The Erasmus+ project "Proactive learning: improving real life skills due to inclusive task-based activities" is an educational project based on the need of four European educative institutions to contextualize learning in real world. All the schools involved in it agreed that a new teaching methodology was therefore necessary if the main aim was to take teaching and learning outside the classroom, so both objectives -contextualizing and developing new methods-were the basis for the project. The institutions which take part in this project , high schools from Portugal , Liverpool, Spain and an Arts´ school in Poland had to face then two important aspects of the teaching and learning process: how to deal with diversity and how to manage different competence levels within the group of students who will carry out the activities. As this diversity is worked differently in every institution, the schools in the project coincided in the richness that different perspectives on the same issue will provide , so an exchange of methodologies was included as objective. The Potuguese institution is experienced with dealing with talented students in Science and Maths, the Spanish institution has a wide variety of immigrant students with important learning difficulties as well a high percentage of gifted students who lack motivation, the Polish institution has observed important negative results in Maths in the latest year, being nevertheless very advanced in the use of new technologies in teaching and learning. As far as the British institution is concerned, it has a wide experience regarding special needs´students as well as talented ones, having a high percentage of both. The main objectives of this project are therefore the following: 1. Increase creativity and motivation in students and teachers. 2. Promote informal learning outside the classroom. 3. Implement a new teaching methodology based on projects in order to improve cross curricular competences. 4. Promote inclusive education using a practical and real life based methodology. 5. Address talented students and students with learning difficulties with multidisciplinary tasks: real inclusion and differentiation 6. Improve the students´results in the competences in Maths, Science and Foreign Languages. The number of students involved in this project will be 70: 25 from the Spanish institution and 15 from each of the rest of European institutions. They will be students who range 14-16 years old who have special educational needs of any type: talented students, learning difficulties, particular social or cultural background, etc., whose academic results are not as good as they would be expected after receiving all the help that institutions can give (extra and specific tuition, extra materials, flexible groups, particular programmes, ...). These students will take part in a number of activities that will include visiting students with similar characteristics in other countries and, which will be adapted so as to be used for low and high level students at the same time. Activities will be focused on real life data and situations, real places and everyday aspects that will make them aware of the importance of having a global knowledge which can be adapted to their characteristics. Mathematics and Science will be the key points for the activities: studying monuments, paintings, architecture...etc from a scientific and a mathematical perspective may help our students to feel motivated towards learning once level differences have been taken into account. Improving communicative competence will be also worked by practicising in real communicative situations using English and Spanish as the the common languages of the project. Moreover, language activities which are planned will always be connected to the mathematical activities. With this project, the four institutions involved expect the following results: 1. Implementation of a new teaching methodology based on real life contexts in all the institutions 2. Improvement in the academic results´ of the students involved in the project 3. Include in our schools the European dimension of education 4. Promote inclusion and involvement of students with special needs As far as the impact of our project on students, families, teachers, institutions and local agents is concerned, we consider that : 1. A new and motivating learning methodology based on learning by doing will be implemented at schools 2. There will be an improvement in our students´ basic skills and in their academis results 3. The project will help to reduce early leaving statistics in specific target groups at schools: gifted or talented students and students with learning difficulties 4. Integration of students will be favoured by the design of multitask activities 5. Local agents and school communities will be included in the curricula of our schools
The Erasmus project "Proactive learning: improving real life skills due to inclusive task-based activities" was born from the common need of three schools (Spain, Portugal and Poland): to promote the inclusion of students in the classroom. The three institutions agreed that this objective would only be achieved through a methodological change. It was necessary a new methodology whose main objective was to take teaching and learning out of the classroom, in a contextualized and useful way, which also allowed the students to promote the acquisition of skills and competences. Specific objectives were proposed to allow our students feel included and involved in the life of the schools: 1. Increase students’ and teachers’ creativity and motivation. The activities that have been carried out (before, during and after each mobility) have been very original, motivating and adapted to the context of our students and to the real characteristics of our students. The entire educational community has been sensitized about the diversity of students in the schools, the different characteristics that we find (dyslexia, Asperger's, autism, ...) and the different didactic methodologies that can be used with this type of student to improve their learning . 2. Promote informal learning outside the classroom. To promote students’ learning inside and outside the classroom, have been schosen topics related to the students' environment and adapted to their interests (for example, street maps of the municipality have been adapted to the different types of disabilities: wheelchair access, blindness, deafness, ..) 3. Implement a new project-based teaching methodology to improve transversal skills. A great methodological change has been carried out in the schools based on the implementation of projects, in a collaborative way between different subjects, promoting transversality and the development of key competences. Works on inclusive tourism, common reading of books, plays, ... have been some of our final products. 4. Promote inclusive education using a practical methodology based on real life. All the activities that have been carried out in the project have been based on the daily life of the students and have been adapted so that any student at the center could work on them, promoting at all times the inclusion of the students in their development ( For example, among others, sports games have been played during recesses adapted to people with disabilities: wheelchair, blindness, deafness, autism, ...) 5. Approach talented students and students with learning difficulties with multidisciplinary tasks: real inclusion and differentiation. At any time, it has been tried that the students were the protagonists of the activities. They have been given a lot of responsibility, adapted, of course, to their characteristics. In this way we have achieved that students with very different qualities and characteristics could work in teams with extraordinary results. 6. Improve student academic results. It has been checked that the students involved in the projects have improved their basic skills and, therefore, their academic results. To disseminate the activities and results of our project we have used different platforms and events: etwinning, project website, school websites, facebook, newspaper, teacher meetings, ... Although perhaps, the medium where it can be observed in more detail The work done is on the project website: https://iessantodomingo.org/web/?page_id=1334