Context Schools nowadays play a significant role in the development of individuals in order to be integrated into the society, to access the labor market in continuous adaptation and develop as responsible citizens in the world of tomorrow. Regarding this, we have started this mutual European journey to associate with each other, to benefit from each other and to assist our students in attaining this objective in the process. For the purpose of preparing students for the future, we need to consider the fact that it is crucial to train them with a sequence of skills and abilities which go beyond their knowledge and are necessary in any field. The mentioned refer to: ICT skills, language skills, interpersonal skills, including their curiosity, critical thinking and risk-taking. Simultaneously, it is a well-known fact that not all students study the same things, in the same mode, at the same time. That is why we consider that emphasizing their learning styles will result in realizing and achieving these goals in the short-run and long-run. For that reason, we developed our project around the purpose of providing students with the essential multicultural environment where they can actually develop the previously-stated skills, which are founded on their individual styles of learning. Objectives: 1. To identify the students’ learning styles and to adapt the teaching strategies in accordance with their needs 2. To share diverse teaching methods based on students’ learning styles with other teachers from EU 3. To develop the students’ language skills, communicational, interpersonal and ICT skills 4. To develop the students’ creativity, critical thinking and problem solving abilities 5. To promote and achieve a professional development of the participating teachers 6. To produce and gather materials for setting up a summer camp programme for underachieving students 7. To improve the students’ intercultural competences and support values such as non-discrimination, tolerance and acceptance of diversity 8. To develop the students’ motivation, self-confidence and as a result increase their performance Activities C1 – visual style of learning, including games for visual types of learners –teaching science (IT) C2 – aural style of learning, including games and activities for aural types of learners - teaching maths (MK) C3 – verbal style of learning and teaching English (RO) C4 – physical style of learning and teaching geography (PT) C5 – social style of learning and teaching history (TR) In all of the above exchanges, the host countries will be assigned to prepare games, design specific formal and non-formal activities to be applied on the participating students. The activities will be planned according to the learning style already assigned for each of the exchange partner countries. We will include all the activities in a support material and distribute them to the partner countries, so that they can continue using them in their own schools as well. Participants Our intention is primarily to involve students. The target group of students will be aged 11-14, male and female students, some of which with challenging backgrounds such as: migration, social challenges, poor economic condition and minority. In each exchange the students will be accompanied by their teachers and they will contribute for the better implementation and application of the exchange. The teachers will assist the students in their tasks, coordinate the activities they do and accommodate their needs, in order to ensure a state of comfort for them. Results Our intention is to create numerous results during the process such as: a collaborative questionnaire form related to the learning styles that will be conducted online at the very start of the project, the obtained results after the application, with a direct impact to at least 100 students and 40 teachers (for improved motivation and better school results), results for at least 300 students and 40 teachers to be indirectly impacted, a selection of resources and activities for various learning styles, students’ presentations, teachers’ presentations, materials of applied workshops, 1 summer camp programme collaboratively developed, evaluation instruments, 5 transnational reports of evaluation, a set of 5 dissemination documents, EU level dissemination tools, a set of 5 management documents and 1 set of general management as well as monitoring and evaluation documents.
We have started this mutual European journey to cooperate with each other, to benefit from each other and to assist our students in reaching the goals we planned. For the students has been very important for their future, obtaining all the skills and abilities beyond their knowledge, necessary for their future life: they improved their English skills, their ICT skills as well as their interpersonal skills, their critical thinking, their entrepreneurship. Starting with the creation of a questionnaire to detect their learning styles, teachers have had the chance to improve their way of teaching and to adapt their teaching style, time after time to the different style of learning. The teachers and the students have shared a multicultural environment that has provided the stimulus to compare themselves with others, to know each other’s way of living and each other's school, exchanging strategies and ideas to improve each other’s work. We have realized that all the following objectives were accomplished: 1. To identify the students’ learning styles and to adapt the teaching strategies in accordance with their needs 2. To share diverse teaching methods based on students’ learning styles with other teachers from EU 3. To develop the students’ language skills, communicative , interpersonal and ICT skills 4. To develop the students’ creativity, critical thinking and problem solving abilities 5. To promote and achieve a professional development of the participating teachers 6. To produce and gather materials for setting up a final outputs 7. To improve the students’ intercultural competences and support values such as non-discrimination, tolerance and acceptance of diversity 8. To develop the students’ motivation, self-confidence and as a result increase their performance The activities we have developed: C1 – visual style of learning, including games for visual types of learners –teaching science (in Italy) C2 – aural style of learning, including games and activities for aural types of learners - teaching Math (in North Macedonia) C3 – verbal style of learning and teaching English (in Romania) C4 – physical style of learning and teaching geography (virtually in Portugal) C5 – social style of learning and teaching history (in Turkey) In all of the above exchanges, the host countries prepared games, designed specific formal and non-formal activities to be applied on the participating students. The activities were planned according to the learning style already assigned for each of the exchange partner countries. We included all the activities in a support material and distributed them to the partner countries, so that they could continue using them in their own schools as well. In the end all the materials have been gathered in a final output that has been published in each school’s website and moreover on ETWINNING platform. Participants The target group of students was aged 11-15, male and female students, some of which with challenging backgrounds such as: migration, social challenges, poor economic condition and minority and in some case even with physical disability. We involved English, Math, Science, History and Geography as well as Arts and Technology teachers. Development: The project, has been implemented trying to respect the planned activities. The spreading of the pandemic has created a stop, forcing all the partners to the decision to avoid travelling abroad for a long time and to reschedule as well as to do an LTTA online. In the meantime the strict cooperation with the partners went on, with regular meetings among coordinators, exchanging documents and exchanging ideas on how to manage in the difficult time of lock down. The project expiry date has been postponed of one year with the hope to restart going abroad and to continue the activities. LTTA C4 was fully developed virtually, while C5 was done as usual. On this purpose we created a C6 in order to give the partners that couldn’t recover the money they paid for the travel to C4 before the decision to cancel it. Due to the pandemic, we could not organize any summer camp. Results We created numerous results during the process such as: a collaborative questionnaire form related to the learning styles that was conducted online at the very start of the project, the obtained results after the application had a direct impact on nearly 120 students and 40 teachers, this has produced results even on nearly 300 students and 40 teachers indirectly impacted and led to a selection of resources and activities for various learning styles, students’ presentations, teachers’ presentations, materials of applied workshops collaboratively developed, evaluation instruments, 5 transnational reports of evaluation, a set of 5 dissemination documents, EU level dissemination tools, a set of 5 management documents and 1 set of general management as well as monitoring and evaluation documents.