REPORT Artmile International Collaborative Learning 2021
Country/Region [ Taiwan ]School
[ Wunsian Elementary School ] Teacher [ Chen,Shengchi ] Grade ( 5,6 ) Member ( 35 )JP School [ Mama Elementary School ]Teacher [ Yumi Sonobe ]# Subjects, Activities and Hours of the lessons
SubjectConception of the lesson

Hours*surfing on the Internet for any related references*creating the PowerPoint for group reports during the Skype18* guided writing for expressing gratitude and introduce the mural content* pronunciation checking* Japan and Taiwan article reading, oral training* short English passages for Skype talk10

* creating drafts in groups* a list of all good elements on the draft/mural* drawing and painting* chromatology

20*scheduled Skype talk*appreciation and reflection on AICL project in class* learning presentation skills

21

Social Studies*geography*understanding Taiwanese and Japanese culture

10

Flexible course

Taiwan and Japan culture investigate (food, temple, nature)

20

ICT

EnglishArt

Integrative
Activities# Theme and Message of the mural
Theme

Zero Hunger

Message

There is no denying that human being plays an important role in our world. Food waste
has become an issue in recent days. Starting from students’ life experience, weinvestigate our school lunch leftovers and tried to find the solutions to solve ourleftovers problems.

United thoughts toshare with the world

# Effects and Problems
Effects your students have gainedThis is our second time to do this project with PBL
teaching methodology. Students compare the effect ofschool lunch leftovers between Taiwan and Japan. In
the learning process, students spent lots of timemaking action research to analysis the reasons ofschool lunch leftovers, and then they painted theinquiry process on the mural. Besides, they also
learned about Japanese culture. During the wholelearning process, students learned how to cooperatesmoothly as well

Points for further improvement
The elements of local culture impressed thestudents in both Taiwan and Japan. However, thelimited English ability hinders the fluent
communication during the monthly Skype talk. The
homeroom teachers and English teachers havemade the plan to implement some culture issues
into the English class. Hopefully, the quality ofcross culture community can be better next year.

# How has your impression toward your partner’s country/region and the world changed?
Changes in the students
Changes in the teachers
Tomakea
perfectproject, teachers start to learn
Some of low achievers start to learn English
howtouse
project-basedlearning into curriculum.
automatically because they want to do their best in
We had a study group for PBL once a week andthe VCs. Students always took turns to give a short held PBL workshops in school on weekend. This istalk during the Skype. They were encouraged to use our second time participating in this project. Basedon the previous experience, most teachers had
English, the difficult foreign language to share theiralready known the flow of project. In 2021 AICL, we
ideas in public. They were brave enough to conquer
focused more on inquired-based learning. We tried
the possible challenges. Building a PBL culture into put project-based learning theory into ourclass is not a difficult thing for students.
curriculum design.

# Flow of the Activity
ContentMonthMEET
Selfintroduction

SHARE
Research on
the theme

June
SepOctWhat you did
Teachers and students
introduced themselves to getknow each other well. We poststudents ‘self-introductions
on the forum. We asked ten
questions with each other,including hobbies, food, famousspots and so on.

Your students’ attitude/reflection
Students were excited to introduce
themselves through VC, and they
really wanted to make friends withstudents in Mama. Writing andspeaking fluently in English is noteasy for them, but they had tried
their best practicing. I can see theirintrinsic motivation has beeninspired.

In October, teachers had
another meeting online due tothe pandemic. We rescheduled
our project plan, and the dateof the following VCs. We
decided to choose zero hunger
as our painting issue. School
lunch leftovers analysis was
our them-based research
topic. After two months
research, we compared theresults between Mama and WS.

With the guidance of teachers
across different subjects,
interdisciplinary, students tried toanswer the PBL driven question’How can we reduce our school
lunch leftovers and solve the foodwaste problems?’ Based on aseries of hands-on research,
students found seasoning,
distribution, eating habits, style ofthe dishes and smell all affected thenumber of leftovers. The research
stage helped them to get more
understanding of the Zero Hunger
issue. In the meantime, they wereencouraged to keep thinking thecorrect actions to protect theearth.

