We have organized the English Project week for the first time especially to increase motivation and interest in a foreign language. To send children to an English speaking country is too expensive for most parents, so we invited native English speaking teachers to our school.
As the (end-of-week) survey pointed out, students have shown improvement of their vocabulary, better listening, better understanding of general English, and older students also better communication skills. The older students managed to keep their attention for the whole 6 units per day, the younger students found it a bit challenging.
After a month, I have played a recording of a dialog in English for the 4th grade students. After the recording, I asked, who from the students understood. Those students, who attended the English Project Week, raised their hands and they not only understood, they also could analyze the text and words from the dialog.
The work of the teachers with our students has brought also other results – they discovered our students as talented in many ways, such as in acting, singing and cooking.
Last year we have received an offer from EEL Language school to organize a Project week in English language with English native speakers at our school. They also came to present their offer to the school during the parent meeting.
According to the large amount of parents and students who agreed with this offer, we have decided to realize the Project week with the EEL language school.
And so, there was English coming from every room in our school during the 3rd week of May. Students were split into 4 groups of 15 students guided by experienced teachers. The students got through the initial fear of communication in a foreign language through interesting and motivating themes and games. During the whole week, students had 6 units per day, using not only the classrooms, but also the spaces of kitchen and gym.
At the end of the project week, our students had a performance, where they presented what they learned, such as many role plays and songs, in front of their schoolmates, teachers and parents who rewarded them with a loud applause.
After we received many positive reactions from the parents and students, we decided to repeat the Project week following year 2010/2011.
From my perspective, I consider this week very successful – for students of our school it was not only an interesting change in the learning process, but most importantly, they have shown that they can communicate in foreign language.
