Lope de Vega School and Ramsta school do share a deep interest in the way thinking works when learning . As long as a decade ago, we were aware that our students got to knowledge mainly through collecting data and facts by heart and very little of this knowledge remained in the long term or was effective to be applied to their lives. Obviously, everybody thinks no matter your age is, but to conclude from this that any type of thinking is skillful, may lead to wrong perceptions. For us, school is the place where you can be helped to gain skillful superior level thinking strategies, to internalise mental processes or "maps" that will lead your problem solving or your decision making lifelong in the right way . School is also the best place for children to "think interdependently" in a way that their own thinking gets enhanced with contributions from others ( adults and pairs), which involves many situations in which cooperative work is the very tool to make it possible. Together with adequate thinking routines and habits of mind, children are impelled not only to think properly exercising those strategies, but also to make their thinking visible through oral , written, artistic or other productions . In this sense, there are a hundred languages to speak your mind and the first years in Education are even richer to allow those languages flow in a natural way. It is the time for the critical and creative thinking to find an expression freer from some prejudices. And here in the point in which our school decided to be fully commited with guiding students in their academic and vital findings, understanding that helping them arguing , reasoning and questioning accurately would mean a great change for a better learning. Each school found their own sources to get inspired and, while Ramsta School began to work in and since 2008 with the Method " Socrates in the Classroom" by PhD. in Philosophy, Ann S Pihlgren, from Stockholm University (Sweden) , while Lope de Vega School implemented the Method " Thinking Based Learning" (TBL) by PhD. in Philosophy, Robert Swartz, emerit from Boston University (MA) U.S.A. Both schools, after having several meetings on how their methods worked, have decided that the exchange of their own pedagogical practices plus the mutual training they can provide, together with real practice in the classrooms with about 315 primary students participating from Ramsta school and 240 from Lope de Vega School. We think the experience will bring so many benefits in terms of creating synergies between the two methods that will be reflected in the ten parts that shape Teaching Unit that is going to be created and assumed by the schools in their regular school curriculum, as well as the dissemination of this Unit may be used by other schools to enhance their own school programmes. The project will facilitate the inclusion of students from the two schools that have about 20% each of children coming from different cultural backgrounds and nationalities, bearing in mind the diversity not only of language but cultural gaps which represent a big challenge for teachers and management. Nevertheless, this also mean lots of opportunities for educating them . During the time the project lasts ( 2 years ), 25 teachers from Ramsta School and 15 from Lope de Vega School will be trained and work together with our students, in ten mobilities ( 5 for each school ). Each mobility will include, at least, ten hours for teaching training, twelve hours for the students to learn content infusing the use of the thinking strategies, joint work for conclusions and the writing of the corresponding part of the Teaching Unit and the other outcomes of the project ( exhibition, testimony video, etc. ) plus the preparation prior to the mobility (teachers and students) and the conclusions, assessment and follow up ( teachers, students, other members of the community) after it. Before the first mobility, some student work is also included as warming up and getting to know of the aims of the project. As our two schools as sort of reference schools for those methods for teaching thinking, the dissemination of what we are doing during the project and what are the objectives of it , because we have precise in not misleading the expectations each of our educational communities have about our school pedagogical programmes.
After two years working together and learning from each other, teachers from Lope de Vega international School in Spain and Ramsta School in Sweden can say that carrying out this project has been a fantastic and rewarding experience. Building Skillful Thinking in Children, as the title of our project describes, has been our main objective and we strongly believe that we have been able to develop different ways to provide the students with the abilities to be good creative and critical thinkers in several areas, and transfer their knowledge in thinking to many varied situations in life. This has been possible thanks to the blending of the two thinking methods used in each of the schools: Thinking-Based Learning and Socratic Seminars. We have had training activities for teachers in both countries to learn about their theoretical foundation and the opportunity to observe and practise with students of different ages, levels and needs. This happened during the 8 physical mobilities that took place from October 2018 to January 2020. In these mobilites, there was always a scheduled time for training, observation and practice in the classroom, feedback, planning thinking lessons with Socratic Seminars and TBL, and designing the teaching units. Thanks to the incredible connection between teachers from both countries and a supreme eagerness to learn from each other, we designed up to four teaching units for students 6-12, dealing with various topics such as the environment, health, emotions, language and art. We had the valuable collaboration of Dr. Ann Pihlgren from the Ignite Research Institute in Sweden, who guided us through the creation of very useful documents from the teaching units planning template to rubrics for class observation among others. And we cannot forget the contribution from Dr. Eleanor Dougherty, author of Assignments Matter and expert in lesson planning, who helped us design the lesson progression template that allowed us to reflect in a deeper way about the purpose and development of the activities included. Due to the pandemic situation caused by COVID-19 we were unable to make the last two mobility meetings, and instead, we kept on collaborating and did all the training sessions online. It is true that we missed the contact with the students to observe them in action and interact with them, but this unexpected situation opened new ways of working together. As a final dissemination activity, we participated as presenters in the 5th Teachers Conference about thinking, this time organised online in August 2020. It was a unique forum attended by 300 participants from all over the world that gave us the chance to explain the project, talk about the teaching units, the blending of TBL and Socratic Seminars and its impact on the students. During this two-year project we have used several European platforms to prepare, implement and disseminate our work. eTwinning has been one of the pillars of the project in means of communication and collaboration, allowing us to share experiences, discuss issues related to the project development and collect the material produced. Erasmus+ Project Results Platform has also been a fantastic tool to recall all templates, teaching units, questionnaires, videos. Presentations, meeting minutes, etc. produced along the process. After the involvement of 40 teachers and more than 300 students in this extraordinary project, we can firmly state that both parties, Lope de Vega International School and Ramsta School have enriched their educational models and have gained new knowledge, giving additional tools to work within thinking from different perspectives. Furthermore, we are sure that thanks to the work of these two years, students from both schools will upgrade their thinking skills and become better thinkers. Our expectations have been met and the experience has been very fruitful, totally surpassing our initial plans.