During our project development all participant institutions will encourage everyone to realize the importance of learning Maths, to make a step towards developing creativity, organizing and group work skills. After completing the activities in the project, it will be shown that it is very necessary to learn Mathematics for analytical, technological, scientific and economic applications. Through different activities, interaction and exchange we will motivate our students/pupils to understand how Mathematics is used in everyday life in their countries and other countries in Europe. By this way they will also learn to accept customs, culture, and heritage to see that we are the same even in our differences. They will be motivated to learn foreign languages for effective communication. Five schools from different European countries will participate in the project. The partners are already involved in an Etwinning project to get to know each other better and also for choosing the project theme. After researching students' comments and suggested activities it was decided to have the project theme of 'Maths'. All the schools have SEN students in their school and the coordinator school is a specialized school for SEN students. Almost all the schools are based in socially disadvantaged areas. So it is very important for the students in these schools to participate in this kind of project to be more open, self confident and tolerant. Students will develop the activities within their school subjects during regular classes and also some extra-curricular activities may take place. Teachers from different subjects and students from different classes will be involved to allow a wide representation of activities. The results and process of the project will be evaluated by monitoring, feedback, internal and external evaluation according to the principles of Total Quality Management. By exchanging reports, pictures, videos and products, the students and also the staff will become more aware of the use of Mathematics, cultural similarities and differences between themselves and people from other countries and increase their ability to communicate more effectively with each other. The project theme will become an integral part of schools' curricula not only for two years of the project, but that will also last after the financed period. Articles concerning the partnership will be published in local/regional newspapers and on local/regional websites. A project website/blog will be created to put the news, results and project progress information on the Internet. Project results and activities will be made available to the parents during the parents' meetings at schools. The project results will be disseminated as wide as possible. The partner schools will work together on eTwinning platform Twinspace, develop the activities and create new tasks even after the end of the EU funding. Finally, the staff can compare their students' attitudes towards learning Maths and exchange ideas how to encourage teenagers to become more conscious participants of educational process in the future.
Four state-maintained mainstream schools and one state special school from different European countries participated in this project. All schools were situated in socially disadvantaged and economically deprived areas and thus it was very important for the students in these schools to participate in this kind of project; mainly to experience the opportunities afforded and to become more open-minded, self-confident and tolerant as well as improving their aptitude and confidence in mathematics, which is vital to enhancing employment opportunities. All schools have students with learning difficulties and so this combination of partners allowed the UK specialist school to support the four mainstream schools to develop new skills, attitudes and approaches to working with SEN students in their individual schools. The partners were already involved in an e-twinning project to gain first-hand information about schools, customs and cultures in other countries which was student driven through exchanges of questions and answer sessions. This was made possible using a shared wed-based platform where the students uploaded various PowerPoints, documents, images and videos to share information and led the discussions leaving the teachers to facilitate the process rather than delivering textbook information. After further researching and considering students' comments and suggested activities on the messaging forums it was decided to develop the project further with a new theme of 'Mathematics'. Mainstream students had expressed their concerns about getting the best grades or made comments that they didn’t see the purpose of mathematics and so it was decided that all participant institutions would encourage everyone to realise the importance of learning mathematics; to recognise it is used in so many other areas including 'hard' and 'soft' sciences, engineering, technological fields, the arts, music, computing and communications. Furthermore, learning mathematics would support teaching students how to think logically, to problem solve, improve their organizational skills and make a step towards developing creativity and group work competences. Through different activities, interactions and exchanges we intended to motivate our students/pupils to understand how mathematics is used in everyday life in their countries and other countries in Europe. In this way they would also learn to accept customs, culture and heritage and to see that we are the same even in our differences. They would also be motivated to learn foreign languages for effective communication. Students would develop the activities within their school subjects during regular classes and also in some cases through extra-curricular activities. The plan to involve teachers across the curriculum helped to reinforce mathematics being involved in many walks of life. The project became an integral part of all the schools' curricula not only for the two years of the project, but it has continued into future academic years. The main activities undertaken included associating mathematics with our everyday environment, reproducing famous landmarks using shape, scaling and measure; fundraising which supported developing money management skills but also raised awareness of social responsibility through volunteering and raising money for charities or for groups of people less fortunate. Students considered mathematics in art, timetables, music, travel, sport and healthy lifestyles with particular regard to calorie counting. Other activities included creating and solving puzzles, finding logical solutions to problems, conducting several surveys and presenting the resulting data accordingly. After completing all the activities in the project it became apparent to the more able students that it was very necessary to learn mathematics for analytical, technological, scientific, economic uses and was invaluable for future employment opportunities. The SEN students began to recognise its abundant use in daily life and displayed an increased interest and enthusiasm for numeracy lessons, expecting them to be fun. Academic progress and attitude to mathematics improved in all schools as staff measured this through national exam results and summative assessments and could assess their students' attitudes towards learning Mathematics from before and after questionnaires. Articles pertaining to the partnership were published in local/regional newspapers and on local/regional websites. A collective project website/blog plus was created to put all the latest news, results and project progress information on the Internet. (http://erasmusmaths.blogspot.co.uk/) and also all activities and results were displayed on dedicated school social media pages and websites as well as being displayed on the e-twinning platform Twin space - https://twinspace.etwinning.net/872/home