covered individually or in small groups before the online session, the Applying and Analyzing level Qs are covered during the online sessions and the Evaluating and Creating level Qs and tasks are recommended as optional follow-up written assignments after the online session.

7 To encourage students from various educational institutions from the Republic of Moldova, the Czech Republic, Italy, Greece and the Ukraine to become one of the key players in developing intercultural communication among teenagers by working individually, in small groups and in a team, planning and delivering a presentation, discussing news articles, sharing knowledge, online tools and resources and own experiences in the framework of this educational project.

Who can participate? English language teachers and their students. Target group: 14-17 year old students.

Where do we meet? We run our online sessions on Zoom.

How do we organise the sessions?

Before the class

The project manager and optionally the local school coordinators select and share the articles via email or via project groups at least 4 days before the online session, create the vocabulary exercises and quizzes.

The students get acquainted with the topic. They read the article, practice the vocabulary, ask and answer Qs by levels of Blooms taxonomy to check reading comprehension and create a mind map of the article. They have also the opportunity to retell the article in a video or a Live in a closed Facebook group or via the platform padlet.com.

During the class

Volunteering students present the article(s) (News in brief), ask and answer questions related to the given topic and play vocabulary games.

The teachers recommend the higher order Qs and tasks to be covered after the class. These may be written assignment including opinion essays, reports and letters. The written assignments are not mandatory.

After the class (optional)

The students do the writing assignments and hand it to their teacher. Additionally, some of the essays could be posted on the site feltschool.net, under the category Selected News in English.

How to access the session?

All the teachers need to send us an email at continuing_education_center@yahoo.com and provide us the following information: name, institution, place, country, telephone number for whatapp or viber, email address.

We will get in touch with you to confirm the schedule. The information will also be updated on our site: feltschool.net

Certificates

In order to receive a certificate of participation, the teachers need to join minimum 5 live sessions x 40 minutes with a group of minimum 5 students.

In order to receive a certificate as a local coordinator the teacher needs to join minimum 5 live sessions x 40 minutes with a group of minimum 15 students.

The students will receive a certificate of participation if they make the mind map and present 5 articles in the closed Facebook group.

The students who will make 5 presentations during the Live Zoom sessions will receive a certificate of achievement confirming the student has been a presenter in the project Selected News in English.