Why

At our internship at College Saint Exupery in Saint Laurent Du Var, we were asked if it was possible to create a relationship to a Danish school so that these two schools could work together on a student level.

We have taken this idea and would like to incorporate this on a Danish school from the 6th grade to the 9th grade, so it is something the school can use as a tool to get students who want to develop their intercultural competencies.     

 

How

Each class at the Danish school will get a ‘buddy-class’ from the French school, whom they will work together within both English and French. They will write letters to each other at Gmail, Google Docs as a tool to create different writing scenarios, Talked to each other on Skype, have video conferences on Zoom and make presentations together on Google Slide.

Both the Danish and the French school will use Duolingo to gain a bigger vocabulary both in oral and written English and at the same time the Danish school will also use Duolingo as a tool to be better at French.

The teachers at the two schools will work closely together on which topics, focus areas and so on, the students should have focused on in the particular lessons.  

 

Intercultural aspect

The intercultural aspect can be found in the communication between the Danish and the French students. The students will communicate authentically through Gmail, Skype, zoom and other digital medias. Furthermore, that communication will be done in English as a lingua franca, between non-native speakers, and will encourage the development of intercultural competencies. The students will be taught in intercultural communication, and through actual communication, be ‘forced’ to be aware and critical of interculturality in order to navigate within cultural differences between the two, understand different viewpoints and avoid potential misunderstandings.

 

Innovation aspect

The innovative aspect of the project is a couple of things. First of all the use of Duolingo in the Danish school. At this time, Duolingo is not available in Danish, so we have reached out to the company behind Duolingo, to offer our help making it available in Danish.

Another innovative part is to use Duolingo as a scaffold the student's English competencies.

Another innovative part is the cooperation between a Danish and a French school as a part that the schools with Garanti can ensure the students and their parents, that they will gain international competencies.

The international cooperation is a sort of aspect both in the Danish and French school system and will, therefore, create value, both for the school and the students.