Getting Science Closer to Students Five secondary schools from Hungary, Greece, Italy, Lithuania and Sweden established a partnership to implement a project focusing on teaching science. The main objective of our project is to make science subjects more popular with students and orientate them to choose a career in the technical field or apply to college or university where they will study maths, physics, biology and chemistry. We would also like to help students with learning difficulties to improve their skills, motivate them to work harder so that they can either learn a trade or apply to a higher institution to get good qualifications. The main goal is to establish and enhance their employability. We also hope to attract more young people to follow in our footsteps and want to teach science subjects in the future. To reach our goals teachers of science will carry out experiments with their students in the schools' laboratory and in the nature in physics, biology and chemistry. The students of the partner schools will make their own projects on the practical use of their studies. About 10-12 students from each partner school will have the opportunity to spend a week in a foreign country and work on projects with their foreign peers. We are going to make videos about the experiments, which will be uploaded on Youtube and the schools websites. The teachers will also collect and make digital materials to improve the students' basic skills in maths and science subjects. We plan to create a digital resource bank which will be shared on our website with all the students and professionals who are interested. The resource bank will include materials for students with learning difficulties. We believe that we must encourage these students and facilitate their studies with all the possible tools and methods. The teachers will exchange experience, know-how focusing on the problems of different learning abilities, educational background and learning disabilities. We could share our experience in multi-channel learning-teaching, interactive and reflective learning methods and applying cooperative methods. We would like to promote our project and disseminate the results by organising a science festival and a dissmeniation day. The local TV stations and newspapers will cover the events. We would also like to inform as many people as possible about the project results on the social network sites. We hope that not only our students and teachers in the partnership will benefit from this project but hundreds of others in our neighbourhood as well as thousands of students and professionals who will use the videos, digital materials and picture dictionary. We also hope to have followers who will help us with the sustainability of the project and enrich the resource bank with their own materials.
Teachers in the partnership realised that a lot of students did not choose science subjects for their higher education because they were not motivated and were afraid of the difficulties in physics, chemistry, biology and maths. Most teenagers do not have real ideas about their future employabilities and they are too young to understand that their career depends on their studies. The main objective of our project was to make science subjects more popular with students and orientate them to apply to college or university where they will study maths, physics, biology and chemistry. As we can see in the job market, freshly graduated young people have a better chance to be employed with a degree in the scientific and technological field. We also hoped to attract more young people to follow in our footsteps and want to teach science subjects in the future. The project was implemented by secondary schools from five European countries. Szekszárdi Garay János Gimnázium in Hungary was the coordinator school. The school has a state of the art science laboratory, which makes it possible to carry out experiments in physics, biology and chemistry. The partner organisations were: 2nd Gymnasio Neas Ionias Attikis in Athens, a Middle School, which prepares students for Lyceum, a General High School. The teachers of the school cooperate for the creation of inter-scientific lessons and the application of new teaching methods concerning all the subjects of the curriculum. Fridhemsskolan in Arvidsjaur, a lower secondary school in Sweden prepares students for upper secondary school. Half the students have their own computer which they use in the lessons. The teachers use peer teaching method and have had several European teachers job shadowing there. It was their first experience in Erasmus+ project. IISS Leonardo Da Vinci, a secondary school in Cassano Delle Murge, Italy, prepares students for higher education in several fields. They introduced Cambridge Assessment International Education at their school. Students have the opportunity to learn biology, maths, chemistry and literature in English. Siauliu Lieporiu Gymnasium in Siauliai, Lithuania, prepares students for higher education as well in well-equipped classrooms. The staff are committed to inclusive education and their work is helped by developmental pedagogues. They have special Arts and Science programmes which are integrated into Biology, Physics, Chemistry and Technology lessons. Main activities: 1) After the formation of the project teams at the partner schools and distributing tasks, we included the experiments and students’ project work in the curricula. We collected data about the students' academic results from the previous year and made a survey on the students' future plans for their future career. 2) We had a kick-off meeting in Lithuania where we discussed the project timetable and details of short-term mobilities on 28th October. 3) Science teachers were continuously carrying out experiments in chemistry, biology and physics, from which videos were made. 4) We made a flipbook of a picture dictionary in six languages with the words and pictures of the laboratory equipment. 5) The students did their own project work in connection with the experiments and other scientific topics. 6) Students with learning difficulties were provided extra lessons regularly, but unfortunately very few took the opportunity. 7) We attended science festivals and organised dissemination days in our schools where teachers and students from the local schools and some from the neighbourhood settlements also attended. We informed the media about our Erasmus+ project and several articles were published and films were shown in the local TV. Results and impact There are 100 videos available to watch on Youtube made by the schools in the partnership, a flipbook with a picture dictionary, resource bank for the experiments in pdf format and students presentations in PPT. The results of the project are also available on TwinSpace, where the videos, project works and pictures can be seen under the project title: Getting Science Closer to Students. As for the impact of the project, we could see that there was more as more interest in the Erasmus+ activities from the students and colleagues as well. Analysing the applications to higher education, there is a slight increase in the scientific field, though we cannot prove that it is just the result of this project. We can also realise that more students are interested in science than before. Participating in the Erasmus+ also attract more students to apply to our schools.