What makes my country unique?

Estonia 

 

France

 

Ukraine

}

Portugal - Bragança

 

Portugal - Madeira

 

Germany 

Be Safe - Escola Secundária Emídio Garcia

Luísa Lima wrote a text entitled "Be Safe", it was 1st published in November, in  the In English Digital - the British Council magazine for teachers of English in Lusophone countries. It is not directly related with the Skin Deep project, but it addresses e-safety, a topic that any teacher and student will surely benefit from learning more about.

Luisa's text is on page 10, be sure to read it. :)

2nd Webconference

Sunday, 14th December, was the date set for our 2nd webconference.

Like before we used a simple Google Doc to allow everyone to share their availability. Eleven in the morning in Portugal, midday in France and Germany and one o'clock in Estonia, Ukraine and Turkey again seemed to be the best time to meet.  Alas, prior personal and professional engagements meant that only 3 of us (Portugal, Germany and Turkey) were free to attend the webconference. Still, we decided to go ahead and then just share with the others what we had discussed. So at the set time the 3 of us sat in front of our computers and logged in to Skype to get the webconference under way.

It was great to speak to Sezi and Oğuzcan again, and after the mandatory :) "His and Hellos" we talked for a good 40 minutes. We shared what we each had already done regarding the project's activities and what hasn't been working. In one way or another we have all had delays due to tech problems and time management issues since, even though we did try to spread out the activities so as to only have one a month, the different time frames of school breaks and the different amount of times we have classes with our students makes it a bit hard for all of us to keep to the set activity schedule. That's something we'll need to look into so as to make the necessary adjustments.

We also went into the idea of having a shared online space where we could all keep copies of our students' work. That way we could all access each others' work and download it if need be, so as to get around internet connection issues when showing it to our own students. We will use Google Drive since unlike our Twinspace it doesn't require sign in, so we can easily share it with anyone. It also makes it easier for all of us to quickly access everything and upload or download any type of file, as well as organize things in anyway we want. The idea is to later simplify the selection of the work we want to include in the final task by keeping everything in one place and in a readily usable type of file.

We'll see how it goes. ;)

Field Trips - Escola Básica e Secundária Gonçalves Zarco

Art has its own version of beauty, clearly showing just how subjective the concept of beauty really is. 

With that in mind we visited 2 different types of museums. On the 3rd of December we visited the Museum of Contemporary Art and on the 17th we visited the Museum Universe of Memories - a repository of memories built throughout the life of João Carlos Abreu as a journalist, traveller, poet, writer, politician, actor and artist, as he travelled through the world.

We asked our students to choose one piece from both museums and share their own interpretation of them, share what, in their eyes, made those pieces beautiful.

Museum of Contemporary Art

Museum Universe of Memories

Here's a glimpse of the lecture on Art & Beauty the kids attended before visiting the museum. The museum staff was awesome and even gave their lecture in English to keep to topic of the English lesson and the project the kids are working on.

Merry Christmas - Escola Básica e Secundária Gonçalves Zarco

Looking to make the most of our own school resources and in an attempt to expand the reach of the Skin Deep project we have joined forces with another project in our school - the "Tutores Juniores". Together we have planned  a number of activities which meet both projects' aims.

The 1st activity took place on the 16th of December. Our 9th grade students - those who participate in both projects -  and the 5th graders they mentor were in charge of creating Christmas decorations so they could decorate a space in our school and share what they had created together with the rest of the school community.

The aim was not only to celebrate Christmas but also strengthen the 5th graders' sense of belonging, boost their self-confidence and ultimately ease their integration.

After the decorations were in  place we got together in the classroom of the Special Needs Teaching Unit where 6 special 5th graders awaited Santa's visit. Carolina, our in house Santa, did not disappoint them and soon joined us, spreading around laughter and the kids' sweet version of all the joy in the world: chocolate :)