Our project has three main objectives or special areas of interest: * Consume reduction * The fostering of employability skills in students * Update of teaching and learning resources in the foreign language classroom to make them linked to demands of labour market From our everyday practice in the classroom we have observed that the over consumption our students encounter makes them require some specific skills and knowledge in order to analyse relevant information and make sensible choices. Consumers, particularly the youngest ones, should be educated to critically filter messages from the advertising sector and be made aware of the differences between real and perceived needs. Consumer education is indeed one of the main topics of this project. It is also an important vehicle for building the confidence needed by consumers to operate in increasingly complex markets. In fact, the 2009 OECD’s committee recommended that “consumer education should begin at an early age and cover all life stages; it should be incorporated into educational programmes for lifelong learning or school curriculum, where appropriate”. Teachers in the partner schools have already tried to implement consumer education in their schools through interdisciplinary lessons. We would like to share our experiences and continue work within the school communities in our five countries. Surprisingly as it may seem, this consumerist society is embedded in one of the worst economic recessions it has known and unfortunatelly for all students and our society, educational plans do not contribute to teach children basic home economics and employability skills. We all think -and as it has been proved in numerous market research- that these "soft skills" (oral communicative ability in at least two languages, creativity, innovation, competivity, flexibility, motivation, ability to influence other people and ability to take risks) are not only key for employers whenever they look for employees, but they are in many cases more relevant than the knowledge students have acquired through their University degrees. Unfortunatelly, none of the associated schools tackle these employability skills in their educational programmes. We are determined to fill this gap in our institutions. This will be the second topic in this association and we would like to approach it as liked to consumer education. Activities would be done by mixed international groups of students who will be encouraged to work using as many foreign languages as possible in their interaction. In fact, our third key aspect in this partnership is to make students realise the importance that learning foreign languages have so as to broaden their own opportunities in the labour market. In order to motivate pupils, teachers will be encouraged to implement innovative teaching and learning resources and methods in the foreign language classroom integrating the use of of ITC tools in their everyday practice and exchanging good practices between foreign language teachers in all participating schools, in which better links to a more practical use of language skills required by the labour market will be specially developed. This multilingual interaction will extend the European dimension of the partner schools and cooperation between students and teachers. In consequence, knowledge about the partner countries and the European Union will increase and many stereotypes will be broken. Closely linked to this European dimension is the long term mobility of students we apply for, as we want to compare working systems in all schools (especially in foreign language teaching and CLIL) and design common recognition systems for formal and informal learning that students will acquire in other countries, where they will be evaluated by host tutors in the visited country using evaluation and recognition tools designed by all of us as a team and easyly applied to any student participating in such experiences. We would like to do so instead of the traditional "at a distance evaluation" traditionally carried out by the sending tutors and home teachers who would mark those students according to the parametrers established in the home countries which would certainly lead to a non complete integration of the student. These mobilities will increase the internationalization of our schools and will contribute enormously to our coorperation providing school with a distinctive quality sign. We have designed a realistic and complete dissemination plan along the project and afterwards and hope to influence third parts, such as local businesses, Chambers of Commerce adn teacher training centres as the three objectives are of key importance in our society and countries.
Our project had three main objectives or special areas of interest: * Consume reduction *The fostering of employability skills in students * Update of teaching and learning resources in the foreign language classroom to make them linked to demands of labour market The participating school were the following: IES Enrique Nieto, in Melilla (Spain) as coordinator Europagymnasium Salzburg Nonntal, in Salzburg (Austria) College Les Eyquems, in Merignac, (France) Havukosken Koulu, in Vantaa (Finland) Gimnazjum nr44 im. Genarala Pawla Chrzanowskiego w Warszawie, in Warsaw (Poland) As for the first aim, our pupils have been educated to critically filter messages from the advertising sector and be aware of the differences between real and perceived needs. With such aim in mind the students carried out different research showing consumerist habits in school and family context. With these results they designed presentations to show the participating schools and after debates on the best tips to reduce consumerism, the students created some multilingual leaflets on consumerist tips that were distributed around not only the participating schools but also local ones. Those tips were put into practice in both contexts, school and families and new consumerism results were gathered that showed our improvement in the matter. As for the second aim, we paid special attention to the "soft skills" (oral communicative ability in at least two languages, creativity, innovation, competivity, flexibility, motivation, ability to influence other people and ability to take risks). These are linked to the entrepreneurship key competence that is common to all of us according to the European Strategy 2020 but which ,unfortunatelly, none of the associated schools tackled in their curriculums in an efficient way. With such an aim in mind the students worked on those soft skills in many subject in each of the schools and afterwards they were introduced by teachers into the business world. Closely linked to this aim is the visit that local businessmen and women paid to each school where students could ask them different questions about setting up their own mini enterprises. The experts gave them tips on how to proceed and finally the pupils thought and created a product for which they designed an advertisement. They showed the ad and product in each school and the best ones were selected for the creation of mini businesses. For that creation each "inventor" had to carry out job interviews to select the different responsible posts in his/her business. Products started to be created. The best three businesses in each country were selected and they started creating a fixed amount of units that were later sold in a market held in Melilla (Spain) and which was advertised on local press and radio and which proved to be a real success. As for the last of our objectives, students were made aware of the importance that learning foreign languages have so as to broaden their own opportunities in the labour market. In order to motivate pupils, teachers implemented innovative teaching and learning resources and methods in the foreign language classrooms integrating the use of of ITC tools in their everyday practice and exchanging good practices between foreign language teachers in all participating schools, in which better links to a more practical use of language skills required by the labour market were specially developed. Therefore, FL teachers exchanged methods, resources, tests and books and all FL departments in the participating schools could compare what is done in other countries and imported those things that could be easily transferred to other systems, which proved to be the vast majority. Activities in the project have been done by mixed international groups of students who were encouraged to work using as many foreign languages as possible in their interaction. This multilingual interaction has obviously extended the European dimension of the partner schools and cooperation between students and teachers. In consequence, knowledge about the partner countries and the European Union has been increased and many stereotypes have been broken. Closely linked to this European dimension is the long term mobility of students we carried out along these three years, In order to make the evaluation of LTM easier we designed a common evaluation rubric based on the key competences.