THE OLD TORTOISE'S
TREASURE TALES
No 2018-1-BG01-KA201-047836
OTTT Project Description
Globalization of Europe is a process in which intercultural education is a reality which children are to encounter sooner or later in their lives, thus it makes it necessary these be introduced in the earliest childhood age. Ethnic, cultural and linguistic tolerance should be brought-up at that early age, too. In the contemporary world, more European citizens live in a social environment consisting of more ethnic groups and nationalities. The project idea is to introduce various currencies and the need to exchange goods to young learners (3-10 years old). Through learning languages, especially English, and applying the CLIL method for teaching currencies, children will get to know more and various international customs, traditions, cultures, lifestyles. Building behavioural models through learning communicative financial and social competencies are not only possible but it is also becoming more and more essential. Multicultural skills are important in a cosmopolitan society which comprises knowledge of the economic and historical development of the European countries. The idea is to teach the simplified history of the financial development of the common European market by teaching English because Europe is becoming more and more a continent of services rather than of production, thus, knowledge and skills in that area are essential. Young people need competences on how to manage their personal budget, and acquire managerial skills since early age so that they become useful to themselves and to their close social environment.
These citizens will, therefore, be able to build a better and more sustainable European market. In short, the project is thought as being oriented to both parties of the educational process. On the one hand, the direct target group is the group of teachers who are taking part in the project work. They will be taught and self-taught how to use digital resources in their pedagogical practice, but most of all, how to make them on their own so that they will be able to create and use materials of their own. We find that it is important not only to teach teachers how to use Open Educational Resources but to be able to create such for their specific pedagogical needs. The experience which teachers will acquire and have already had will be shared as good practices and examples. Teachers will share opinions on how to use and create OER and will undergo peer-to-peer educational courses during the Teacher/training mobilities. All the lessons which will be developed during the project will be gathered and a guidebook with good practices and methodologies, as well as the generated content for language teaching to young learners aiming at the topic of entrepreneurial and financial skills will be issued. The other target group is one of the children at the preschool and primary level, who will be indirect beneficiaries of the project work. Once teachers create the materials, they will approbate them with children and teach them several hard and soft skills. We aim at composing a teaching series of lessons in English, applying the CLIL (content-language integrated learning) method in real teaching practice. The content, which children will learn will be under the topic of studying finances and simple economics. Developing content for English language classes for young learners will be beneficial to all teachers involved and to children respectively, as it will work for the unification in a way to the curricula concerning English language for young learners. We feel that it is necessary for teachers to share teaching practices and ideas and collaboratively to create handouts and a set of resources. Each lesson will be piloted in the partner institutions and feedback will be provided. By doing this, not only will children learn new vocabulary in English and develop their speaking language skills, but they will also be taught about the history of currencies and marketing policies and techniques in their country and the countries of the partner schools, all of which are European. In that way since an early age, they will learn topical vocabulary and adopt social and communicative skills and elementary financial and numerical, and ordinal literacy in simplistic mathematics. Parents will be invited to be an active part and participate along with their children in the pre-project period (the research stage) when they will be asked to help with finding materials and information about economic development in their region and tell their children about it. Parents will be the active link between the kindergarten and home and will consolidate the aims of the project. The project is to be transnational as the European Union is the common home place of all the partners and we all live in a common single market and follow the common European strategic policies and laws. Being part of the single common market all constituent countries and their citizens are involved in the process and its policies.
With the project we aim to achieve better results applying new technologies in the era of digital pedagogical practice, to enable teachers to get training and share good practices and methods of creating educational materials, digital resources , to apply these methods, approaches, tools and materials in order to teach foreign languages applying the CLIL method. By doing these more teachers will be trained and children better educated in the field of language study and communication, cultural and financial competences and acquiring basic knowledge and competencies both to teachers and children at the preschool level. As parents will be closely monitoring the whole project process, they will be aware and supportive of our work. In that way, by working on that project we will also build a stronger partnership and collaboration with parents for the sake of their children, their well being, and educational needs and achievements. The project is focused on teaching and training teachers on how to use and produce their own pedagogical Open educational resources which to use not only in that project but also to be able to apply them further in their pedagogical practice in a larger and varied range of topics. These skills are basic for their own professional development and growth. .
