According to research published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, meeting new people stimulates your brain. Interacting with others increases cognitive performance, because using the parts of your brain required to talk to others and process social cues wakes up these parts of your brain and allows for better cognitive scores. This suggests that meeting and talking to new people serves to give your brain a workout.That idea is central to the group of teachers who decided to participate in this Erasmus + Project on Cathedrals. Our learners will have an outstanding opportunity to broaden their horizons, and to use the foreign language they are studying, not in an academic context but in a real one. Thus, they will never more consider English as a set of grammar rules and language structures, but as the most important means of communication in the world.The project comes as a result of a need to find new pedagogical strategies, the need for students to learn how to organize different kinds of information (foreign languages, geography, arts, geology, ICT) through one common activity, and the need of promoting the learning of foreign languages in a communicative way and in situations similar to real life. Any pupil can benefit from innovative teaching methods, and our teenagers in particular.We would like to comment on the socioeconomic aspect of the students: most of them belong to a rural area (case of Portugal and Spain), with parents with low qualifications and non specialized jobs in general; they are far from big centres or with difficult access to them, with low capacity to know other geographies, cultures and people, or to get to communicate outside their natural ground,. That is why we would like to offer these disadvantaged students equal learning and cultural opportunities, and involve them more into school and into learning. Although many partner countries have emigrant tradition, students show difficulties and lack motivation for the study of foreign languages, namely English. Thus, the necessity to find motivating, communicative teaching strategies and different scenarios to motivate students for the use of English as a communication tool and a future work tool. Besides all activities related to the study of the monuments in a broader sense (architectural, artistic, materials, culture and history or geographical position), the main aim is to make a transversal study, approaching different perspectives and these different areas of knowledge, already in the curricula. The aim is to get to the curricula using innovative and new teaching strategies. The use of technology, namely ICT, is a language that is motivating to students. We plan to do so, namely by the geo-referencialization of the studied monuments, creating a web page with information (historical, artistic, geographical or cultural) by using maps, taking detailed photographs, exhibitions, sessions with experts on different areas. Also, the shift of the place of the student, by creating and organizing different perspectives of information, the student role becomes more active in his personal learning process and, consequently, more motivated, more interventive, becoming the centre of the learning process and the teachers assuming more the role of moderators in this process.The communicative use of foreign languages (with a specific need and purpose, for example to build the webpage or to forums) and to contact their foreign partners and the use of mobile technology, social networking and image is a motivating tool and innovative as a pedagogical tool and didactic purpose, because many times school and teaching don't always accompany society evolution and needs.The project has some core objectives and expected impacts, such as improving access to information about local and European historical landmarks in a transcurricular perspective; improving the use of foreign languages, namely English as a communication language; acquiring knowledge and disseminating cultural landmarks; getting a better understanding of historical and natural heritage; acquiring wider knowledge of European Community culture; increasing the students' competence in creativity, giving presentations, having debates; improving the use and competence in Information Technology and Communication Skills; bettering their awareness of the importance of historical monuments; learning to value the importance of tolerance and peaceful attitudes. Apart from all these benefits, by taking part in European projects, we hope to get a higher involvement in school life and extracurricular activities, not only of students but also of their families. For teachers, it will be interesting to increase our scope of methods and pedagogical experience in dealing with students' motivation and students' learning difficulties.Taking all these considerations into account, this Erasmus + association can be one of the most rewarding experiences in our students' lives.
The English language teachers from Juan de Barrionuevo Moya secondary school, aimed at motivating their pupils to learn foreign languages, use it in real contexts and offer them opportunities to live innovative experiences, got involved in creating an Erasmus project entitled “Cathedrals” to let the above-mentioned objectives come true. By means of the E-twinning platform, we got in touch with some European secondary schools and, among the many volunteers, we chose the three ones which better suited our requirements (students’ age, interest in oral and written L2 skills, availability of families, relation between the project and syllabus, and knowledge and disponibility of teachers. Together with the linguistic target our project seeks, “Cathedrals” is intended to make the pupils study artistic movements and buildings, acquire knowledge about the different academic subjects, get to know the European community from a social and an economic perspective, to appreciate essential values such as tolerance and respect towards different lifestyles and thinkings. Besides, from the very beginning, the pupils are going to work with new technologies through emails to get in touch with their penpals, filming videos on cathedrals, internet connection via skype and working together on the web pages of the schools. With these types of projects, we can offer low-income and socially-impaired families the chance to live academic experiences which would be unaccesible otherwise. The beneficiaries or associated schools are: -1st Gimnasium of Corfu: It is a medium school that consists of 240 students and 35 teachers. It is located in the center of CorWe are a medium school that consists of 240 students and 35 teachers. The school is located in the center of Corfu town, the capital of Corfu Island, which is located in the northwest part https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/eac/mobilityof Greece, close to Italy and Albania. Their aim is to teach and help the students improve their language skills. -Monsenhor Elísio Araújo secondary school, belonging to the cluster of schools Agrupamento de Escolas de Vila Verde. It has a total of 259 teachers and 3147 students of all ages. The school belongs to a rural area, in the North of Portugal and the families have few job qualifications and arefrom a low socio-economic level. There is a high school-leaving risk, so this project offers them an extra motivation. -Instituto Comprensivo 2 de Anagni, with 3 to 13 years old, (249 pupils from kindergarten, 451 from primary school and 399 secondary school students). The years has always shown interest in Europe, and in teambuilding sojourns with students from other European countries. -Our secondary school is called Juan de Barrionuevo Moya. It is located in Villanueva de La Reina, Jáen, in the south of Spain. It has 125 students, 12 to 16 year olds, and 20 teachers. As it is located in a rural area, with middle and low-middle class families, the students have few opportunities to practise the second language outside the school context. The planned activities, which paired different types of competences and skills, are focus on cathedrals in a broad sense. We have studied: -the structural features and decoration of monuments, mainly in a workwork where the students built a cathedral, and studied typical decoration on window panes, rose windows, cosmatesco floors. -measures and proportions, with workshops where cathedrals and churches were analysed from a mathematical perspective, and others where computer programmes (like Open Simulator) were used. -effects of weather conditions on buildings, with workshops where pupils had scientific experiments. - visits to the monuments and buildings previously studied, where pupils were accompanied by touristic guides so as to allow on-site learning. An essential part of our project has been related to the mobilities, which is an appealing form of reaching the objectives set when elaborating the e-form. The products created (e-book, the cathedral and the video-recordings made by the students ) are available in the school web pages and in the Erasmus + platform.