2017 IIME REPORTCountry/Region [ Taiwan ]School[Tainan Municipal WunSian Elementary School]

Teacher [ Chen Sheng-chi ]Grade ( 5,6) Member ( 42 )JP School [ Momoyama Junior High School Attached to Kyoto University of Education ]Teacher [Keiko Watanabe ]# Subjects, Activities and Hours of the lessons
Subject

Conception of the lesson

Hours

EnglishGuided Writing for expressing gratitude, pronunciation checking, Japan andTaiwan article reading, oral training

10

draft design, how to paint the mural, Chromatology, painting mural

18

make name cards, poster making, learning presentation skills,4ICT

theme-based research, make presentation PowerPoint

6Culture

Taiwan and Japan culture (food, temple, nature….)

6Geography, Understanding Taiwan and Japan relationship

5Art
IntegrativeActivities

Social Studies# Theme and Message of the mural
ThemeMessage
United thoughts toshare with the world

Peace-“ five words mean peace”
The relationship between Taiwan and Japan is intricately interwoven. How to show thepeace concept into the mural is the main idea of this project. Besides, we share our culture
with each other. Tainan history is related to Japan history. Well goes the saying “same same,but different”. The more we understand the diversity of different cultures, themore we cherish the invisible value of it# Effects and the Problems
Effects your students have gainedThis is our first time to do the International project with thePBL teaching methodology. Students learned the culturesin common and differences between Taiwan and Japan. In
the learning process, students spent lots of time making thesurvey research to analysis the most representative featuresof Taiwan, and then put the features into the mural.
Besides, they also learned about Japanese culture. During
the whole learning process, students learned how tocooperate smoothly as well.

Points for further improvement
In order to make the project go successful,teachers have to train students the research skills,
presentation skills and summarized skills.
Cultivating these skills in the normal class.
However, some students are passive learners who
were not willing to engage in this project.
Specific strategies need to be used encourage
more intrinsic motivation in learning.

# How has your impression toward your partner’s country/region and the world changed?
Changes in the students
Changes in the teachers
Some of low achievers start to learn English PBL teaching approach is new to teacher, so theautomatically because they want to do their best when teacher has to change his teaching styles to the PBL
they introduce themselves and Taiwan cultures to one. Besides, this is the first time to do the projectJapanese students.
with the foreign teacher. Teachers were excited to see
more active participation and cooperation whilestudents were working on different tasks. When theteacher saw some of the low achievers practiceEnglish automatically, the teacher felt relieved.

# Flow of the Activity
ContentMonthMEET
Selfintroduction

Sept.

SHAREResearch on
the theme

Oct.

UNITEUnited
message/

Muraldesign

Nov.

What you did
Teachers and students introduced
themselves to get know each other well.
We post students’ self-introductions
on the forum. We also did the little
research on Kyoto’s history anddevelopment.

We have three face to face skype sessions.
One is the teacher discussion and others
are students’ discussion. We discussed thecontent of mural. The content should
include several special features of localculture, such as mountains, a famous river,two or three traditional local people andfive words which represents “peace”.
Students also asked ten questions witheach other to get more understandings ofJapanese and Taiwanese culture.

In this month, we started to discuss
the content of the mural. There aresome elements we have to put themin the mural. Those are mountains,rivers, temples, buildings, food andfive "peace" words. We finished ourfour mural drafts and post them on
the forum.

Your students
Subject
attitude/reflection
Students were excited tointroduce themselves by thevideo reference, and they
really wanted to make some English
friends abroad. Writing and Research
speaking fluently in English
ability
is not easy for them. But they
ICT
tried their best practicing andpracticing because they wereexcited to meet the friends
from Japan.
Six graders investigatedJapanese culture and fifth
graders investigated Taiwaneseculture. When they done theirEnglishresearch, they present withSocialeach other to learn TaiwaneseStudiesand Japanese culture. Students
Integrati
were interested to find out thevethings in common andActivity
different between cultures ofICT
Japan and Taiwan. Students
Researchwere focused on making theAbility
survey report in English, andthey feel satisfied to present
face-to face in the skype
session.
Students showed thepositivity in discussing
ICTand uniting the ideas ofEnglish
mural. They were happy toIntegrati
see their conceptsvecombine perfectly withActivity
students abroad.

