What’s the German for strawberry?

Please note that this cookbook refers to Glow Meet using Marratech.  Glow Meet is now delivered over Adobe Connect which offers enhanced functionality.  To find out more about Glow Meet using Adobe Connect click here.  The principles around the benefits of Glow Meet are the same regardless of the technology used for Glow Meet.

Overview

Cathy Francis teaches P6/7 in St Thomas’ Primary school in Keith, Moray. She is the school’s coordinator for the Comenius project and has established links with schools from across Europe over recent years. In March, Cathy visited one of St Thomas’ partner schools in Germany as part of the Comenius project.

St Thomas’ is one of four Primary schools in Moray currently taking part in the Comenius project. To help them work together, a Global Education Glow Group was created at Local Authority level, with a sub Group within it specifically for the Comenius project.

Context

Cathy and St Thomas’ are half way through a 2-year Comenius project which links them with schools in Germany, Romania, Poland, Greece and Italy. She has made excellent use of the Comenius Glow Group to help connect all of these schools during this project.

Each of the Comenius coordinators in the foreign schools has been given a guest account for Glow and has been given membership of the Comenius Glow Group. During a visit to Scotland in February, the coordinators were given some basic introductory training on how to access and use the Glow Group by Allan Reid, who was then one of Moray’s Glow Development Officers. The training session really tested Allan’s foreign language skills (!) but he did a great job and all of the teachers found the session helpful.

Cathy has visited Germany twice recently as part of the Comenius project. On both occasions she has used Glow Meet to enable the pupils in Germany to link up with the St Thomas’ pupils back in Keith.

In October last year, Cathy used Glow Meet from Germany to link up with her own P6/7 class back in Moray. The pupils in both schools used the shared whiteboard in the Glow Meet meeting room to upload and display photos of where they live. They then asked each other questions about them. The conversation then took on a life of its own! The pupils in Germany were intrigued to see that the pupils in Scotland were all dressed the same, and asked why they wore a school uniform. The pupils from St Thomas’ gave excellent responses, explaining that wearing uniform keeps everyone the same and also means that they do not need to wear out their ‘normal’ clothes by wearing them to school. Cathy was extremely impressed with the way her pupils thought out and explained their answers and how clearly they communicated these with children whose first language is not English.

Health and Wellbeing project

Recently, Cathy made a second trip to Germany.

The schools involved in the Comenius project with St Thomas’ undertook a collaborative project to do with healthy eating. Teachers from Romania and Poland joined Cathy in Germany and they each made a healthy breakfast, typical for their country. (Cathy made porridge).

Cathy saw this healthy food exercise as a great opportunity to link up once again via Glow Meet with pupils back in Scotland. This time, however, she decided to link up with the Nursery pupils in St Thomas’.

The nursery children and pupils from the school in Germany used Glow Meet to link up. They had arranged to have a joint activity which involved making fruit kebabs.

In each of their own classrooms they prepared and talked about the fruits they were using. Pictures of the fruits – grapes, strawberries, bananas, and kiwi fruit were uploaded to the shared whiteboard and the English and German words for each fruit were typed up, enabling pupils in both countries to see them. The nursery children in St Thomas’ learned the German words for the fruits and noticed the similarities between the English and German words for banana (banane) and kiwi fruit (kiwi)

The St Thomas’ children made their kebabs and held them up to the camera for the German children to see. The pupils in Germany then copied the pattern of the fruit and made the kebabs for themselves. They pointed to each fruit and said its name in German and in English.

The Glow Meet was recorded and added to the Comenius Glow Group, giving a permanent record of the event and enabling people to watch it back at any time.

Watch excerpts from the Glow Meet between St Thomas’ nursery and Germany in the following video:

Scottish/German links: Making fruit kebabs via Glow Meet (6:33)

Curricular impact

The activity allowed the Nursery pupils in St Thomas’ to engage with a range of Early Level Curriculum for Excellence Experiences and Outcomes: Amongst others:

Health and Wellbeing
HWB 0-30a Together we enjoy handling, tasting, talking and learning about different foods, discovering ways in which eating and drinking may help us to grow and keep healthy.
HWB 0-35a I explore and discover where foods come from as I choose, prepare and taste different foods.

Literacy and English
LIT 0-02a / ENG 0-03a As I listen and talk in different situations, I am learning to take turns and am developing my awareness of when to talk and when to listen.
LIT 0-04a I listen or watch for useful or interesting information and I use this to make choices or learn new things. 

Mathematics
MTH 0-13a I have spotted and explored patterns in my own and the wider environment and can copy and continue these and create my own patterns.

Technologies
TCH 0-04a I enjoy exploring and using technologies to communicate with others within and beyond my place of learning.  

Ingredients

So what did Cathy need to do to have the Glow Meet between Moray and Germany?

- Have the Local Authority create guest accounts for the German teacher
- Make the German teacher a member of the Glow Group
- Send the URL of the Glow Group to the teacher in Germany
- Add the Glow Meet web part to the Group and create a meeting room
- Have a web cam, microphone and speakers

For the fruit kebabs Glow Meet, since Cathy was in Germany, she actually logged on to Glow herself to do the Glow Meet. Another member of staff in Moray then logged on in St Thomas’.

In the following videos we can find out how to set up a Glow Meet, record it and make it available for playing back.

How to add Glow Meet to a Glow  (5:36)

How to join a Glow Meet (3:38)

How to use the video, audio and chat facility within a Glow Meet meeting room (6:19)

How to use the shared whiteboard in a Glow Meet meeting room (8:25)

How to record a Glow Meet (2:09)

How to play back a previously recorded Glow Meet session (3:22)

Impact

The children in both Scotland and Germany thoroughly enjoyed the Glow Meet. They had the opportunity to speak to people in another country and learn new words in a foreign language, in a relevant and realistic context, giving them a real purpose for their learning.

The nursery children really took in everything that happened during the Glow Meet, as they still tell their parents the German words for the fruit even now!

Cathy found the Glow Meet a really useful and convenient way of keeping in touch with her own school whilst on a trip abroad. She has also found it useful for communicating with teachers in other countries when she is at home in Scotland and really improving the collaborative links she has with the other schools.

What’s the German for strawberry?5.054