REPORT Artmile International Collaborative Learning 2023
Country/Region [ Taiwan ]School [ Wen Ya Elementary School ] Teacher [ Luke Tsai / Hama Dai / Ruth Hou ] Grade (5) Member (50)
JP School [ Okuno Compulsory Education School ] Teacher [ Shousei Sawada / Hiroshi Kobuke ]# Subjects, Activities and Hours of the lessons
Subject
Conception of the lesson
English

ICT
IntegrativeActivities

HealthSocial Studies

Art

Hours

*key words and phrases in English about SDG 2 and 6*short passages about SDG 2 and 6 from Wikipedia*short oral passages in English for Google Meeting

4*surfing on the Internet for any related references*creating the PowerPoint for group reports during the Google Meeting5*sharing of the research result*scheduled Google Meeting*appreciation and reflection on AICL project in class4*the importance and threat of clean water and sanitation (SDG 6)*the World Food Program proposed by the United Nations*the practice of supporting hunger in Taiwan

3*the practice of food aids program in history*the background of food shortage issue, SDG 2 (Zero Hunger)3*creating drafts individually*mural drafts discussion*a list of all good elements on the draft/mural*drawing and painting

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

Baton of Happiness to the Future World
Currently, the world is facing some problems, like safe water shortage and food shortage.
We want to look into the problems in details and come up with some solutions to theseproblems. Wen Ya Elementary School from Taiwan and Okuno Compulsory Education
School from Japan connect the baton for a healthy future world. Hopefully, people fromTaiwan, Japan and the world can be close to a safer and happier life.

# Effects and Problems
Effects your students have gained
Born in fairly warm families, most of the students do
not understand the difficulties of food shortage. They
used to take the sufficient food supply for granted.
After making their research on SDG 2 (Zero Hunger),my students saw the hunger problem appearing indifferent parts of the world. They better understood
why we need to cherish the food and even donate theextra food to those in need.

Points for further improvement
The focus on SDG 2 (Zero Hunger) this year is avery good point for the younger generation to know
more about the reality of the hungry people indifferent parts of the world. Thanks to thecollaboration from the partner school and thehomeroom teachers at Wen Ya Elementary school,
the students have better understanding of the poorand sad side of the world. Next year, our teachersplan to set up a clearer schedule for the online
meeting dates so that more interaction of thestudents in both schools can be achieved.

# How has your impression toward your partner’s country/region and the world changed?
Changes in the students
Changes in the teachers
Taiwan and Japan are comparatively rich countries so The teachers always felt rewarded to broaden thethat it is not easy for the students to understand what students’ horizon of understanding. Through thehunger is in their daily lives. By researching on SDG process of research on the world issues (SDG 2 and2 (Zero Hunger), the students see the darker side of 6), the teachers knew more about the world as well.
human lives. They felt sorry for those in need and they Teachers from both Taiwan and Japan are doing awere more enthusiastic to take actions to support the great job to lead the younger generation to pay moreworld. Our students were happy to know that the attention to the world problems. We feel stronger
students in both schools were working hard together when we work together to promote the students’to do something good to the world. Again, it is global awareness. We hope that all kinds ofeveryone’s responsibility to take care of the world, misbehavior of hurting the world will disappear as
including the people living here.
soon as possible.

# Flow of the Activity
ContentMonthRESEARCH
the theme

Sep.
Oct.

What you did
The homeroom teachersoffered the suitablebackground information
about SDG 2 and 6 to thekids and asked them tomake a short report about
their findings. The students
took turns to talk about
what they have found fromtheir research and reached
the conclusion why weneeded to support those in
need. We also understoodthe values of Charity Showin the school anniversaryday.

Your students’ attitude/reflection
Our students made a good research on
the SDG 2 and 6. They said they felt
sorry for the people in need in different
parts of the world. They did notunderstand why the leaders of thepoorer countries took no actions fortheir people. We, those who have better
living standard and environments haveto support them, but the people in thepoorer countries needed to work harder
to support or even change their lives bythemselves, too.

Subject

Integrative
Activities,

Health,SocialStudies,
ICT,
EnglishSHARE
with thepartner

UNITE
the thoughts

CREATEthe mural

APPRECIATE
the wholelearning

Oct.

Nov.

Dec.
Jan.

Feb.
Mar.

