LangCulture: Peer - teaching our languages via Culture
WHEN?
Our Erasmus+KA229 project started in September 2020 and ends in August 2023. Its life was extended from 2 to 3 years due to the travel restrictions imposed by the COVID19 pandemic during the first year of its implementation.
WHO?
Our partnership consists of six European schools from across Europe:
- 3 GENIKO LYKEIO NEAS FILADELFEIAS "MILTOS KOUNTOURAS" Greece
- Gymnazium, Celakovice, J. A. Komenskeho 414 Czech Republic
- LICEO SCIENTIFICO STATALE "F.LUSSANA" Italy
- Vilniaus Zveryno Gimnazija Lithuania
- Mersinli Mesleki ve Teknik Anadolu Lisesi Turkiye
- Escola Básica e Secundária Bispo D. Manuel Ferreira Cabral Portugal
The coordinating school is the school in Greece and the partners have cooperated among them and/or with the coordinator in other projects before. The majority of the teachers are foreign language and language teachers but there are also ICT teachers and specialists in projects and other subjects like History, Philosophy and more!
The pupils are 15 to 18 years old in their majority. Few of them are newly arrived migrants aged 18 to 21 years old. They are all actively involved in this project, eager to share their languages and cultures with their peers from the partner schools.
WHAT?
The pupils are teaching their languages to their peers from the other schools and to the migrant students at their schools using cultural goods from their own backgrounds such as Art, architecture, songs, poems, myths and legends, history, philosophy, gastronomy, entertainment, sport, religion, superstitions, stereotypes, jokes, proverbs; all integrated in learning scenarios for the language peer teaching.
WHY?
Our schools share the need to embrace innovation for intercultural exchange and inclusive teaching. We also need to address the 21st century education challenges for differentiated instruction so as to cater for the diverse needs of learners with different learning styles and tempos as well as of those from different ethnic and linguistic backgrounds.
HOW?
In preparation for this project, we created the parallel eTwinning project "CULTURE MIRRORS" aiming at presenting our cultures to our partners and polling for the three most interesting tokens from each aspect of culture to be included in our language courses.
For the peer teaching of our languages via culture, we started off with the paradigm of Suggestopedia, an innovative approach to experiential language learning based on interdisciplinary research and communicative suggestion.
The teachers first got acquainted with Suggestopedia themselves by the project coordinator and then facilitated their pupils in designing their language courses inspired by Suggestopedia and using the cultural tokens collected for "CULTURE MIRRORS".