CREATE
Mural
painting

APPRECI
ATE
Reflection/
Appreciat
ionJan.
Feb.

March.

In this term, we spent one monthfinishing the mural. Students cooperateand collaborate with each other. We
finished the mural on February 23rd. We
sent it back on February 25th. We also
held an exhibition in art class to show
our result. Everyone who saw the mural
was very impressive about ourcooperation work.
After sending back the mural, we had askype session to talk about our mural
painting. In order to present the muralcontent to the foreigner students, weread a lot of historical materials about
our mural content drawing. Students
also prepare some words to say thankyou to the Japanese students.

We used winter vocation tofinish the mural. Students
worked very hard to finishthe mural and recording task.
They were very happy andsatisfied with their job.

Students work very hard on
their final presentation. They
made PowerPoints bythemselves and thought about
the presentation styles.
Students felt really proud andexcited to present the mural infront of all the students. They
had a sense of achievement
about their work.

Art
EnglishEnglishSocialStudies
Integrati
veActivity# Effect and evaluation gained through the collaborative learning
Evaluation: Rank 5 to 1 (5: very effective / 4: effective / 3: so- so / 2: not so effective / 1: not effective at all)

Expected effectEvaluation

Understanding yourown cultures

4

Understanding yourpartner's cultures

3

Information literacy(research, share)

3

Scenes / points teachers felt the effects
Students were divided into five groups to investigate Taiwanese andJapanese culture based on their research topics. They collected data
and made their research into PowerPoints during the computer class.
Then, they present their culture research to Japanese students. Thanks
to the extra efforts made by Homeroom Teachers, students learned
more about the traditional Taiwanese cultures on integrative activityclass.
They learned the partner’s cultures by handout and ppt from English
teachers and the brief reports from Japanese students in the skype
session.
Students didn’t have the chance to do the research on the computerby their own. They did not deal with the technical problem while
the Skype talk started. However, after training, they had very goodabilities to sort out the data and information
they needed on the project. They have good abilities to make acomprehensible PPT to facilitate their oral report.

Communication ability(interactive exchange)

Critical thinking(objective, critical views)

Active learningand action

Collaboration(in the class, with partners)

Expression ability(in words, in pictures)

33

4

4

4

Appreciation ability(the mural, the wholecollaborative learning)

4

Before each skype session, students have to take four-hour
presentation skills class. The most important one of presentation
class is the “manner”. We had rehearsed for several times. During
the process of co-working, Students were willing to contribute their
special talents in different aspects in order to make the collaborative
project as perfect as possible. During their presentation, they added
some video or news to illustrate their standpoints so that it could
re-attract the audience’s attention. They have surely acquired thedifferent effective communication skills.
Critical thinking is important in this project. Before designing themural draft, students do the brainstorming with each other. They had
discussed several times and talked about the disadvantages andadvantages of each concept. They selected their present contents andmake PowerPoints by themselves.
This project not only enhanced students’ learning motivations towardlearning English but also cultivating their culture awareness when theylearned a new culture. The majority of students were active learners inthis project. The teacher found that some low achievers’ learning
attitude had been changed to positive in this project.
Students were proud of our willingness to collaborate withdifferent group members. Different opinions did not stop ourwork but encouraged us to find better ways to persuade theothers. We were happy that we could always reach theconclusion at the end.
Students knew more about their own culture and their partners’
culture from the project. They have tried their best to explain
what they drew in English. It is for sure that they have acquired thenecessary communication skill after the project. They are getting betterto express the ideas by their own self.
Students appreciate partners’ mural and also introduce their own
mural to others. Each student write down three sentences to express
their gratitude to Japanese students. By means this project, students
know how to cooperate with each other’s, even cooperative with otherforeign students.