3. TRANSNATIONAL MEETING OF PROJECT PARTNERS
WITH SEVERAL BENEFICIARIES OF THE ERASMUS+ PROGRAM
2021-1-SK01-KA220-SCH-000031588

Good afternoon, dear students, teachers and supporters of the iCan language school,

we are here to welcome you again. We would like to let you know what happened
since we last met. As you already know, after finishing work on our textbooks, we have been working on methodical guides for the textbook "Aha, slovenčina!" and the workbook for preschoolers "The world around us in Slovak" for a year. In addition, together with our partners, we are creating communication cards with pictures as additional educational material, and we are also working on Spanish, German, French and Chinese versions of the translation dictionary.

We are coordinating 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 at the Education Center in Dublin for the 3rd transnational meeting of the project to take stock, discuss some outstanding issues and propose ways to develop the project for the next period.

Dublin greeted us with sunny weather and the rain that is so characteristic of this area eluded us. The day after our arrival, we all met at the premises of the Education Center for Slovak Children in Dublin, located in Mount Carmel High School, King's Inns Street, Dublin 1.

We had a busy work schedule.

We were greeted by Mr. Pacher, Managing Director of the Dublin Education Center, and Ms. Lutsia Shefchikova, Coordinator of the eMeLeS project in Dublin. Mrs. Shefchikova introduced us to the educational center where about 150 children study the Slovak language. Most of them are children with Slovak roots with different levels of Slovak language proficiency.

We visited several classes where Slovak language lessons were held on weekends. We were pleased to see the children's interest in improving their Slovak language. Most of them were children who had already been born in Ireland, some had spent part of their childhood in Slovakia. We were also pleased to see the textbooks we prepared from previous years on the desks, the exercises and pictures from the textbooks hung on the project board, and the children listened to the audio recordings of the exercises. We saw with our own eyes that the results of our work bear fruit and are highly appreciated by teachers in foreign centers. You can see the atmosphere in the classrooms in the photos I am attaching. On the very day of our multinational meeting, the President of ÚSŽZ, Mr. Pylyp, together with the Ambassador of the Slovak Republic to Ireland, Mr. Andrii Drob, visited the Educational Center.

It was a rare opportunity for us to present to the ambassador our Slovak textbooks for the children of foreigners and emigrants . The benefit of the project was evident when observing the work of teachers directly in the classrooms using textbooks and workbooks.

After the part dedicated to getting to know the work in the educational center, we were given information about the progress of the project. Ms. Tunegova spoke about the process of creating methodological manuals, Ms. Pishova from NIVAM - about the process of creating cards with pictures and adding 4 more languages to the translation dictionary. Ms. Tunegova also reviewed the financial implementation of the project for the entire project community. Project partners from Paris, Ms. Elizabeth de la Beauvry, and from Birmingham, Ms. Dagmar Smalley, reported on the progress of testing in their facilities. At the end of the meeting, we answered questions about the next tasks of the project. We were able to state that we are making progress in our work according to the plan. In the fall, we will all meet again at an educational, training event, where teachers from foreign facilities, as well as from a Slovak school, will be trained directly under the guidance of the authors on how to effectively work with educational and didactic materials.