Using ready-made OER can be useful and successful but this also sets limits in their use due to the limited scopes they usually come with. To avoid this we aim to teach and train teachers but to make and adapt them according to the class abilities. These skills are important in their work as the ready-made products come with their own aims and it is hard at times to adapt them to the particular group of children as teachers may have set more and various educational aims different from the ones which the OER can satisfy. With respect to this, we offer the teachers the opportunity to get trained taught to create their own materials suitable to apply at the preschool and primary school level in the field of teaching English to young learners, applying CLIL method, applying gamification in their pedagogical work and the Gardener’s Theory for Multiple Intelligences. We expect the project work to have a direct impact on the teachers and it is the major result which we expect, and what’s more, it will indirectly have an impact on the children who will be taught with these methods. Children will get the real communicative practice in English, they will adopt necessary linguistic skills what listening and speaking are and by doing it, they will also learn some historical facts of their own countries, the countries of the partnership, the principles of commercial development and the appearance of monetary systems. They will also adopt numerical and basic mathematics skills of doing simple arithmetics and working with numbers. In the long term, an expected result will be that children will acquire the social skills necessary for their well being and lifestyle and general intelligence. During the project, we foresee organisation of three teacher/training meetings each of which will last for 3 days ( + 2 days for travel) On the meetings teachers will get specific training in the area of making OERs. On the first meeting in January 2019 in Portugal, teachers will get training in Using Web2.0 and Web3.0 tools for educational purposes at preschool and primary school level making their sessions interactive and more interesting to children. The second teacher training meeting will be in January 2020 in Greece and then teachers will get training in 2.”Creating and Applying interactive game-books in the English educational sessions in the kindergarten applying the method of gamification”. On the third Learning Teaching training meeting in October 2020 in Italy the topic will be “Creation, methodology and application of projected electronic games (zoomed games) in the process of English language teaching to young learners” - teachers will learn how to make and use zoomed electronic games in which children will be active and major agents like the real-life pawns in a game of chess. The layout of such games are to be projected in the indoor environment on the playground field and children will then will take roles and play on that field as real pawns. We look at the skills which teachers and children will adopt as the most important results and they will be measured by surveys of satisfaction which the participants will complete at the end of each particular course and the end of the project period. The results from the surveys during the project will help the partnership as they will be looked at as important feedback. Not only teachers will express their satisfaction with the project work and completion but also children and their parents. Children will apply emoticons to each particular educational stage on specially designed project assessment boards. That way they will also learn social skills such as expressing opinion and feelings
The Old Tortoise’s treasure tales project is innovative by default as it introduces financial literacy at a very early age of children and what’s more, it will be implemented as a method of teaching English as a foreign language. The title of the project The Old Tortoise Treasure tales is thought as a sequence of Tales which the main characters the Old Tortoise tells in English to children about the currencies and simplified the principles of commerce. The maskot - the Tortoise is not a random choice but thought as a metaphor for being a witness of historical events as tortoises are known to live longer, and a guard of treasures - the tales which he tells. Introducing an animated character makes the content suitable. Thus, firstly, we will teach English as a foreign language to young learners and what’s more, by doing this, children will also gain competences and knowledge in finances and currencies, stock exchange and history of their own culture and country and the partners’ ones. The element of innovation lies in the idea to teach various topics through teaching foreign languages – the CLIL method, elaborating teaching content for young learners on the above-mentioned topics (finances and history), elaborating teaching materials for teachers in the preschool stage. All these materials will be approved and edited for the individual needs of each educational institution so that to meet the National educational standards and curricula. The idea is, not only to teach and train teachers on how to use ready-made Open Educational resources, digital, non-digital and interactive but also to teach and train them how to make some by themselves. The trend nowadays is to teach teachers digital skills, but usually, the focus falls onto using digital sources and adapting them to their own pedagogical practices. What we suggest differs from the trend as we want to teach and train teachers to be able to produce OER themselves according to their own pedagogical needs and the specifics of the children they work with and for. We find it as the major innovative approach to teaching practice and it is also the main innovative approach which the project lies on. The topic itself seems a little bit strange to be introduced at an early age as studying finances and commerce is a difficult subject even for adults. However, we assume that the earlier a child starts learning about the financial world, the easier it will be later for them to cope with the challenges it will offer them. The historical development of the European countries, from the point of view of financial development, is a subject which can be suitably presented to children at the age of 3-10. At that age children are ready to understand simple commerce practices and stock exchange and learn the terms in English by tales. The idea is innovative as there are no suitable teaching materials for the primary and pre-school stage, kindergarten or after school care available to use in class although one of the main strategies in Agenda 2020 is said to be entrepreneurial skills for the EU citizens. We assume that it is not possible to adapt and acquire such skills without gaining elementary financial and linguistic communicative skills, as they are a prerequisite for successful realization in the business environment and a single European market. Fostering such type of skills at such an early age is innovative as it hasn’t been applied on a common basis and it is also useful. Having in mind children’s abilities to memorize facts at that early age we think we can reach the aims we set. The coordinating organization, Leonardo da Vinci kindergarten has experience in exploring topics related to European cultural heritage in their work on Erasmus+ projects. The teachers there have experience in working with young children on topics related to it and their experience can be useful to the other partner organizations and we think that the basis we have laid can be a good start for a new project to explore the financial dimensions related to the European cultural heritage with a new project in which all partners will take active part in sharing experience, ideas, findings and will elaborate new pedagogical materials for their practice. Through educational games, they will also learn other soft skill such as how to negotiate, compromise and bargain, offer help, accept help and many more. Project activities will also result in the creation of pedagogical materials which will be displayed and accessible for free to download on eTwinning platform and other online channels, which will be the main channel of the project communication and organizational place. Parents will be invited to the platform and will be able to monitor the project activities with access to the eTwinning network as guests. In that way, all the materials will be accessible to all partners as well thus parents can use them at home and also print out materials for own parental-children relationship and play-study at home.