Cooperation of foreign SBA students and ZŠ 1. Máje

  • Veronika Novotná
  • 17.12.2020
At the beginning of November, we were approached by the teacher Mgr. Nikol Porubová from the primary school 1. Máje in Havířov, whether our foreign students would not be interested in participating in an online English lesson at the mentioned primary school, in which they would present a piece of the country they came from to 6th -9th-grade pupils. Besides, we could do nothing but agree and boldly participate in this project, through which students could not only hear English from the mouths of many nations but also meet people from different parts of the world, whom they will just not meet in everyday life in Havířov.

A total of 15 students from countries such as Turkey, France, China, India, and Bangladesh took part in the project. Students prepared a presentation on one of the selected topics including the areas of family, lifestyle, cuisine, and travel. Our visiting academic from the last semester from the partner Shanxi University of Finance and Economics in China also learned about the possibility of presenting in English for primary school students, who saw this idea as a great opportunity for her students to try presenting in English.

The online presentations started on Monday, November 23, when a pair of foreign students spoke at each lesson and presented interesting findings from their country to primary school pupils through MS Teams. At the same time, foreign students tried to be in the role of teachers and thus be the main presenters in the online lesson, and at the same time, the pupils could really try English in practice in the form of their inquisitive questions. A total of 10 of these online lessons took place, which lasted for two weeks due to the great interest of the students.


The students' attitude, in terms of the way they managed and cared about the presentations, was simply great. The students were proactive from the first moment and had an incredibly positive approach to creating presentations as well as to the children themselves. It was such a small experiment when neither party was sure of the result, but as they say, nothing ventured, nothing gained, and in this case, the statement itself was confirmed. The students were duly rewarded for their great work, in no other way than a proper Czech gift of food in the form of Honza's buns and traditional Christmas gingerbread cookies from a primary school teacher. Mgr. Nikol Porubová with the headmaster Mgr. Michaela Drozdová, Ph.D. were very enthusiastic about the cooperation and will be happy to welcome the cooperation in the coming period.