“Mens Sana in corpore sano” is a strategic association just between school centres with the aim of carrying out a key action K2 over 24 months. This association is formed by four primary schools, some of them with Infant and Secondary Education as well. They are schools from: Portugal (Braga), Italy (Sicily), Poland (Nieporete) and Spain (Guadalajara) as the coordinator country. Italy, Portugal and Spain have previous experiences in other associations such as Comenius and Erasmus+. Nieporet takes part for the first time in an European programme. Three of them are state schools and the other one is a private school. They are all characterised by: integration schools, inclusive methodologies, strong sensitivity towards the use of Information and Comunication Technologies (ICT), development of values for the school coexistence, emotional intelligence, bilingualism and a concern for the environment. The name of our project express our comprehensive, integrated and inclusive education: Mens sana in copore sano. The main purpose of this association is to carry out teaching and learning activities with a focus on the improvement of personal (Me and my Identity), sociocultural (Me and Ohers) and environmental (Me and the Environment) skills . These activities will help our students, teachers, families and other agents in our context to take advantage of the integral, inclusive and cooperative education as an opportunity to improve diversity within our educational system. The impact of these activities are very important for our association, therefore we intend to reach a large number of agents over the next 24 months with hopes to improve our digital, communicative, interpersonal and environmental capabilities or skills. The specific objectives we want to work on are the following: ME AND MY IDENTITY: - Improve personal well-being, that is, physical, affective and relational through the work of intrapersonal intelligence, - Evaluate identity and personal healthy habits. ME AND OTHERS: -Take part in differet sports, traditional games, traditional dances and activities in the nature as a proposal of healthy free time activities. -Exercise interpersonal intelligence through activities related to assertiveness, empathy and social skills. -Exchange good practices and experiences in the learning of a foreign language (English) using Content and Language Integrated Learning metholodogy (CLIL). ME AND THE ENVIROMENT: -Know and value the ecological environment of the different countries taking part in the association. -Share experiences and good practices related to the protection of the environment. We will use a collaborative and interactive methodology to carry out these objectives. This methodology focuses on the development of activities that enable the exchange and the common action of proposals of each of the participating schools. The goal is to obtain mutual knowledge and overall improvement of our association. The characteristic features include: - The use of ICT application (communication, creation, exchange of experiences). - The promotion of English as a common language. - The use of our mother tongues as a sign of our identity. - The personal experiences (international meetings). - Educational innovation (methodologies to learn a foreign language and the action-research method). Three transnational coordinating meetings will take place over the next three years (at the beginning of each school year and at the end of the association). There will be four other international visits of work in each of the schools taking part in the project, these visits will last five days. In these teaching and learning activities will travel teachers and children from each school. At the same time, there will also be developmental activities in each of the six semesters. The following is a list of the main teaching and learning activities of the international encounters and the work during the next 24 months: - Create a digital space for the communication, holding and exchange of tangible products (e-twinning). - Elaborate the Association Logo, decorate the schools and create and exhibition space (Erasmus+ Corner). - Elaborate different projects: design audiovisual documents to introduce our educational systems and our schools; design a book with traditional recipes; a bank of traditional dances; create a bank of audiostories about coexistence values; and create an animal and plant field book of the environment of each country. - Provide workshops, methodological presentations, classroom exchange experiences and visits to sites of significance. All of which under an initial, on-going and final assessment through procedures such as coordination meetings, surveys, use of checklists, budget monitoring, etc. In short, this is our proposal, a project for citizens of the 21st century.
At the end of our project, as a summary and with regard to the achievements and concrete results, we can say, we have carried out our main aims in a very high percentage. That means, over the two last years, we have developed our contents, we have applied the different methodologies that we proposed, we have carried out all the tasks and activities that we designed and we developed the three transnational meetings and the four short-term activities, just how we planned in the initial project and timeline. There haven´t been any significant change in the initial agreements and the respect for the agreements between the four partners has been maximum. This reality has got a very high participation, dissemination and impact in our schools and environments. More specifically, and talking according to the blocks and objectives whom defined our initial project we can say: With respect to the first block, "ME AND MY IDENTITY": during our four visits each other and with our tasks and activities planned to carry out during the school years, we worked two of our main objectives: to improve our personal well-being (physical, affective and relational), through the work of the intrapersonal intelligence, the value of our personal and cultural identity and the work of the live healthy habits. The different tasks and activities that the four schools develop to work these aims were: videos describing each school and country, activities and tutorials about traditional games and dances typical from each country, recipes and cookbooks about the different cuisines, audiobooks with traditional stories of each region and logbooks showing the ecological heritage of our countries. Everything with the intention to show how we are and get the appreciation and respect for the different identities. Without doubt, we got it because our relationship and respect has been amazing. Also, we carried out different workshops about emotional intelligence, social and teaching abilities, assertiveness and empathy, everything in order to get an integral health (social and emotional, too). In our second block, “ME AND the OTHERS”, we worked these aims: to take part in different sports, traditional games, dances and activities in the nature, as a proposal of healthy free time and for improving our interpersonal intelligence through activities related to assertiveness, empathy and social skills. Also, we have exchanged good practices and experiences in the learning of a foreign language (English) using the “Content and Language Integrated Learning methodology” (CLIL). The achievement of these aims has been very high, as well. Beside all activities which are mentioned before, very useful to know and accept the other one, in our project has been a mass participation and intense interaction between all the participants: students, families, teachers. All of them have taken part in the different initiatives. The method of work adopted in all the decisions and actions had been cooperative, collaborative and inclusive. This way, all the pupils from the different levels and educative stages (from three years to fourteen years) took part in the tasks elaborated in each school and later these tasks were showed and shared in our mobilities. Likewise, in each short-term activity all the pupils, teachers, families and other institutions have been the main actors and actress during theirs weeks as host, with the develop of workshops, school trips, visits, performances, activities, celebrations, etc. Without a doubt these weeks were the most intense and enriching time during these two years. We have been very careful with the activities and actions to prepare our meetings, specially about how to select our students for the short-term activities, our host families and how to get a perfect relationship between them: interviews, letters, videoconferences, sending previous information to the families, using social networks for the first contacts… Everything in order to get a perfect living together. In fact, our families and students keep the contact with pupils and families from the different countries and they have visited each other during the summer holidays. English has been our principal language in all our communications, activities, workshops and visits. Also, we have developed a pair of workshops to know the “Content and Language Integrated Learning” methodology to use it in our classes and subjects. In the same way, we have done different activities and tasks in order to use, learn and share our mother tongues: using our multilingual dictionary and learning traditional songs and stories from each country. Finally, about our block “ME AND THE ENVIROMENT” and its objectives: to know and value the ecological environment of the different countries of our association and share experiences and good practices related to the protection of the environment, we have carried out activities with a real contact with our environment, visiting natural parks in our four countries, with different workshops where we knew our biodiversity in each school, planting different typical species from each region and with the elaboration of our logbooks (with the most common animals and plants) and our activity about the The three “R” (reduce, reuse, recycling). It is possible to find all our experiences, documents and tasks mentioned in our blog and the results platform and also, in a lot of published articles in different mass media in our four countries.