Subject
English
ICT
Integrative
Activities

Flexible
CourseEnglish
ICT
Integrative
Activities

Flexible
CourseSocialStudies

UNITE
Message ofNovunited thoughts

CREATE
Mural painting

Dec
Jan

In this month, we started todiscuss the content of themural. At first, we asked
students’ opinions what theywanted to put into the mural.
We categorized students’
feedbacks and discussed withteachers in Mama throughface-to-face meeting. We
reached an agreement witheach other. We drew three bigcircles into the mural. Eachcircle represents a research
process. In WS, we put school
lunch leftovers analysis, foodbank into the first circle. For
the second circle, we drew
aerobic food waste composting.
Eating whole food are in thethird circle. Students stared todraw drafts.

Students showed the positivity indiscussing and uniting the ideas ofmural. They were happy to see theirconcepts combine perfectly withstudents abroad. Students wereinterested in creating their owndrafts. However, students’creativity seems to be limited. They
needed the art teachers’
suggestions. By watching the draft
design of the Japanese partners on
forum, they learned to see morecreative possibilities.

In this term, we spent one
month finishing the mural.
Students cooperate andcollaborate with each other. We
finished the mural on January
20th. We sent it back on
February 11th. We also held an
exhibition in art class to show
our result. Everyone who saw
the mural was very impressive.
Our students formed into
groups and attending thepainting meeting during theirwinter vacation. Each group
was responsible for one circle.
The group leader drew theoutline first and asked the restof the group member to painton the mural. They
collaborated with one anotherand finished the painting workin 6 days.

The painting for this year wascomparatively easy because there
were lots of big images and color
blocks on the mural. We justfocused on the three big circles.
Audience could read the mural froma broader perspective.

EnglishICT
Flexible
CourseArt

English
ICT
Integrative
Activities

Flexible
CourseArtAPPRECIATE
Reflection/Appreciation

FebMarWe read the completed muralin class with the hope that wecould share some suggestions
with our partners during theSkype. We also took a group
photo with our principal, school
faculty and the art teacher
before we sent the mural backto Japan. After sending backthe mural, we had a skype
session to talk about our mural
painting. To present the muralcontent to the foreigner
students, we had practiced
several times for the muralcontent. We had five groups tointroduce the mural content.
The topics are school lunch
leftovers analysis, foodbank,aerobic food waste composting.
Students also prepare somewords to say thank you to theJapanese students

Students work very hard on their
final presentation. They used Canva
to make PowerPoints bythemselves and started to think
about the presentation styles.
Students felt proud and excited topresent the mural in front of all thestudents. They had a sense ofachievement about their work. AICL
is a very good project for thestudents to broaden their world
view. It also encouraged thestudents to take a deeper look at
the global issues and even takesome actions to help solving someproblems. Painting is not hard.
What’s better, painting helps deliver
the message of saving the earth
from the younger generation.

EnglishICT
Flexible
Course# 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

Critical thinking(objective, logical views)

Evaluation

Scenes and reasons that teachers felt the effects

4

Students were divided into five groups to investigate Taiwanese andJapanese culture based on their research topics. They collected data andmade their research into PowerPoints during the computer class. Then,they present their culture research to Japanese students. Thanks to theextra efforts made by Homeroom Teachers, students learned more about
the traditional Taiwanese cultures on integrative activity class.

3

Active learningand action

4

Collaborating withdifferent people

5

Expressing in words,
in shape

4

Critical thinking is important in this project. Before designing the muraldraft, students do the brainstorming with each other. They had discussed
several times and talked about the disadvantages and advantages of eachconcept. They selected their present contents and make PowerPoints bythemselves.
This project not only enhanced students’ learning motivations towardlearning English but also cultivating their culture awareness when theylearned a new culture. Most students were active learners in this project.
The teacher found some low achievers’ learning attitude had been changed
to positive in this project.
Students knew more about their own culture and their partners’ culture
from the project. They have tried their best to explain what they drew inEnglish. It is for sure that they have acquired the necessary communication
skills after the project. They are getting better to express the ideas bytheir own self.
Students appreciate partners’ mural and introduce their own mural toothers. Each student writes 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 other foreign
students.