Valpaços, Agrupamento de Escolas de Valpaços

Hello everyone,

Welcome to our Blog - Class 8A.

We are students from Valpaços, a small city in the Northeast of Portugal.

We joined "Authentic Coding", this fantastic project, to learn more about culture, our own and others, and to improve our English skills. However, this project turned out to be much more. Not only did we have the opportunity to learn about culture, but also about coding in culture, that is to say in folk dances, music, artwork, food and traditional games.

When our project started we were in lookdown due to the COVID - 19 pandemic. Our teacher had a meeting with us about the project, where she informed us about the eTwinning platform, the project "Authentic Coding", the necessary parents' permission and the code of conduct. We joined this project because it fit perfectly into our Citizenship Curriculum and it was also beneficial in terms of improving our English speaking, writing, listening and reading skills. As our teacher is both, our English and Citizenship teacher, it was a win-win situation.

01/02/2021 Our meeting during lookdown.

PLANNING THE CITIZENSHIP AND DEVELOPMENT PROJECT - CLASS 8A

TOPIC: INTERCULTURALITY

Subject: CITIZENSHIP

Subtopic: Recognize and value diversity as an opportunity and source of learning, with respect for the multiculturalism of today's societies.

ESSENTIAL LEARNINGS:

develop the ability to communicate and encourage social interaction, which creates identity and a sense of belonging common to humanity;
deepen knowledge about the meaning of Culture
promote the debate on the existing perceptions of different cultures;
contribute to self-knowledge and recognition of cultural identity;
recognize and value the cultural diversity of peers and the rest of the educational community;
recognize the specificities and intentionalities of different cultural events;
enhance the role of various forms of artistic expression and material and immaterial heritage in the life and culture of communities;
foster interpersonal, social, and intercultural relationships.

Subject: ENGLISH

Subtopic: Cultural Diversity

ESSENTIAL LEARNINGS:

develop autonomy and perseverance in order to demonstrate more tolerant attitudes, recognizing and respecting divergent opinions; actively listening, understanding the other and critically reflecting on what was said, justifying their conclusions, associating the new learnings with the previous ones;
follow, without difficulty, a brief presentation on a familiar topic; monitor information in some detail;
respond appropriately to the interlocutor's speech; exchange relevant information and give opinions on practical problems when directly questioned; interact, with correction;
express yourself, with correctness, in previously prepared situations; talk about school and leisure activities; talk about the world of teenagers: habits and routines, hobbies, fashion, emotional states, for example, expressing your opinion; interact with everyday language on everyday matters;
communicate with others on a local, national and international scale; ask for and give information by email; contribute to interdisciplinary projects and group tasks that apply to the student's everyday context and experiences; participate in a WebQuest to access knowledge, using online computer applications.

COMPETENCE AREAS ACCORDING TO THE STUDENT PROFILE

ü Researcher / Researcher

ü Creative

ü Knowledgeable / breeder

ü Communicator

ü Responsible

ü Participative / collaborator

Information about us

We were all asked to make a card on Canva with pictures that illustrate some of our hobbies, likes and dislikes, in order to get to know our project partners better. Here are ours:

BIANCA

DIANA

EDUARDO

GABRIEL

INÊS N

INÊS P

LEONOR

LUÍS

MARCO

RODRIGO

SANTIAGO

SARA

SÓNIA

TOMÁS

CLÁUDIA (our teacher)

Learn more about Valpaços and us

28.02.2021

Our first project meeting with all students and teachers

This meeting was quite entertaining and fun. We had some ice-breaking activities where students were asked some random questions about their hobbies, family, colours, sports, music and much more.

Each student was given a number beforehand, and with the help of a Random Wheel, we had to answer a question when our number came up.

The next activity was another very interesting one. We had to draw an object by following commands in the picture below you can see the results.

Project Logo

We were all asked to create a logo for our project on Canva and the most voted on was selected.

These were our porposals:

Project Poster

These were our proposals:

Coding Table Activity

We played around with binary codes and made some interesting artwork

We made a collaborative work for the World Compliment Day on Canva and we also wrote some messages for important people in our lives on Mentimeter.

World Puppetry Day - March 21st

Since our topic in Citizenship is interculturality, we studied about our own culture and about other countries culture. All our teachers joined in some extend, and in their own possibilities, our project, making it interdiciplinary.

Our "Educação Tecnológica" teacher explored with us the different costumes of some countries and our final products were dolls / puppets dressed in a traditional costume.

Here are some of our study processes:

GERMANY

MEXICO

SAUDI ARABIA

JAPAN

WORLD DANCE DAY - 29TH APRIL

Here is our small contribution for World Dance Day. Where we try to dance a traditional folk dance "Murinheira" from our region. We also interviewed some students at our school and danced some TikToks. Enjoy! We surely had a lot of fun!

World Dance Day 2021 AEValpaços

9th May - eTwinning Day Activities

21st May

World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development Activities

Collaborative Word Cloud

Leonor's algorithm of creating an e-mail account

Mixed Students Teams

There were 5 study / working groups, each with a different topic. Still, they had two things in common - INTERCULTURALITY and CODING.

The teams and their names:

Folk Dances and Coding - Movement
Artistic and Cultural Works and Coding - Coding Stars
Local Dishes and Coding - Coder Cooks
Nature, Music and Coding - Rhythm of the Nature
Children Games and Coding - CodingChildren Games

According to our interests we signed up for one of these teams and here we learned about that particular topic and its codings. It was a quite enriching experience. We shared our traditional dance moves, arts, dishes, music and games. Every group worked collaboratively and with great success.