Don't bully, act kindly, live happily

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The project focuses on a phenomenon that, in all likelihood, occurs at almost all schools – bullying. The pupils address the forms and effects of bullying in many different ways and attempt to find various approaches to a solution. In the course of the project, the pupils create mind maps and word clouds and jointly write stories that will be published in an ebook. The project language is a foreign language, for example English.

Objectives

• To acknowledge bullying as a widespread problem and to come up with solution approaches • To develop international skills as the issue will be jointly addressed by several countries • To develop foreign language skills: - English is the TwinSpace communication language - Improvement of reading and listening comprehension - Development of writing skills (stories and comments) • Development of the ability to work as a team and improvement of ability to act independently

Collaboration

1. Break the classes down into teams 2. Introduce the partner teams, schools, school locations with the aid of videos and puzzles (e.g. jigsaw planet) 3. Different forms of bullying (recognising) • The pupils of each partner school address the different forms of bullying in small groups. They look online for videos that focus on the issue of bullying in the lives of schoolchildren and present a video of their choice in class. They are expected to explain the reasons for their choice and to ultimately vote which video they will share with the partner schools and would like to post in the TwinSpace. • They develop a list of terms related to the issue of bullying which they will then use in word clouds and mind maps. • They watch the partners' videos, discuss these and comment on them. 4. Writing stories about the issue of bullying The partner schools jointly write stories about the issue of bullying. Beginning, continuation with a bad/happy end, illustrations and title are divided amongst the partner schools in such a way that each school is involved in all stories. Five stories from five partner schools (A, B, C, D, E) – allocation example: Beginning A B C D E Continuation with happy end E A B C D Continuation with bad end D E A B C Illustrations C D E A B Title B C D E A Each partner school • reflects in groups what might be an interesting story about the issue of bullying and writes the beginning of the story. The story should end with a cliff-hanger. The class chooses a beginning and passes it on to a partner school that will write its continuation with two different endings (happy/bad end). • reads the partners' stories. • writes a continuation. • illustrates a story and • decides on a title. 5. The products of their efforts (stories, illustrations, title) are uploaded to the TwinSpace and commented on in the forum. 6. The individual parts are put together and published as an ebook.

Evaluation & Assessment

The work will be evaluated with an online questionnaire and through the evaluation of the respective comments in the TwinSpace. Pupils will be asked how much they have learnt, what it was like to work in the TwinSpace, what they enjoyed most, whether there were any problems, and whether they are interested in more such projects. The evaluation will be accessible to everyone in the TwinSpace. An external software, for instance SurveyMonkey, can be embedded in the TwinSpace for the survey.

Follow up

An audio book could accompany the jointly produced ebook. New contributions could be added to the collection of short stories. The stories could be acted out.

Additional information

Age from:

12
Age to:

15
Difficulty:

Intermediate

Don't bully, act kindly, live happily

Additional information

School subjects

Vocational subjects

Key competences