This arts project involves Pre-Primary and Primary schools from Italy, Romania, Poland and Spain with a common necessity of improving our students’ communicative competence and their involvement and motivation in their learning process. The objectives of the project are mainly the following: - Increase the communicative competence of the students. - Sharing innovative teaching - learning methodologies and approaches. - Making use of different ICT resources in order to work cooperatively. - Knowing and valuing other countries' culture. This arts project comprehends a serial of monthly activities to introduce the students to the most well-known masterpieces of art of each country involved in the project from these following fields: literature, painting, architecture and music. Students from every country will choose one of the most representative masterpieces of each field and they will elaborate and send a presentation of it to the other countries along with several questions that will encourage the students to make a deeper research on each masterpiece. The students will work on the presentations that other schools have sent them from their art masterpieces. Students will also work in international groups in order to create an art dictionary. After having worked cooperatively on each block of art, students will prepare an open-door school day for the parents to come to attend lectures, exhibitions and to participate in a contest done by videoconference in which they will have to answer some of the questions they will have been working on before. During the project, all the products will be exposed on a wiki page and on the eTwinning website where all the participants will be able to add or edit any information. At the end of the project, a book compiling information of every masterpiece from each country, in the language of the project and in the different countries’ languages and also a brief explanation of what methodology and ICT resources have been used will be published and handed out to the families, local institutions and libraries. This book will compile an explanation of how to use several ICT resources and innovative approaches not only to develop the communicative competence of the students in our schools but also to motivate them towards learning even after the end of the project.
The Erasmus + project "Fostering Communicative Competence through Arts" has been carried out by these four schools: - Coordinator: Montsant Rural School Zone, Cabacés and La Bisbal de Falset, Spain. Pre-Primary and Primary Schools. - Istituto Comprensivo Filipo Traina, from Vittoria, Italy. School-High School. - Szkoła Podstawowa nr 6 im. Marii Skłodowskiej-Curie of Ruda Slaska, Poland. Pre-Primary and Primary School. - Colegiul National Pedagogic Stefan Cel Mare, of Bacau, Romania. School-High School. The project arose from the common need to improve the communicative competence of the students in both English, as a foreign language, and in their mother tongues; as well as the need to achieve greater motivation and involvement of students in their learning process. Despite the great differences between the typology of the four schools, they all agreed on this need. For this reason the following objectives were established: - Improvement of the communicative competence of the students. - Exchange of methodologies and techniques of teaching and learning. - Use of ICT resources for cooperative learning. - Knowledge and value of the culture of other European countries. This project based on art is divided into four blocks: literature, painting, architecture and music. Each of the blocks consists of a series of monthly activities that have served to familiarize the students with the most famous works of art from each country involved in the project of the different fields. The students of each country have selected among the best known works of each field the most representative and have prepared a summary in the form of a Prezzi presentation that has been posted on the project wiki. Each country has worked on the presentations received from the other partners. During the process they have worked cooperatively in international groups to create an art dictionary, they have organized contests about knowledge related to masterpieces using "Kahoot", they have represented their own interpretation of each masterpiece in different formats and as closure of each block an open doors’ day was held in each school to show the educational community the work done. During the project, four transnational meetings were held in each of the four participating countries, each dedicated to one of the artistic fields worked. There have been workshops organized and carried out with the intervention of families, cultural visits related to each artistic field and activities to publicize the culture and traditions of each country such as cooking, dancing, music or visits to museums. All the activities have been collected and displayed on the project website: www.foccta.wikispaces.org, in each Erasmus corner of the schools and in the book that has been published: "European Art Guide by Kids" which is available free of charge in pdf format on the project website. Each family of the students who have participated in the project has received a copy of the book and copies have also been provided to different local institutions such as the Educational Resources Centers of the regions, Regional Education Departments, local libraries, town halls and all other people and organizations that have collaborated in our project in a disinterested way. At the same time, the teachers of each country have selected a technique or methodology to work on the artistic field that had been assigned and shared it with the teachers of the other countries that have used it to carry out the activities of that block. These techniques are also collected at the end of the book and on the project website. The realization of the project has contributed to increase the communicative skills of teachers and students, as well as their digital competence. The bonds of friendship created between the participants in the project, guarantee the improvement of the communicative competence even after the project is completed. It has also meant the introduction of new methodologies in the teaching and learning process. Another important contribution of the project has been the development of the awareness of European citizenship throughout the educational community: students, teachers, families and local educational institutions. As a long-term benefit we highlight the development of interest and an attitude of openness towards new international experiences and the implementation of a methodological line of work based on cooperation and focused on more competitive and significant activities in our schools. The fact of participating in a project of this magnitude has contributed to increase the schools’ prestige.