School name: Velindre Community School, Port Talbot

Teacher: Ruth Sanders

Twinned with: Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Estonia, France, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Spain, Turkey and UK.

Project Overview

“My Friend is Real Friend” has set up communication links between partners in over 70 schools across Europe, allowing pupils to make new friends and share information about themselves, their lifestyles, areas and cultures whilst also improving literacy, communication, ICT and problem solving skills.

Pedagogical Innovation and Creativity

Velindre Community School is a special school for disaffected pupils who have “Severe Emotional Behavioural Difficulties”, resulting in challenging behaviour. Some pupils have not been engaged in education for some time before attending the school whilst others have attended primary education sporadically, due to exclusion from previous establishments. The project gave a real impetus for learning and enabled students to take on board knowledge about their partners’ countries, improve literacy and their own learning

Curricular Integration

The school follows a mainstream curriculum at secondary level. This can be challenging for both teachers and pupils at times when pupils have missed out on large chunks of the education process. However, this particular eTwinning project leant itself well to being incorporated into several subject areas such as Geography, History, ICT, Modern Foreign Languages and Food Technology.

Creative use of ICT

The project activities were excellent for incorporating a range of different software; Word Processing, Desktop Publishing, PowerPoint, Movie Maker and Photostory 3. The students created short films using photographs and videos and added sound/music to enhance their work. With the pupils at KS4, their final pieces were included in their OCN/Key Skills portfolios which allowed them to gain recognized qualifications.

Results and Benefits

The most outstanding result of this project is that the pupils are still engaged with their eTwinning partners and collaborative projects today. SEBD pupils are challenging to work with, however eTwinning has really made learning fun! The pupils have been able to engage in a non threatening manner, build up friendships, knowledge of different cultures and use other languages. Their films and videos have been shown in assemblies across Europe. Their letters have been read and responded to. In participating in this and other projects, pupils have produced some outstanding work which has been entered for OCN/Key Skills accreditation. Everybody has gained!