PLEASE Parental Learning with EASE but also to EASE children’s aquisition of English as a foreign language is the ERASMUS+ Strategic Partnership Project which gathered four partners from Poland,Greece, Spain and Portugal around the subject of intergenerational language education. The project is intergenerational in its nature but also inter-sectoral as parters represent a public primary school, a private language school, two NGO organisations of the third-age generation. The project is aimed at two target groups: families with fewer opportunities that cannot afford additional private education of English in order to offer their children a helping hand with the English homework and practice thus reinforcing the basic language instruction offered by the state schools. The other target group is teachers of English at primary level who will be equipped with tools they will be able to use to continue spreading the results of the project on a langer scale in the future. Both target groups will be show how to use easily available OER for the benefit of children, but also parents/grandparents. Partners and teachers participating in the project will work out and deliver in form of seminars, the theoretical aspects of family education such as scope of parental control, the safe-for-children Internet, OER online. Partners will collect examples of OER available online, particularly the European Shared Treasure and the eTwinning platforms, YouTube and similar. Best practices will be collected in form of an e-book ”100 Ideas for Happy English” which will be disseminated as the project main product. As a result of the project, parents/grandparents/children will learn from each other reinforcing their language and ICT basic skills. The highlight event of the project - the SUMMER CAMP OF ENGLISH - based on the principles of experiential learning - will be organised by partner organisations for the target families in each of the partner countries, with the participation of both home and incoming teachers. This pilot-course will constitute experimental basis for the IST course curriculum which will be another product of the project and will secure long-term benefits of the Strategic Partnership.
Transsectional Erasmus+ Project PLEASE: Parental support for learning English gathered four organisations from different sectors of adult education: 50+HELLAS ASTIKI ME KERDOSKOPIKIETAIRIA Athens GREECE, Poland Agencja Usług Lingwistycznych LOGMAR Rybnik POLAND, Associaçăo Prosas, Sines PORTUGAL and Elementary School Santa Teresa de Jesús, Calzada de Calatrava, SPAIN. PLEASE addresses the needs of several target groups: teachers, parents, grandparents and school children. The following objectives have been addressed: - the need of instructing teachers on how to cooperate with parents and grandparents by enhancing their parental English language skills and ICT skills; - the need of equipping teachers and parents/grandparents with basic psychological and pedagogical knowledge on family education; - the need of creating a compendium of easily reachable tools for teachers and parents to be used for family education by partners’ investigating the resources offered online as OER ; - the need of creating teachers and parents/grandparents consciousness of potential dangers created by the Internet for the youngest generation; - the need for constant development of the parents/grandparents ICT skills. Partners had 4 transnational meetings travelling to Poland in November 2014, to Greece in April 2015, to Portugal in October 2015 and to Spain, for the project final conference - in May 2016. Developing the intergenerational concept of what parents/grandparents can do to help their children with learning English and how to do it, Partners worked out and compiled an imposing collection of 100 IDEAS to be used by both teachers of English and parents/grandparents who want to play and practise English with their children. The Toolbox of ideas is accompanied by the Instruction Booklet for teachers of English and the Instruction Booklet for Parents/Grandparents that was translated into all partner languages. The Internet turned out to be a very useful tool of intergenerational education providing plenty of opportunities for kids and parents/grandparents to work together and offering many open educational resources. Every transnational meeting was also a chance to deliver a seminar which in their turns was disseminated on going back home – they were shared with members of our organisations and local teachers. Summer 2015 was the pilot-stage of the final product of the Partnership – two teachers from each partner country travelled to another country to conduct a one week’s SUMMER CAMP for adults and children. We were testing out the Toolbox teaching English in partner organisations and asking our participants for feedback. The PLEASE Summer Camp results showed that what participants enjoyed most was interacting with children and also the fun approach to learning a foreign language. Partnership is also about European integration: wherever we travelled we took with us samples of our culture, language, cuisine to share with members of the hosting organisation. We were met and entertained by the local Town Council representatives, visited many famous sights and places of interest, danced the local dances and sang songs. For all 4 project partners, the project PLEASE was all about learning from each other, communicating , building relationships and participating. The project tangible results, which we hope to share are: Toolbox of Ideas which contains 100 activities for intergenerational English Instruction Booklet for Teachers Instruction Booklet for Parents/Grandparents which contains 20 chosen activities that may be used by adults who have no methodology preparation in English, Greek, Polish, Portuguese and Spanish. We gave out 200 CDs with our project products and they are also available for free download at www.logmarschool.com.pl and also on the Erasmus+ Project Results platform. Over 400 people took part in various activities of our project: disseminating seminars, working groups, SUMMER CAMPS and they are asking for more.