The project " An Artistic Trip Around Europe" is focused on Arts and Music trying to provide both teachers and pupils new ways of teaching/learning in this field. An exchange of good practices will help both subjects to get a better experience and improve their abilities. An analysis of the implementation of the curriculum in each country shows that often we make a big focus on having good results on Language and Maths, not paying so much attention on other pupils abilities, specially the ones involved in arts and music. "Theory of Intelligences Multiples" of Howard Gardner will be used for developing the project. The main objectives of the project for pupils are: 1. Improve the skills related to Arts and Music: the musical–rhythmic, the visual–spatial and the kinaesthetic intelligences. 2. Use the english language as a common way to communicate and make pupils realize the importance of learning english. 3. Use the ITC tools to integrate them in learning activities . 4. Awake the children an European citizenship awareness and know other cultures. The main objectives of the project for teachers are: 1. Share and improve new methods and techniques of teaching art, music and dancing. 2. Create a teaching guideline as a source of lesson planning. 3. Improve skills in English. 4. Use ICT in contextual situations and in both planning, learning/teaching/dissemination activities To develop this project five schools from five different countries are going to team up and join forces. This partners are: - From Barcelona (Spain) : Josep Maria School. It's a preprimary and primary multicultural school, having around 470 pupils from 3 to 12 years old, and 32 teachers. - From Savonlinna (Finland): Nätki Elementary with 10 teachers and 150 pupils from the 1st to 5th grade. - From Grebkow (Poland): Henryk Sienkiewicz School with six classes, children aged of 5-13 and a kindergarden. There's about 200 students and 25 teachers. - From Riga (Latvia): Valdis Zalitis school have about 500 pupils from the 1st to 6th grade and 40 teachers. - From Vienna (Austria): Neue Mittelschule is located in a migrant district and it's a rather small school with about 200 pupils and the most of them (95%) don't have German as their mother tongue. The number of pupils with mobilities will be 74 but the project will involve more than 1000 people, counting other pupils in each school, teachers and families. Different activities are scheduled related to different art disciplines: painting, drawing, music, happenings, experimenting with materials, video creation... In addition the project will provide pupils mobilities and in these a chance of working together in different workshops scheduled in different European countries. Methodologically mixing pupils of different countries in different workteams and using several and different techniques and materials would provide richer experiences practising with arts and music. The main results expected are a teaching guideline about methodology in arts, and beyond the products related to each planned activity there will be a common product: a collage on a canvas made with the effort of all partners, a collage is an assemblement of different elements and materials to create a meaning and we can think about Europe as a "collage" of different cultures with the aim of constructing an European awareness. Our collage will be a metaphor about joining different forces around Europe to make a common creation. Concerning the curricular contents we expect teachers to improve their teaching methods of arts and music according to each country's curriculum and pupils to improve their skills in arts and music. At the same time the learning/teaching activities and experiencies will be integrated in each country's curriculum. With this Strategic Partnership we expect both social and academic impact. The main impacts are: - Revise and improve the schools teaching methods by providing to all teachers meaningful activities and ways of teaching, so they can have more resources. - Awake and develop creativity and imagination. - The growth of an European citizenship awareness in both students and staff. - Improve language skills for both pupils and teachers using English as a common language to communicate. - Integrate ICT tools in the daily work activities. Finally, this project will help our institutions to give them a european dimension, trying later to extend our partnership through differents projects (with e-twinning) in order to stablish a european cooperation between our schools.
The project " An Artistic Trip Around Europe" was focused on using art and music to provide both teachers and pupils new ways of teaching/learning in these fields.An exchange of good practices helped both subjects to get a better experience and improve their abilities. An analysis of the implementation of the curriculum in each country showed that we often put a big focus on hachieving good results in Language and Maths and not paying so much attention to other pupils abilities,specially the ones involved in Art and Music The "Theory of Intelligences Multiples" by Howard Gardner was used for developing the project The theory says that every child is good at some intelligence(verbal-linguistic,logical-mathematical, interpersonal, etc...)As Gardner,we believe that the purpose of schooling "should be to develop intelligences and to help people reach vocational and avocational goals that are appropriate to their particular spectrum of intelligences" The main objectives for pupils were : 1. Improve the skills related to Arts and Music:the musical–rhythmic,the visual–spatial and the kinaesthetic intelligences. 2. Use English language as a common way to communicate and make pupils realize the importance of learning English. 3. Use ICT tools to integrate them in learning activities. 4. Raise awareness of European citizenship to our children ,broaden their horizons,reduce prejudices and get to know other cultures. The main objectives for teachers were : 1. Share and improving new methods and techniques of teaching Art,Music and Dancing. 2. Create a teaching guideline as a source of lesson planning. 3. Improve English skills. 4. Use ICT in contextual situations and in both planning,learning/teaching/dissemination activities. To develop this project five schools from five different countries became partners, these were: - From Barcelona (Spain) : Josep Maria School. It's a preprimary and primary multicultural school with 470 pupils, aged 3-12 and 32 teachers. - From Savonlinna (Finland): Nätki Elementary with 10 teachers and 150 pupils from the 1st to 5th grade. - From Grebkow (Poland): Henryk Sienkiewicz School with about 200 students, aged 5-13, a kindergarten and 25 teachers - From Riga (Latvia): Valdis Zalitis School has about 500 pupils from the 1st to 6th grade and 40 teachers. - From Vienna (Austria): Neue Mittelschule is located in a migrant district and is a rather small school with about 200 pupils and the most of them (95%) don't speak German as their native language. The project involved more than 1000 people, including pupils from each school, teachers and families with 74 pupils having mobilities. Different activities were scheduled related to different Art disciplines:painting,drawing,music, happenings,experimenting with materials,video creation... In addition the project provided pupils' mobilities where they had a chance to work together in different workshops scheduled in different European countries. Methodologically mixing pupils of different countries in different workteams and using several and different techniques and materials provided richer experiences practising with Art and Music. Carrying out the project, exposed students to other cultures and promoted their foreign language abilities,especially in English. The transnationality of the project allowed pupils and teachers to work with people from other European countries, so they could help each other and at the same time gain an awareness of European citizenship. By adding an European dimension to the project, students and teachers were able to work in a richer context widening their knowledge of Europe,its inhabitants and some of its cultural and artistic expressions (artists, songs, popular music...) Beyond the products related to each planned activity there was a common product: a big canvas made with the effort of all partners,a collage which is an assemblement of different elements and materials to create a meaning that parallels the idea of Europe as a "collage" of different cultures with the aim of constructing European awareness. Our collage is a metaphor about joining different forces around Europe to make a common creation. Concerning the curricular contents we were expecting teachers to improve their teaching methods of Art and Music according to each country's curriculum and pupils to improve their skills in Art and Music. At the same time the learning/teaching activities and experiencies were integrated in each country's curriculum or activities plan. We had both social and academic impact with this partnership.The main impacts were: - Revising and improving the schools teaching methods by providing to all teachers meaningful activities and ways of teaching,so they have more resources - Awaking and developing creativity and imagination - The growth of a European citizenship awareness in both students and staff - Improving language skills.