Playing With New Words

For primary school children, language learning is a significant step towards becoming successful communicators. Teachers must not ignore the value of early learning language skills. Research indicate that if teachers incorporate games and play in their instruction, English as a foreign language is better learned and used by primary level children. Teachers can improve motivation through games and encourage more interest. Teachers may also use appropriate games to help students develop self-esteem and self-confidence, which are both essential elements when coping with language learning. The partnership addresses pupils aged between 6-11 years in our classrooms. Starting from 8 or 9 years old children begin to grow a natural sense of curiosity of the outside world, fueled by the overwhelming amount of knowledge now accessible via the internet and smartphones. When handled wisely, this can be an asset and advantage in language learning.The project also promotes English teachers' professional growth and encouragement for self-improvement.OBJECTIVES 1. Promoting language acquisition and raising the participation of early-age students in language learning 2. Raise student participation and encouragement 3. To allow the sharing of best practices between EFL teachers across Europe 4. To encourage English teachers to improve their careers 5. Improving language learning and student skills development (by at least 10 points on a scale 0-100) 6. To build the self-esteem and confidence of the students in using English 7. To cultivate respect for other countries, intercultural friendships and mutual acceptance/tolerance.NUMBER AND PROFILE OF PARTICIPANTSTeachers - primarily English teachers from kindergarten and primary level. In each LTTA activity we will ensure the participation of at least 3 of this kind of teachers / country. They will basically be primary level teachers that will be teaching EFL related lessons-and they will be in the spotlight for their work and tasks carried out during the implementation, both directly, by attending LTTAs, as well as indirectly, by implementing all the activities and games with their students before and after the exchanges. Pupils-are engaged in the project's online contact and cooperation, including playing games through their English lessons. The involved students will fall into the age group category 6-11, around 500 students altogether will benefit from the implementation. They will be at the center of all project`s events during the transnational conferences held periodically. Before LTTAs, they will participate in online meetings whereby they speak about their cultures and topic related subjects with their peers.MAIN ACTIVITIESC1 – Teaching with the help of games – existing practices in the partner countries C2 – Using online games for teaching vocabulary and grammar C3 – Teaching reading and writing by the help of dynamic and interactive gamesC4 – Teaching listening and speaking with outdoor team games approach C5 – Teaching English via online, interactive/dynamic and via various indoor / outdoor creative games.METHODOLOGY Before the key events, teachers will work with their pupils on the topic of exchange, identify and test games and various activities. Based on the feedback received from the pupils, they choose the final activities they will conduct with host students during the LTTAs.In C1, the host will organize table debates and workshops on the subject Teaching English through games approaches, in which participants give the presentations they had prepared and address the methodological implications of using games in language lessons. In C5, participants bring together the activities and refine the final content and layout of the material produced – a free online database of English games. All partners coordinate a local conference with teachers from EFL for disseminating results and sharing best practices.RESULTS Outputs: In C1 we conduct comparative analysis of partners` education systems, their EFL curricula etc. As a product of C2-C4, we will be developing 3 games sets which will be submitted during C5 to an open access portal and presented during the regional conferences. Other outputs include lesson plans produced in mixed teams, students` research, presentations about the partner countries, the recordings of the online meeting, the language portfolios, the twinspace, project`s website, the social media accounts, all the articles, testimonials, feedback papers, initial and final reports, the evaluation and the impact reports, the sustainability plan, the five local conferences held for disseminating the final results.IMPACT AND LONG-TERM BENEFITSImproved professional human capital in schools while the English teachers grow effectively and build a European team that will collaborate outside the programme as well. Students will improve their English skills and and will therefore obtain better results at the end-of-cycle exams.