This project is looking for changes in methodology that meet the demands in our national curriculums, such as learning by doing, problem solving or cross-curricular projects which involve the development of the students´ competences. Teachers involved in this project will learn and so they will have to put into practice their own required competences that are an essential part of the teaching-learning process and must be integrated in our everyday practice. One of the main challenges of this project is to foster school motivation among students which is aimed at the quest of quality in education.The Project is based on the idea of improving motivation among students through learning by doing; using rich and different methodology where problem-solving, Project Based Learning or collaborative work will be the tools to achieve it. Teaching strategies are then ameliorated and so teaching competences will be improved. This search for changes in teaching methodology will contribute to improve quality in education as so will do the exchange of good practices and experiences among the schools’ partners.The importance of students must be highlighted as they play the key role to achieve the main goal of this project. They will actively have to develop tasks, take part in planning, discuss and evaluate their work. Problem solving methodology will be a constant in this project as that will lead to an increase in motivation of the students. All in all, they will be able to implement basic skills and competences such as learning to learn, collaborative working, and the development of critical thinking, social relationships and the use of ICT.This project aims to face one of the main necessities in the educational field all over Europe which is the lack of motivation among students which may lead to failure. We want our students to show a better attitude towards learning and so we need to improve their level of motivation, when covering the tasks of this project our schools will be opened and enriched by different teaching approaches.This project will allow teachers to improve and develop their competences, improve the quality of teaching by developing new, common and innovating materials. Allow the exchange of experience, educational materials and international team work. Improve and share good practices. It will aim to compare methods and techniques and it will enable information exchange and experience sharing.Students will develop key competences. It will help them to obtain experience from project activities. They will reinforce their ability to present the results of their research and experiences within the frame of an international team work. The development of language and other communicative skills will be enriched.We intent to carry out a whole schedule of specific activities during these two years, they will mark the different steps to reach, assess and evaluate the process. The cover of these tasks will show the quality and results of the ongoing progress. This is meant to be measured by using multiple and different parameters as well as by showing the outcomes which have been designed in the project. The use of different platforms is strongly required to communicate and develop some of the activities. One of our goals is also to learn and increase modern ways to the use of ICT for both students and teachers. Our project has clearly stated different moments to evaluate the process; it shows how necessary the assessment at all its levels -individual, peer or group assessment- will be used. The meetings will be the rewarding moments to show, share, clarify or tune in the work, as well as moments to reflect or discuss on the outcomes and whole progress. They will also be particular ways of dissemination of results and future planning. The added value of the European dimension into the schools participating will make a different into our own schools projects. The schools’ image will be improved when disseminating the results of the project and the experiences. It will also increase cultural awareness and understanding among those countries participating in the project.
This project was designed to produce changes in our methodology to meet the demands in our national curriculum, such as “learning by doing”, problem solving or cross-curricular projects to develop students’ and teachers competences. The teachers working in this Erasmus+ KA-219 project were researching and then putting into practice the required competences to successfully approach that kind of process, we had to integrate new tools and new methods in our classes. The project was based on the idea of improving motivation among students through “learning by doing”; to achieve this aim, rich and different methodology like problem solving, Project Based Learning or collaborative work guided us as essential tool. The role of the teacher played an important part and all through it, our teaching strategies, formation and competences were highly ameliorated. The exchange of work, good practices and experiences among all school partners’ contributed to improve quality in teaching-learning process. We gathered these methods using common Padlet wall, and then we shared those using the Book Creator. The importance of the students was reinforced with the project; they were actively taken part into planning, discussion and evaluation to develop activities before, during and after meetings. Students’ basic skills were forced to be implemented to achieve objectives, that’s because learning by doing, problem solving, international collaborative work, critical thinking, social relationships, use of ICT or communicative competence were rooted before and during the meetings and also into the planning of the different cross-curricular projects we designed. Our students showed a better attitude towards learning during and after this process, they felt motivated and their self-esteem improved. The development of language and communicative skills were enriched. We covered many activities, some stated from beginning others created in process; the fulfillment of them marked steps to follow, assessment moments and evaluation process. The results can be valued by the amount and quality of the produced outcomes. During these two years one of our main objective was also to develop practical tools for evaluate students work during projects. All the partner schools had a local project where were several school subjects involved. Teachers and students documented all the ways of evaluation that they used and we put together all the best parts of evaluation and made the common evaluation tools. We used different levels of evaluation for both students and teachers (individual, peer and group assessment). We piloted these tools having a common project which title was “Sustainability” and finalized those during our last meeting. We put those tools in the Book Creator, so it will be easier to share. During the Erasmus+-project we used many ways to analyse evaluate our work and products; – filling forms, questionnaires, rubrics, posters with ideas, etc. All our meetings had moments to assess, clarify or tune in our common work, to discuss on presentation, quality and dissemination of outputs. All countries agreed on specific ways to disseminate activities and results by including other associations at some stages (teacher training teams, local authorities, educational authorities, etc.) breaking the boundaries of the school communities. Our project work called the attention of different educational authorities, two coordinators were required to present their experiences, a Czech student won the first prize in a national competition on Erasmus+ experiences, Lithuanian coordinator wrote a report for its NA website, Finnish NA suggested it to take part in Canal Art documentary, etc. This helped us to disseminate the work as so did many other activities created in our schools with the same objective. Thanks to this Erasmus+ project our schools were opened and enhanced with different teaching practices and approaches. The job shadowing experiences for teachers facilitated all us to discover in depth how our partners organize, plan or work within their classes and education. It helped us all to comment, learn more and compare our systems, it was a chance to reflect on our work and spread it to other colleagues.Teachers improved and developed teaching with common and innovative tools, educational materials and made international team work. They shared and learnt many modern ways to use of different ICT platforms. Our schools’ image improved thanks to this Erasmus+, as the added value of the European dimension is now deeper rooted in them. We are planning for the future; students’ exchanges, a Lithuanian teacher association to visit and develop a lecturer in Finland, individual students’ meetings, etc. This reflects the impact of this project and the importance of increasing cultural awareness and understanding among our schools. More information and all the outputs are available in our web site: https://urly.fi/HCL