In the project entitled "Take a chance" the Polish, Greece and Portugal schools take part. The Polish school coordinates the project. It meets the needs of our schools. According to Pisa,the Polish youth takes place in the top ten or is close to the EU countries: 5 in reading, 7 in physics, 11 in mathematics.Students from Greece, Portugal received even lower scores.However, all the students in our schools have problems with basic skills such as reading comprehension and basic knowledge of mathematics.The lack of reading comprehension skills creates problems in learning science within the meaning of simple commands. Also the economic and socio-geographical problems in Europe were not without influence on the youth of our schools.The level of unemployment is the most serious in Greece 30% and is the highest in Europe. The number of Greek children living in poverty increased from 23% in 2008 to 40.5% and is the highest (UNICEF figures) in the other countries participating in our project.The difficult economic situation often makes students leave school, look for work to help in supporting their families.Many students in our schools live in single-parent families due to migration of their parents, which is the cause of their emotional problems, inability to establish contacts, problems with adaptation in the classroom.Similar problems have also children from dysfunctional families where there is a problem with alcohol or violence. These children often have low self-esteem and lack of desire to learn.Considering the mentioned problems the aim of our project is to strengthen the professional profile of the teachers through the participation in short courses (peerlearning) and workshops designed to enhance the competence and skills.The teachers enrich their skills with some new active methods (experiments, experience, modern technologies). The project will provide new ideas for interesting lessons and other school activities.This knowledge will help teachers motivate students to learn, develop their social skills, learn their logical and critical thinking.They will be more effective at work in the four key areas: student motivation, reading comprehension, mathematics and science, and student social skills.The employees will enrich themselves with new knowledge, skills and competence. The level of work quality in our schools will also raise.The students will receive help in solving their problems in the field of studying, their self-esteem will increase, they will integrate in the group and gain new knowledge that will help them in self-realization.The project will be carried out within the framework of international cooperation, because we have similar problems, but different ways of dealing with them.Our countries represent different cultures and different traditions, so we can benefit from our partner’s knowledge and experience.Innovation of our project lies in the fact that we are dealing with modern and interesting teaching methods that encourage students to learn subjects such as biology, chemistry, physics, mathematics and progress in these areas.At present, these subjects are taught in a standard way, which sometimes does not fulfill the expectations of our students and is not popular among them.Our innovative action will help students develop their interest, as well as help them find employment in the medical, pharmaceutical, chemical and biological industry what could also prevent unemployment in the future. Our students will participate in after school activities, interesting workshops, which will be conducted using experimental methods with a lot of research, experiments and observation. This will allow students to see the beauty of these sciences.Our project will last 2 years, 4 semesters in which we will deal with four important areas for us: the motivation of students, reading-media education, science with mathematics and social skills.Thanks to the project, our school will increase their knowledge in the management of European projects within the framework of the planning and financial management. The schools prestige in the local community, regional, national and European will grow. Teachers will develop their competence in the management of European projects, in preparing documentation, time management and human resources.• By participating in the activities of the project, students will make larger their skills in reading comprehension which is associated with better results in mathematics and natural sciences.• By participating in classes conducted using active methods and modern technology, students will be encouraged and motivated to learn scienceGood knowledge of foreign languages, modern technologies and social competence will be principal for the future.
Our project "Take a chance" lasted 2 years, 4 semesters, in which we dealt with 4 areas: student motivation, reading comprehension, active methods in teaching science and social competence, which supported our schools in preventing early school leaving. As part of the project, 2 trainings for teachers, 3 meetings of pupils and 4 meetings of coordinators were carried out. The assumed goals were: For teachers - strengthening their professional profile through participation in training: "Professional teachers' burnout and motivation of students", "Modern teaching methods, using IT tools", - expanding competences in the field of European project management, in preparing documentation, time and human resources management, - deepening the level of knowledge during the exchange of experience - increase motivation to learn foreign languages and self-improvement, - getting intercultural experience, - deepening communication skills. For pupils - increase of motivation to learn - improvement of teaching results - improving their skills in 4 key areas - increase of faith in their own abilities as well as commitment to performed tasks. - breaking the language barrier and appreciating the importance of knowing foreign languages - deepening of intercultural competences: openness, tolerance and acceptance - skills to work in international groups For schools - deepening knowledge in the field of European project management, financial planning and management, - enriching the didactic base with new solutions - raising the prestige of schools in the local community The project involved schools from Poland, Greece and Portugal, from areas struggling with socio-economic problems Our schools play an important role in social and cultural life in our regions. We shared common goals: prevention of early school leaving, willingness to continue learning, openness to other cultures. Schools participating in the project have many years of experience in running European projects. During the project, the following activities were carried out: workshops for teachers in Greece were organized - "Teachers' burnout and student motivation to learn" and in Portugal - "Active methods in science teaching". Thanks to these trainings, teachers gained knowledge about coping with occupational burnout, ways of motivating students to learn and using active methods during classes. Based on the acquired knowledge, they prepared training for teachers in individual schools and workshops for students. Teachers enriched their workshop with new active methods (experiments). This knowledge helped them motivate students to learn, develop their social skills, learn their logical and critical thinking. Three of the students' meetings took place in Portugal, Poland and Greece, during which the students had the opportunity to learn informally, because learning is not only a school. This allowed students to develop language skills, break the language barrier, become more open to different cultures and tolerance, their self-esteem was increased During these meetings, students took part in workshops during which they worked in international groups implementing tasks resulting from the subject of the project. There were 4 meetings of the coordinators during which the most important principles of cooperation, ways of implementing project tasks, financial management as well as evaluation and dissemination of the project were discussed. The project prepared a number of information materials that enabled dissemination and promotion of the project results. For this purpose, the Twinspace platform is used, the blog project websites of participating school and leading authorities, as well as traditional methods of promotion in the form of posters, leaflets, information at meetings, meetings, articles in the press, interviews. Each of the partners was involved in the dissemination of the project in their country - dissemination conferences took place, which met with great interest of the local community and teachers from the neighboring schools were invited, and the information materials were prepared in the appropriate language of the partner country. The project implementation also influenced the promotion of schools in the region. The developed materials that are the results of the project have been published on publicly available platforms, and links to them are posted on the websites of our schools so that they can be downloaded and used by other educational institutions Thanks to the very high activity of teachers who engaged in the implementation of this project, we can say that they noticed the benefits of this kind of experience. Each of the schools can see only positive sides from the implementation of this project, we will certainly cooperate with each other in the future. Teachers taking part in this project gained motivation to acquire knowledge and have already written new projects.