Homeroom teachers offered
extra learning materials toenrich the learning contents
for the students. Thestudents have a chance tolook at the charity clubs in
Taiwan and get to know thehard work they are facing. We
posted our research resultson the Art Mile forum toshare what we have learned.

Students spent some time surfing on theInternet and watched the videos on
YouTube to get a broad view of the foodand water issue. They felt unbelievablethat the food we grow every year was notenough for all the people in the world. Dueto the threat of wars, fighting andtransportation, more and more people
failed to receive the food they were
supposed to have now. The studentsexpected that the leaders could havesome mercy on their people to help them.

Our students created theirown drafts first and chose thebest two versions to beposted on the Art Mile Forumfor our partner school.

Students were interested in making a
draft for the mural this year. They did agood job presenting what they wanted toshow on the mural and they were openminded enough to read others’ drafts andmade some changes after negotiation.

Art,
ICT,
EnglishWith the guidance of Art
teacher, art-gifted students
drew the outline and the restof the students took turns tocome back to school and paintduring the winter vacation.

We were very surprised to see the great
work done by our Japanese partners. We
started to worry if we could finish themural as well as our partners did. Thanks
to our partners’ suggestion and brilliant
ideas, we figured out the best way that wecould present the mural.

ArtIn addition to appreciating
the mural at school, we andour partner set up an online
meeting to read thecompleted mural together.
We had a discussion of whatmessage we would like todeliver from the mural. Our
copy of the mural arrived intime so we could take agroup photo with theteachers and students inboth schools. That was agreat moment that both
Japan and Taiwan keep a
copy individually. We believethat whenever we comeback to school and read themural, we would know theduty that we need to carryon for the world.

Art Mile is a wonderful project for thestudents to broaden their world view. It
also encouraged the students to take a
deeper look at the global issues andeven take some actions to help solving
some problems.
Painting is fun and easy. What’s better,
painting helps deliver the message ofbeing a responsible global citizen in theminds of the younger generation. We
strongly believe the world is going to bebetter and better in the coming future.

Integrative
Activities,

Health,SocialStudies,
ICT,
EnglishSocialStudies,
ICT,
English,Chinese# 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 effectCross-cultural
understanding

Active learning

Critical thinking

Collaborating withdifferent people

Expressing in words,
in shape

Evaluation

Scenes and reasons that teachers felt the effects

4.5

Taiwan and Japan are very similar in terms of social and economic
development. The kids in both countries are so lucky that they do not
see the dark side of the real world. By researching on the same global
issues, we helped each other to see the differences and we felt excited
to build up the same partnership to make the world better.

4This is the third time that our homeroom teachers participated in Art
Mile Project. They were very experienced to guide the students step bystep and they made very good use of the digital platform, Google
Classroom to collect everyone’s research results. From reading
others’ reports, the students had a better understanding of SDG 2 and6. Our students were so interested in digital learning that the project
this year did encourage their active learning.

4.5

SDG 2, Zero Hunger was a very challenging topic for our students totalk about. As you may know, Taiwan is a comparatively wealthy country
and we did have good social welfare to support the people in need. Afterthe research about SDG 2, the students criticized the leaders in poorer
countries, who did not take good care of their people. The wars inUkraine and Gaza made the food problem even worse. As teachers, weare very, very satisfied to see that Wen Ya students have good criticalthinking ability when they face the problems of global issues.

5Wen Ya Elementary School aims to promote international education
since it was established in 2008. Wen Ya students, thus have lots ofopportunities to meet global friends and learn with the people fromcross-cultural background. They are usually active enough to makefriends with the world. Japan is close to Taiwan and we share so many
similarities. We do not mind if our friends disagree with us because weare open-minded enough to accept different opinions. We learn to beflexible because that is the key element for efficient negotiation.
We would like to thank our Japanese partners in Okuno Compulsory
Education School, too. They were very polite to listen to our ideas andkindly offer more time for our internal discussion. We have had a goodtime working with them and we hoped they felt the same, too.

3.5

Both Wen Ya and Okuno students have limited English to express theirideas freely. However, by presenting many pictures and photos, as wellas asking the English teachers for help, the two school always reached
the agreement without too many difficulties. Art Mile is a good platform
for us to practice English and drawing. It helped us to understand theimportance of verbal and non-verbal communication in the school year.
Everyone with different talents, no matter language talents or art
talents, could find a place to show the world what he/she wants toexpress. That is great!