Fantastic Four is a strategic partnership whose main objective is exchange of good practises on STEM methodologies among 4 European primary and secondary schools. The coordinating school is Nám. L. Novomeského 2, Košice, Slovakia. The other three partners are Malmslättsskolan Tokarp in Sweden, Agrupamento de Escolas de Canas de Senhorim in Portugal and CEIP Arcipreste de Hita in Spain. Each school has a different field of expertise and in our partnership we share these abilities and learn from one another. It is a give-and-take relationship based on mutual concessions, shared benefits and cooperation. Slovak project team focuses on Physics enquiry based activities, Spanish project team adapts all activities to young learners 'needs and special needs students, Portuguese project team focuses on Mathematics and Maths computer programmes and Swedish project team introduces cross-curricular methodology that implements environmental issues into STEM education. The partnership was established because recent studies show our students lack STEM skills and are reluctant to pursue it as their future career. Since there is a shortage of STEM workers across Europe, Fantastic Four contributes to solving this problem by increasing student's interest in STEM, promoting a positive image of STEM, making improvements in school based science teaching and learning, empowering teachers with innovative teaching methods, supporting inter-peers learning and aiming for gender balance. The target groups consists of students and teachers of the above mentioned schools, however, the newly-adapted activities as well as all the other outcomes are available to all teachers across Europe on the joint-project web site on Twinspace. The activities are as follows: presenting the project and setting up the project web site, survey done on teachers and students in the beginning and at the end of the project, Science Week held simultaneously at all schools, STEM Olympic Games full of gripping activities both for girls and boys, and evaluation and adaptation of all developed materials. In the course of 2 years the partnership produces these tangible and intangible products: a joint-project web site on Twinspace, a questionnaire for students, a questionnaire for teachers, detailed analysis of these two questionnaires, ppt presentations about project teams, ppt presentations about schools/regions/countries, worksheets with activities in English, Slovak, Swedish, Portuguese and Spanish, activities for young learners/special needs children in all 5 languages, videos, quizzes, exhibitions, excursions, World Games presentation, Science Week, STEM Olympic Games, a brochure with Maths tasks. The main expectations regarding the impact are changing the way STEM is taught and viewed, an increase in students 'motivation to study STEM, an increase of the number of qualified people within Europe and thus reduction of the number of the unemployed, an improvement of students´ grades, an increase in teacher job satisfaction, an improvement of European education system by implementing innovative practices, creating a network of professionals across Europe and an intercultural awareness and respect for the different cultures of European countries.
Fantastic Four was a strategic partnership whose main objective was exchange of good practises on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) methodologies among 4 European primary and secondary schools. The coordinating school was Nám. L. Novomeského 2, Košice, Slovakia. The other three partners were Malmslättsskolan Tokarp in Sweden, Agrupamento de Escolas de Canas de Senhorim in Portugal and CEIP Arcipreste de Hita in Spain. Each school had a different field of expertise and in our partnership we shared these abilities and learned from one another. It was a give-and-take relationship based on mutual concessions, shared benefits and cooperation. Slovak project team focused on Physics enquiry based activities, Spanish project team adapted all activities to young learners 'needs and special needs students, Portuguese project team focused on Mathematics and Maths computer programmes and Swedish project team introduced cross-curricular methodology that implemented environmental issues into STEM education. The partnership was established because recent studies show our students lack STEM skills and are reluctant to pursue it as their future career. Since there is a shortage of STEM workers across Europe, Fantastic Four contributed to solving this problem by increasing student's interest in STEM, promoting a positive image of STEM, making improvements in school based science teaching and learning, empowering teachers with innovative teaching methods, supporting inter-peers learning and aiming for gender balance. The target groups consisted of students and teachers of the above mentioned schools, however, the newly-adapted activities as well as all the other outcomes were available to all teachers across Europe on the joint-project web site on Twinspace as well as on the disemination platform E+ VALOR. The activities were as follows: presenting the project and setting up the project web site, survey done on teachers and students in the beginning and at the end of the project, Science Week held simultaneously at all schools, STEM Olympic Games full of gripping activities both for girls and boys, and evaluation and adaptation of all developed materials. In the course of 2 years the partnership produced these tangible and intangible products: a joint-project web site on Twinspace, a questionnaire for students, a questionnaire for teachers, detailed analysis of these two questionnaires, ppt presentations about project teams, ppt presentations about schools/regions/countries, worksheets with activities in English, Slovak, Swedish, Portuguese and Spanish, activities for young learners/special needs children in all 5 languages, videos, quizzes, exhibitions, excursions, World Games presentation, Science Week, STEM Olympic Games, a brochure with Maths tasks. The main expectations regarding the impact were changing the way STEM was taught and viewed, an increase in students 'motivation to study STEM, an increase of the number of qualified people within Europe and thus reduction of the number of the unemployed, an improvement of students´ grades, an increase in teacher job satisfaction, an improvement of European education system by implementing innovative practices, creating a network of professionals across Europe and an intercultural awareness and respect for the different cultures of European countries.