Project "Sharing is caring " is three years project. Six countries are involved in the project: Finland, Croatia, Greece, Hungary, Italy and Portugal. The project has 4 topics. 1. How do I learn? 2. Where do I learn best? 3. How can I help you? and 4. Can you help me to do it? All the schools in this project feel that we have a great demand to offer a wide variety of methods in learning, so all the children are able to find their own way to learn. We wanted to have this project with European schools because we think we have many good methods to share, but we also think we can learn from other schools as well. We are willing to have pedagogical discussion and in this way grow as teachers and empower our teacher profession. Kaakkuri School created this project content and found partners via e-twinning and other international connections. The children in this project are 5-12 years old. We think they'll benefit this kind of a project most.The main target is to help pupils find out what kind of learners they are. How and where do they learn the best? We teachers need to find different methods and ways of teaching. We need to take into account childrens individual needs. In this project the teachers will learn from the other teachers. New methods, didactic ways and new programmes will be familiar for them. Differentiation in teaching is important in every lesson. Use of the modern technology is an important part of the project as well. Also the spreading of the new information learned is in a big role in this project. You have to share, because you care. Children and adults will get "Sharing" and "Caring" tasks in this project. Pupils learn to keep "Learning diary" as well as making photostory and write blogs. Those are important ways of getting the learning more visible. " This is the way I learn" and " I have learned a lot". Children will make the learning environments better in this project. They'll have "Tuning week(s)" when they really think how the environments could be better and then work for it. Children/the classes will get to know each other via google/skype hangout sessions. Children write blogs and make photostories. They also share the activities in their classes and learn from each other. Not only the tachers will communicate with each other but also the headmasters are involved in this project. They are responsible for arranging the school life and we think it is a key role to get things to change better. They share their experiences and good practices too.We also included a cultural aspect in this project. Besides the school life and the meetings we'll introduce ourselves in the country's cultural surrounding. We'll have day trips to get to know each other better and in that way get important international connections. We think that all the schools will get new power for their work in their own school by meeting new colleagues. We all share the European citizenship and we need to care of it!
Project "Sharing is caring" was a three years project. Six countries were involved in the project: Finland, Spain, Greece, Hungary, Italy and Portugal. The project had 4 topics. 1. How do I learn? 2. Where do I learn best? 3. How can I help you? and 4. Can you help me to do it? All the schools in this project felt the need to offer wide variety of learning methods, so all the students could find their own personal way to learn. We wanted to make this project together because we thought that we all have methods to share and at the same time we are able to learn from the others. We wanted to have pedagogical discussion and grow as teachers and empower our teacher professions. The students in this project were 7-12 years old. We thought they would benefit this kind of a project most. The main target was to help students to find out what kind of learners they were. How and where did they learn best? Teachers needed to find different methods and ways of teaching. They also needed to take into account children's individual needs. The students had an active role too. They had to start thinking their ways to learn. They did self-assessment in their Learning/Success diaries. In the very beginning we noticed that differentiation in the classes is important in every lesson. We used the modern technology as a tool. We recommended good applications to each others and the children made the tutorials to learn to use them. That was a motivating way to learn. By doing this project the teachers learned from the other teachers as well. New methods, didactic ways and new programs became familiar for them. Spreading new information had a key role in this project. "You have to share, because you care." Students and teachers got "Sharing" and "Caring" tasks. They all wrote "Learning and success diaries", made Photostories and wrote blogs. In that way learning became more visible. Students made the learning environments better by tuning them. They had the "Tuning week(s)" where they found out how the environments could be better and then worked for it. They took the pictures to show the change to others too. Students/the classes got to know each others via Google hangout/Skype sessions. It was very motivating way to use the English language in the real situation. Not only the students and teachers worked with this project but also the headmasters had their own tasks. The headmasters shared their experiences and good practices with each others. That was a great success! There are both long-term impacts and short-term impacts in the project. However we see that this projects impacts are more long-term impacts than short-term impacts, because the idea of the project was life-long learning. Both students and teachers learned skills that they can use later in their lives. However the methods and activities we chose were easily brought into the classrooms and easily shared with other European schools, so they can be used instantly. In addition many activities were non-verbal so it did not matter if the students were beginners in their English skills. These were project’s short-term impacts which are growing for long-term impacts. Besides the school life and the meetings we introduced ourselves in the country's cultural surroundings. Therefore the cultural aspect was fulfilled in many ways in this project. For example international dinners, international markets, national dances and cultural day trips. Besides the school life we thought that it was important that we introduced ourselves in social occasions. We think that all the schools got new power for their work in their own school by meeting international colleagues. We all share the European citizenship and we need to care of it!