In the following report, the participants from Gronau describe how the project unfolded:
First, all the children in Gronau and Mezöbereny filled out profile forms. The teachers sorted all the forms and matched each Hungarian child with a suitable German child. Then our email addresses were forwarded to Hungary. In our first emails to our exchange partners, we introduced ourselves. In the following emails, we were able to write about various topics in English. Unfortunately, the number of emails gradually decreased over time. Still, it was a wonderful experience.
In the second step, our teachers came up with the idea of having us film short videos for the other school. We divided all the participants into small groups, each of which filmed and explained a different part of the school. This resulted in videos of, for example, the art rooms, the science labs, and the gym. We then sent these videos to the other school. The Hungarian students also sent us the videos they had made about their school in Mezöbereny, which we then watched. This is how we got to know each other’s schools a little better.
The video conference organized by both schools at the end of the school year—for which members of each project group could volunteer to participate—was a lot of fun because we were able to interact directly with the Hungarian students. All the students had prepared questions about the other schools, which they then asked. We received immediate answers to our questions, which really helped us learn more about the Hungarian school.
The video call helped us get to know each other better. Although the Hungarian students had an accent when speaking English that was unfamiliar to us, we could still understand them just fine. We thought the video conference was great and would love to do something like this again.
We think a project like this with the school in Mezöbereny should be repeated—especially the video conference—because we always got an immediate response. Writing the emails was also a lot of fun; although the replies didn’t come right away, we still learned a great deal about the school, the students, and Hungary. Filming our videos and watching the videos from Hungary was also interesting for us.
We’d recommend that you take part in a project like this, since it’s a lot of fun and we learned so much. We’re really glad we got to have this experience, since it’s something completely different from regular classes.
