The project key idea is the concept of TRACE to follow, leave, to be seen and make people think and change. It is a journey created, retraced and shared by many, not only schools. Our varied TRACES touch all the key players of the European future: schools, teachers, students, families, municipalities and communities.The partnership aims first to reduce early school leaving, creating an inclusive and aggregative environment which responds to special needs or Learning Difficulties requirements beyond the origin and religion barriers.The 3-year partnership develops a broad meaningful exchange of best practices and effective trainings in innovative methods, in order to activate teaching practices, strengthen learning and concretely achieve the 8 Key Competences 2020. An inclusive and active school fills a need of a real integration, and gives the opportunity to meet current learners necessity .The only possibility to create a mixture of the future European citizens has to be pursued from early childhood in a shared and experiential way. Doing together!Our aim is to exchange and experience active and inclusive methods to understand and promote Life Skills in an inclusive context. The partnership involves 6 Countries (Iceland Italy Norway Poland Romania UK) sharing different experiences and skills with a common new school concept: experiential, dynamic and inclusive; 6 for a wider perspective to integrate the various school systems on a common rich multifaceted path. 5 Partners already have European experience, 1 is at its first. The choice of partners was guided, besides the obvious European vocation, by the desire to exchange, the tendency to innovation and the particular experience and excellence in, at least, one innovative and active method. Each country has a background and a specific expertise that lacks to the others in at least one important learning area. In so doing, every partner influences positively the group contributing to its general growth.We can observe, after a conscientious analysis of all strengths and weaknesses that the group has the potential to undertake a structured pathway aimed to:1) Meet the need for professional growth, by making partner schools learn innovative methods to initiate pupils from 4 to 13, to the acquisition of all 8 Key Competences and Life skills, integrating them permanently in the school curricula effectively and functionally2) Increase, among teachers, the habit of using informal methods aimed to facilitate the best level of inclusion for pupils in difficulty or disadvantage in order to affect the school welfare and on the sense of belonging positively, reducing at the same time early school leaving3) Synthesize and promote new and past knowledge/experiences/skills/best methods...in a WEB PLATFORM”TRACES OF EUROPE: ACTIVE METHODS FOR LEARNING” that will enable other European teachers to understand why, with which methods, tools and activities bring their schools to active learning. The platform will also contain many practical and reproducible lessons, for pupils from 4 to 13, dedicated to each innovative method and related worksheets and it will be promoted on eTwinning/Twitter/Schooleducationgateway4) Leave a TRACE of Europe in every Country that has an impact on all components of each host partner area: school children, parents, communities, municipalities. The TRACE “Love for Learning”, a monument made by children, teachers and municipalities will be placed in a public place and possibly outdoor in the Community, to witness the European effort towards building a single people5) Maintain ICT, Social Emotional Learning, English and Learn to Learn across the whole projectThis is possible thanks to 3 Transnational meetings, 6 Short-term mobility for teachers (one for each method) and 1 Short-term mobilities for pupils. Each country will always be present to enable the wider sharing and growth. In each meeting, parents, communities and municipalities will also be involved. All activities carried out at school with pupils are applicative of new activated knowledge and are designed to test the effectiveness of the methods and the created environment. They will all be documented with ICT tools and uploaded to the project platform• The expected impact is high: the active approach and the "normalization" of innovative methods, acquired in the 8 key competence framework, will radically change the teaching practices, not only for the 6 partner countries, but also for all those who will get in contact with the project, its web platform, its several dissemination activities• It is a project that trains teachers to improve their professional skills and competences. It is a long-term investment in staff who will act in the school, focusing their educational action on many pupils for a long time, who will represent future European men and women, maybe future decision-makers and, above all, members of only one Country: Europe.
The project "Traces of Europe" started from a previous partnership, between an Italian and Norwegian school. Starting from the common need of innovation, it was decided to form a partnership able to provide a meaningful exchange of best practices and most effective active methods, suitable to reach the 8 European Key competences 2020. The objectives of the partnership were: Meet the need for professional growth and professional development. Increase teachers pedagogical approaches to ensure inclusion of all pupils with differing needs and full spectrum of abilities. Synthesize and promote knowledge/experience/skills(new and previous)through dissemination on a teacher platform. Leave in each country a TRACE of the partnership that has an impact on all the components of each host institution. By using eTwinning the partnership was composed of 4 additional schools from Romania, Poland, GB and Iceland as coordinator. The partnership could guarantee all levels of education from the age of 4 to 16. GB decided to quit after the approval so their tasks and responsibility were split between Italy and Norway. It was decided to assign a key competence and the related active method to each country according to their past experience and knowledge: Iceland - primary and secondary school - age 6/16 - Mother tongue - Beginning Literacy Italy - comprehensive Institute with 3/14 - Digital competence - ICT integration/Coding Robotics/ Tinkering + (from GB) Civic Competencies - Social Emotional Learning/ Mindfulness Romania - kindergarten 3/6 - Cultural Awareness and expression - Outdoor Learning Norway - primary School 6/13 - Math and Science - Assessment for Learning/Visible Learning Poland - primary school 6/13 - newcomer in EU paths - Foreign Languages - Game Based Learning ALL COUNTRIES - Entrepreneurship - Trained by designing and building the TRACE The structure used during meetings and intermeetings periods was always the same: BEFORE MEETINGS Pre evaluation: knowledge about the specific methods Each country prepared a presentation about their best practice connected to the competence of the meeting DURING MEETINGS Community building activities Best practice sharing Workshop & learning the new methods with an external trainer (Educational agencies /departments/Universities) Open lessons with kids Lesson planning with Learning Designer Meeting with parents and municipalities Leaving a visible trace in the community AFTER MEETINGS (3-4 months) Dissemination activities among colleagues External dissemination Twitter/Facebook project website New method implementation with kids Monitoring of the activities and results Post evaluation Other undertaken activities were: 3 Transnational project meetings: NORWAY - The first to create the evaluation forms, train about the PBL and Learning designer and start the project ITALY - The second for Medium term evaluation ICELAND - The third one for final evaluation/graphs/project data/long term impact NORWAY - Final Meeting with children- THE EUROPEAN SCHOOL WEEK when kids from all the partners Countries met together to experience all the methods and European belonging Each partner was also responsible for some tasks implementation: ROMANIA - Flyers and LOGO NORWAY - External dissemination on social media POLAND and ICELAND - Evaluation ITALY - Website and ETwinning Twinspace structure All partners were responsible for the internal and external dissemination activities Considering the results of the pre and post evaluation forms distributed among students/teachers/parents and the constant monitoring provided by all the teachers involved, it seems that the impact is strong, long lasting and spread among all the school community components: STUDENTS - generally increased -sense of European belonging -understanding of learning foreign languages -motivation for learning -ICT skills -peers cooperation -inclusion TEACHERS - level of professionalism & ability to share their own knowledge - level of general and specific methodological competences to overcome difficulties SCHOOL -Innovation -Students centered approach -Inclusion & school climate -8 key competencies integration Human relationship COMMUNITIES(parents municipalities…) -School consideration and collaboration -Openness to diversity -Awareness of the value of an active School -Participation to the European dimension -Awareness of the role of Europe in their future Due to the nature of the project, benefits will be long lasting. Partner schools started a total change process that went deeper into schools organization and into teachers’ instructional strategies. Classroom settings changed, putting students at the center of the learning process, frontal lessons decreased to give frequent chances of active learning. Partner schools started building a new educational system that, thanks to a spread periodic dissemination is getting stronger and stronger.