The project will be implemented with the cooperation of three countries, Hungary, Spain and Italy. The participating organizations, as they operate in a village or a small town, are similar in type, size and scope of work. We share common interests in European cultures, and all of us are committed to quality education. The education programs of our schools give high priority to foreign language education. Our main objective is to find new ways of development in this field. We can identify different needs depending on our context and background. For Felsőtárkány Primary School in Hungary it is crucial to strengthen its competitiveness, and build a higher reputation among parents in its area. Ceip La Acena in Spain would like to complete its successful bilingual language education programme with executing international projects. Istituto Comprensivo Castelfranchi from Italy aims to give new perspectives to its students facing economic and social difficulties, and cope with the problems that originate from the cultural differences of the children. The title of our project is European Patchwork-Applying CLIL Approach to Culture Swapping. Our concept is that Europe includes a diverse range of cultures; every nation has its own character. There are various things that belong to our national identity, things we feel valuable in our national culture. During the project we reveal some notable features of the Hungarian culture, and learn about other nations, discover what is unique in their countries. Dealing with this topic opens the door to raise the participants’ awareness of other cultures .They can build networks of international contacts and develop a sense of European citizenship. We are planning to use CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) approach in an innovative way outside the classroom involving our students actively. Our experience on the method is quite different, but all of the partner schools believe that the content based approach offers excellent opportunities to find new ways of development, and they will benefit from international cooperation. Our final objective is to design and edit an Illustrated Cultural Dictionary in which we attempt to summarize our learning outputs and present our results. We are planning three international learning, teaching and training activities, one in each country. The host country is responsible for the implementation of the activity. Each student meeting is preceded by a preparation phase. The participants do preliminary research on the cultural characteristics of the host country. The exact activities will be elaborated by the active participation of the host students, and the partners are expected to execute the tasks through virtual cooperation. Teachers support the students and assist them in preparation. We place a special emphasis on language applying CLIL techniques. Through cooperative project work on the spot students gain hands on experience on the culture of the host country. During this phase the students are expected to present the results of their previous research and they can extend their knowledge taking part in further activities such as making crafts, visiting attractions, cooking local food. Students can use language that they have learnt previously. On each occasion we will organize a special public event when each nation is represented, and anyone interested can join, such as other students, parents, local representatives. We intend to organize the following programmes: a European talent show called E- Factor, European Expo European Patchwork memory game and a Culture Competition. European Expo is an exposition imitating business trade fairs where each country designs stands, displays characteristic objects and provides information about the country in order to facilitate culture swapping. At the same time periods we organize an opening and a closing project meeting in Hungary and in Italy. Embedded an international student meeting we hold a conference on CLIL in Spain. As a significant result of our project the language and communicative competence of the participant students will improve. We will raise their cultural awareness and strengthen the sense of national identity. The students, parents and local residents, who do not benefit directly from the grant, learn tolerance towards foreign cultures. In the long term new educational programs will be introduced into the school practices. They become able to offer higher quality education to the students who achieve more success in further education, and on the increasingly competitive labor market. In this way the schools will meet the parents’ requirements, and build a higher reputation in their region. The school management establishes new contacts and opens the possibility of further cooperation. Our results will be widely disseminated in the media and professional forums so hopefully, we will inspire other schools to start a European Union granted project.
The title of our project is European Patchwork-Applying CLIL Approach to Culture Swapping.The project was implemented with the cooperation of three countries, Hungary, Spain and Italy. The participating organizations, as they operate in a village or a small town, are similar in type, size and scope of work. We share common interests in European cultures, and all of us are committed to quality education. Our concept was that Europe includes a diverse range of cultures; every nation has its own character. There are various things that belong to our national identity, things we feel valuable in our national culture. During the project we have learnt about each other's nations, discovered what is unique in our countries. The education programs of our schools give high priority to foreign language education. Our main objective was to find new ways of development in this field. We used CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) approach in an innovative way outside the classroom involving our students actively. Our experience on the method was quite different, but all of the partner schools benefited from the cooperation. Our final product is a digital Illustrated Cultural Dictionary in which we summarized our learning outputs. We accomplished three international learning, teaching and training activities, one in each country. The host country was responsible for the implementation of the activity. Each student meeting was preceeded by a preparation phase. The participants did preliminary research on the cultural characteristics of the host country and the students executed the tasks through virtual cooperation. The teachers supported the students and assisted them in preparation. We placed a special emphasis on language applying CLIL techniques. Through cooperative project work on the spot students gained hands on experience on the culture of the host country. During this phase the students presented the results of their previous research and they extended their knowledge taking part in further activities such as making crafts, visiting attractions, eating local food. Students used language that they have learnt previously. On each occasion we organized a special public event when each nation was represented, and anyone interested could join, such as other students, parents, local representatives. We organized the following programmes: a European talent show called E- Factor, European Expo, European Patchwork Culture Competition. At the same time periods we organized an opening and a closing project meeting in Hungary and in Italy. Embedded the international student meeting we held a conference on CLIL in Spain. Francisco C. Jaímez Ortiz, Teacher from C.E.I.P “LA ACEÑA” elaborated “MRMIC & G.XXI”, an educational program based on CLIL and presented it in the conference. During the cooperative activities teachers became more and more involved in CLIL method so we decided to organize additional professional programmes on the topic. There were two webinar courses of ten lessons each, one for the Italian and one for the Hungarian teachers followed by open model classes and discussion in each country. Our trainer was Francisco Jaimez who is a highly qualified expert on CLIL approach. As a significant result of our project the language and communicative competences of the participant students have improved. We raised their cultural awareness and strengthend the sense of national identity. The students, parents and local residents even who do not benefited directly from the grant, learnt tolerance towards foreign cultures. This year new educational programs were introduced into the school practices in Italy and Hungary involving the teachers who took part in the webinar courses. Our Spanish colleague intends to go on with teacher training programmes and write a methodology book about his own practice. All of the schools became able to offer higher quality education to the students who achieve more success in further education, and on the increasingly competitive labor market. In this way the schools got closer the parents’ requirements, and built a higher reputation in their region. The school management established new contacts and opend the possibility of further cooperation. Our results were widely disseminated in the media and professional forums so hopefully, we inspired other schools to start a European Union granted project. To learn more information about the project visit our website: http://europeanpatchwork.weebly.com