We are six partners from all over Europe. We all are Primary Schools and some of us have several experiences in international projects. In contrast, the coordinators of the project only have a little experience, only doing eTwinning projects for three years now. But is this new challenge what inspire us to think in our project as a new way to involve all our School Community for a common goal and an opportunity to exchange our experience with Institutions over Europe. “Turning this world into a healthier and safer place” is a project born by the necessity of making the children more human and developing the need of social inclusion among them. We live in an Europe that seems to be more worried about economical factors and interests than in people. We think that children need to develop social values like empathy towards immigrants, refugees and minorities because the future will be on their hands, and we, the teachers have a lot to do with it. This is the reason why the main aim of our project is turning our students into good citizens. Linked with what we have said before we find the environmental issues that we also work in our project. Children need to be aware of the importance of taking care of the environment and being responsible with the use of the world’s natural resources. To work those subjects we will develop different kind of activities: - Presentation of our projects to our school communities. - Knowing each other activities. - Reasons why people move. - Moving around for a better life: watch videos/short films about the refugees topic. - Researches on our ancestors: drawing our personal map. - Teaching-Learning visit to Greece: visit a refugees camp and creating an NGO through different workshops. Receiving a talk by the person who is in charge of the camp. It will be filmed by a photoperiodist. - Give talks to our school community about our experiences in Greece. - Teaching-Leraning visit to Latvia: water pollution and wood cutting. Make videos. - What can we do for the environment?: clean up areas, create a school art gallery with recycled materials, etc. - “Environment S.O.S” comic. - “The clean environment” story and film. - Teaching-Learning visit to Poland: games, performances, visit to a a Science Center to work on the “Recycling” issue. - Let’s keep working for a better world: celebration day. - Song composition. Taking into account the characteristics of the project and the main goals of our project, children will work in a cooperative way because it improves the critical thinking, social abilities and inclusion of all kinds of students. Besides, the international cooperation is recommended as it may force the development of language competences by CLIL methodologies. It also implies: supporting each other, interacting and debating, reaching agreements with their classmates, managing with conflicts or disagreements and being responsible with their assignments. Furthermore, we have seen that working this way improves their relationships, their personal abilities and reduces conflicts at school. Needless to say, sharing and coopearting with other European schools will make our work more significant because children will compare and contrast our reality with other realities. They will make some specific projects in collaboration with students from the partners’ schools so they will feel the need of using ICT resources and using English. It means learning in a significant and meaningful way. As far as the results is concerned , we have to say that our project’s main focus is the work of values with all the School Community. That’s the reason why we want to point on the situation of our environment and the inclusion of people, this last, through the work on of the situation of refugees around Europe. Therefore ,the results will have different dimensions: a) The concerning of our School Communities and our closer Institutions about the problems and come to an agreement to the proposals for solutions. b) The European Institutions Knowledge about the citizens worries about those problems and work together to carry out with their proposals. Our project will have an impact on the school and local community: - Participants will grow up entirely: they will develop values and strategies to work in a cooperative way, use English and ICT to reach their learning goals and develop enterprising competences while developing the critical thinking. - We will spread our project to the local, regional and international community through different channels: magazines, radio station, regional TV, social networks and European Results Platform. - The whole school community will benefit from our project: we will interact with the town hall, regional organizations, schools and high schools from the area through varied activities. - We will establish this project as a school identity trait, so all the students aged 10-12 will do workshops every year related to the topics of this project.
We are five partners from all over Europe. We all are Primary Schools and some of us have several experiences in international projects. In contrast, the coordinators of the project only have a little experience, only doing eTwinning projects for three years now. But this fact has not been an obstacle to develop our project. “Don't Forget what Really Matters" is a project born by the necessity of making the children more human and developing the need of social inclusion among them. The main aim of our project is turning our students into good citizens. Linked with what we have said before we find the environmental issues that we also work in our project. The project has been applied with children aged 10-12. Even though, all the children in the schools and the rest of the School's Communities have been taking part part of it in different activities. Main selection criteria for choosing students who participated in LTT project activities were parental agreement and pupil's involvement in the project activities, willingness and eagerness to participate in a travelling experience. Project’s main objectives: - Do cooperative work among other countries and different cultures. - Develop solidarity values among people and environment. - Develop an active and responsible role as a world citizen that starts in their own communities. - Promote the respect towards different cultures. - Include non discriminating habits in the students’ daily lives in order to make a fairer society. - Know the refugees current issue, its causes and consequences. - Promote the critical thinking towards stereotypes. - Be concerned about the current environment problems in Europe from the nearest to the furthest experiences. - Reinforce the knowledge that children have about the situations that refugees and immigrants go through. - Develop children’s positive attitudes towards immigrants and refugees. - Promote the refugees inclusion in the society. - Develop the children’s awareness towards the importance of taking care of the environment and people . During 1st year of project, pupils were involved in activities about migration. Pupils, age 10 - 12 were participating in common project activities - making a project logo and voting for the best one, watching and discussing a video about migration, and making their family trees and researching their own family history. The LTT in Greece allowed children meet each other for the first time.Children were able to learn the real situation of refugee lives and situations at refugee camps: they couldn't go to the planned refugee camp visit, because of an internal set of circumstances happening at the camp at that moment. As a result children developed positive attitude towards immigrants and refugees. The Greek students prepared a black theatre play based on the story "Karlichen" written by UNHCR. In the 2nd year of the project, pupils worked on environmental issues. All the activities in Latvia focused in this issue. Pupils of all project countries made one comic about saving the environment, together drew a cooperative puzzle 'A Clean Environment', cleaned local areas, made a Decalogue about reducing waste, recycled different materials by creating decorations. During LTT in Poland, students, in international groups worked together on environmental issues during the seminar, workshops and after that they prepared together musical instruments from recycled materials. Meeting- interactive, musical performance about tolerance, friendship, with the school community, in which students acted and sang together. Other activities in Poland: interactive games with QR codes using SAM Labs blocks for programming and iPads, talent show presenting national dances and culture as well. The activities below are only few examples of other tasks done in the different schools . All the materials can be found in the project blog, the Results Platform and the Twinspace. Latvia: -Contest in Latvian school - “Get to know Europe” -Collecting donations for animal shelter. Greece: -The tree of timeless value. - Visit to the refugee camp in Koutsohero. - Christmas bazaar of recycled :the profits were sent to the non-profit organisation "The Child's Smile". Italy: -School activity in cooperation with the Mazzarino scout group entitled "At school of recycling". Poland: -The World Water Day -Erasmus Day - Several dissemination activities around Europe. Spain: -A Bosnian refugee talk for all the school's community. -Cakes contest : the profits went to an NGO from Ethiopia. -Town hall organised an exhibition about refugees.in our school . -Two dissemination activities for teachers in our area. Regarding the impact, and, as a non tangible result, we have realised the improvement of the awareness towards the importance of taking care of the environment and people in our schools communities. The visible results consist on all the tasks done and resources used to carry on the project.