Isabelle comes to the front of the hall and collects her award with a big grin. The room is filled with floods of applauding parents and students. The students are louder. In the past academic year this 7 year old has read 93 books about water.
It appears at St Albans Road Infant School, Kent, the impact of eTwinning is quite literally measurable; the students have created graphs which prove it. Competing with their European peers, in the autumn term students at St Albans read an average of 5.6 books from their Water library. Unveiling the results in December they discovered that their success had been diluted by higher results achieved by Spain. Motivated by the tough competition St Albans' average rose to an immersing 14.5 in the summer term. Numeracy skills are just as drenched into this project as literacy. The year twos have measured the water meter at stages throughout the year and practiced their subtraction to work out the school's water consumption in a given time period. Shockingly, the 'water saving' posters the students have artistically created have had a tidal impact, as water usage has notably reduced in all participating schools throughout the course of the project.
The award ceremony is a high profile event: parents are not the only guests, the Mayor is also there to award the students their certificates. The students perform songs about water in not only French but also Norweigan.
Award winning eTwinning project 'Treasure Island' has brought together eight European schools and one Chilean. It is undisputedly cross-curricular and is splashed across the majority of the school's dispalys. eTwinning Ambassador Rita Stoskiene should feel flooded with pride as the impact this project has had on this school demonstrates that it is truely a treasure.
