Our pupils are the future generation and the next citizens of a great and unite Europe. We want to inspire the pupils to learn new things from various educational systems. This project will not only equip pupils with life skills, it will also encourage mutual respect and the ability to work with people from different cultures. The main topics of our project are sport, music and ecology. The idea of the project “ LIKE the naturE- tRAdition- Sport- MUSic!” springs from the consideration among young teachers that through sport, music and environmental activities students from our schools will learn how to create, communicate and cooperate. We are the teachers from schools located in six European countries with different languages, cultures, habits, believes, traditions and school organization. We can state that there is a big number of children with special needs and students coming from other countries with the language gaps, that need to be taught using lots of innovative methods in curricular and extracurricular activities. We come from Hungary, Italy, Romania, Portugal, Poland and Estonia. We are teachers with different cultural backgrounds united by a big will to collaborate and improve: ICT and language skills, solidarity, democratic values and respect among participants. All of us have already had in the past the special opportunity to live the experience of partnership inside Comenius or ERASMUS+ programs and thank to this amazing opportunities we already seen the great results and impact of our last projects. All of us known that it is very important to encourage and promote the best teaching practice to draw out the best from all the young students in every country. The strong point of our International collaboration: equal opportunities opened to different range of students with all the possible needs, human rights, collaboration and citizenship, traditions, emotions, creativity, art, universal languages and signs. So, the main issues in this project are to provide students and teachers with a deeper understanding of their needs and passions and to widen their knowledge in the main subjects (Music, Sports and Ecology) connected to culture, traditions, history, English language, violence, bullying, and ICT while integrating students who come from different cultural backgrounds, learning difficulties or disabled. Doing the project tasks we aim to prepare our students to become open-minded, creative, imaginative, sensitive to the others who have fewer opportunities and health problems, culture-conscious, healthy citizens and we intend to motivate them to active participation in social life, too. The students will be involved in the study of the music, sport values of their own countries and of the other partners’ countries; they will appreciate the different cultures, will develop the pleasure of doing music and sports, and will consciously search for ways how to be creative, self-confident, fit and sensible to the others who are in disadvantageous positions rather than them in health or many other occasions. Sport and music performances will help the community of pupils to access best results and improve their self-confidence; using technology devices and social networking will help them to know new friends, places, cultures and appreciate values such as peace, brotherhood and cultural knowledge. We will measure through questionnaires the effectiveness of the well teaching practice, the impact on the participants, the collaboration between the partners, the increase of European values. We will also promote and increase human rights. All the communities will be aware of these practice: teachers, parents, authorities and volunteers . We will do lots of activities: international meetings, collaboration with associated partners (local musicians and sportsmen), exhibitions, concerts, sport games, seminars, publications, etc; the results will be visible on blog of the project and to the Project Twinspace. Through the project's activities students will acquire the knowledge regarding respect and responsibility for social values: family and community, natural and cultural environment. The entire learning process is organized as a non-formal teaching based on the place-based educational concept, which will include an experiential and cooperative learning approach, the project-based learning approach and ICT tools. Each topic of project, Sport, Music and Ecology, is carefully selected, in the purpose to cover the acquisition of a large amount of knowledge. As methodical approaches, those topics are treated using a wide range of pedagogical approaches: research activities, conferences, workshops, learning through art (artistic creations, songs) e-journalism, educational games, sports, outdoor education. As a feed-back of learning we will use volunteering activities.Using the results of the project we will create new curricula taught as a non-formal teaching based on the place-based education.
During the two years of the implementation our project – ’LIKE the naturE-tRAdition-Sport-MUSic!’ - proved that the European nations are connected so strong by the nature, tradition, sport and music. With the help of the planned activities the Italian, Romanian, Estonian, Polish, Portuguese and Hungarian institutions got to know each other’s professional work and the education system of the given country. Beside the pedagogical work on occasion of mobilities the students and their attendants took part in a unique community-building. The participating students reached the most important goals that had been planned during the application: - their foreign language competence increased (presentations in English, student-chats – on occasion of the partnership-building or mobilities) - their ICT competence improved (they made videos, made contacts on online interfaces, took part in online votes) - their self-confidence rose, they became braver in social situations because the positive experiences that had been got in the opened international partnerships helped in overcoming the language barriers The connection-points - that can be found in the title of the application – were very popular among the students and they took part in the implementing activities with pleasure: - in the category of nature: on occasion of the certain mobilities we could get acquainted with the natural values of the given countries – freestone in Italy, mossy bog lands and the sea in Estonia, the Paring mountain in Romania and coal pits in Poland - in the category of tradition: the certain countries sent hand-made boxes to the partners, as a visual task we planned an own calendar using the students’ drawings in the subject of ’My beautiful country’/ they made a short-film about the old hobbies / During the mobilities we got to know the local historical and cultural values in every country and we tried out the local folk-dance everywhere as well. - in the category of sport: the students made instructional videos about their most popular sports games that could be tried out in Poland/ they edited a brochure about the most popular sport of the given country/ they could meet familiar sportsmen on a local level, they excelled in common sports in Estonia and in mini-competitions in Romania - in the category of music: we held common online concerts at Christmas and the celebration of Europe/ we learnt common songs that were shared on the Internet/ we took part in concerts in Italy, Estonia, Romania and Poland At the two project-meetings important organizational tasks were realized: - in Várpalota the coordinators’ very first personal meeting took place, the identification of the two-year-old activities were done - in Madeira the partners with strong professional contacts planned the future in the final year Beyond the concrete results (publications, short films, calendar, common school mosaic, my diary) the positive educational situations and programmes that had been experienced in the certain countries could be built into our own programmes. Moreover a strong commitment was formed on the score of the further common work in the topic of science – in this way we will be able to work together in a new KA229 project.