3. INTERNATIONAL MEETING OF PROJECT PARTNERS

WITH MULTIPLE BENEFICIARIES WITHIN THE ERASMUS+ PROGRAM
2021-1-SK01-KA220-SCH-000031588

Hello, dear students, teachers and supporters of the iCan Language School,

We are contacting you again and greeting you. We want to inform you what happened
new since our last meeting with you. As you already know, after the completion of work on ours
textbooks, we have been working for a year on the processing of methodological manuals for the textbook Aha, slovenčina! and the workbook for preschoolers Svet okolo nás po slovensky. In addition, together with our partners, picture communication cards are created as additional teaching material, and Spanish, German, French and Chinese versions are also created for the translation dictionary.

We coordinate the work on the project together with our partners from NIVaM, eMeLeS Dublin, Petit Slavik Paris and Czech & Slovak Birmingham. A few days ago, we all met together in the premises of the education center in Dublin for the 3rd transnational project meeting to discuss the progress of the work on the project, discuss some open questions and propose the progress of the work for the next period.

Dublin greeted us with sunny weather and the rain that is so typical of the area avoided us. The very next day after our arrival, we all met at the premises of the Education Center for Slovak children in Dublin at Mount Carmel Secondary School, Kings Inns Street, Dublin 1.

We had a rich work program.

We were welcomed by Mr. Pacher, manager of the Education Center in Dublin and Ms. Lucia Šefčíková – project coordinator for eMeLeS Dublin. Ms. Šefčíková introduced us to the educational center where approximately 150 children learn Slovak. These are mostly children with Slovak roots with different levels of the Slovak language.

We visited several classes in which weekend Slovak classes were taking place. We were pleased with the children's interest in improving their Slovak. Most of them were children who were already born in Ireland, some spent part of their childhood in Slovakia. We were also pleased to see on the desks the textbooks we created during the previous years, exercises and pictures from the textbooks were displayed on the project board, and the children listened to recordings of the exercises. We have seen directly in practice that the results of our work bear fruit and are appreciated by teachers in foreign centers. You can also see the atmosphere in the classrooms in the photos I am attaching. On the day when our international meeting was taking place, the educational center was also visited by Mr. the chairman of ÚSŽZ
Mr. Pilip together with the Slovak ambassador to Ireland Mr. Andrej Drob.

This created a rare opportunity for us to introduce Mr. to the ambassador, our Slovak textbooks for children of foreigners and compatriots. The benefit of the project was obvious by observing the work of teachers directly in the classrooms using textbooks and workbooks.

After the part devoted to getting to know the work in the educational center, we devoted ourselves to information regarding the progress of work on the project. The process of creating methodological manuals was informed by Ms. Tunegová, about the process of creating picture cards and supplementing the translation dictionary with another 4 language mutations was informed by Ms. Pišová from NIVaM. Ms. Tunegová also evaluated the use of funds for the entire project community. Partners in the project from Paris, Ms. Elizabeth de la Bouvrie and from Birmingham Ms. Dagmar Smalley reported on the progress of testing in their centers. At the end of the meeting, we addressed questions related to the next tasks on the project. We could state that we are proceeding with the work according to plan. In the fall, we will all meet again at an educational and training activity, where teachers from foreign centers, as well as from a Slovak school, will be trained directly under the guidance of the authors, how to work effectively with teaching and didactic materials.

After the official part of the meeting, we walked together through the streets of Dublin and ended the day full of emotions and knowledge with a joint dinner in a real Dublin pub.

We look forward to our next meeting together.