One of the priority goals of Europe is tackling the issue of early school leaving and it has been planned to decrease the drop out rate to 10% from 15.7% in the Europe Strategy 2020. Our intention is to make contribution to this problem via this project “Find your starfish”. We aim to reach students who are in the risk of early school leaving and open them a door to happy and intellectual global citizenship. In other words; we will find our starfish that need us as in Loren Eiseley’s story “The Star Thrower”. Basic objectives of our project are finding global and local solutions to early school leaving and contributing to reduce its rate. Also, we aim to contribute to raise the students’ and their families’ awareness, change their attitudes and perspectives towards necessity of education positively and strengthen parent-student-teacher triangle because “Union is strenght”. The number of partners is 5. We have a partnership including Turkey, Greece, Spain, Italy and Romania. 4 of the partner schools have drop outs because of socioeconomic, sociocultural reasons.These are marriage/pregnancy in early ages, child labour/adult working students . Spanish school is a private school and the other four are public schools. Description of activities : All participants will carry out presentations about early school leaving due to marriage/ pregnancy in early ages (Turkey and Romania) and child labour/adult working students (Greece and Italy). Turkey will have a presentation based on early school leaving due to marriage and pregnancy in early ages (caused by migration, sociocultural, socioeconomic reasons and other related reasons). Also, Turkey will hold an exhibition including pencil drawings and photographs about the mentioned topic. The results of the logo contest will also be announced. Greece will have a presentation based on the chosen topic (Early school leaving due to child labour and adult working students) and shoot a short film. Spain will organize a teacher training based on "Applications to prevent and reduce early school leaving in European countries". Italy will have a presentation about the chosen topic (Early school leaving due to child labour ) and create a Giant Starfish pattern including five stories about drop out students. Romania will have presentation on drop out due to marriage and pregnancy in early ages , and an interview with real drop out people will be organized. Student focused aims of presentations,short films, starfish pattern and interview that will be carried out in the Learning/Teaching /Training activities of each country are improving digital, social and foreign language skills, developing team work, providing high self esteem, tolerance to different cultures, knowledge about European Union, life style and education of partner countries and local cultural knowledge of their own country. In the first year two learning/teaching/training activities will be held, one in Turkey and one in Greece, in the second year there will be three learning/teaching/training activities one in Spain, one in Italy and one in Romania. Both teachers and students will take place in these learning/teaching/training activities. Methodology to be used to be in carrying out the Project: All the participant pupils will do the duties by using their abilities under the leadership of their teachers.Presentation, group/pair work and demonstration techniques and learning-by-doing method will be carried out. Thanks to these LTTs communicative and cooperative language learning, task-based language learning, constructivism and also Bandura's Social Learning Theory will be stimulated. We expect that the teachers of participant countries will generate strong relationships and motivation of working in a multi-disciplined team, develop digital and English skills, motivation in business field, improve project coordinating skills, knowledge of European Union and education systems of partner countries. All pupils will be expected to generate self-esteem, European Union knowledge, interest and tolerance towards cultures of partner countries, strong relationships with pupils of other partner schools and motivation of teamwork, developing digital and English skills Potential longer term benefits can be sorted like this : Drop out rate may decrease because we will generalize our project outcomes via booklets, videos, seminars to parents and students and we will organise a relief fund at our school. Furthermore; our project will be a good example and alter negative attitude towards school and necessity of education positively. Pupils experiencing the huge opportunity of interacting in different cultures and international learning environments will be good examples to other students for motivation and education, too.
One of the priority goals of Europe is tackling the issue of early school leaving and it has been planned to decrease the drop out rate to 10% from 15.7% in the Europe Strategy 2020. Our intention was to make contribution to this problem via this project “Find your starfish”. We aimed to reach students who are in the risk of early school leaving and open them a door to happy and intellectual global citizenship. In other words; we tried to find our starfish that needed us as in Loren Eiseley’s story “The Star Thrower”. Basic objectives o project were finding global and local solutions to early school leaving and contributing to reduce its rate. Also, we aimed to contribute to raise the students’ and their families’ awareness, change their attitudes and perspectives towards necessity of education positively and strengthen parent-student-teacher triangle. The number of partners is 5 including Turkey, Greece, Spain, Italy and Romania. 4 of the partner schools have drop outs because of socioeconomic, sociocultural reasons.These are marriage/pregnancy in early ages, child labour/adult working students. While Spanish school is a private school, other four are public schools. Description of activities: Turkey had a presentation based on early school leaving due to marriage and pregnancy in early ages (caused by migration, sociocultural, socioeconomic reasons and other related reasons). Also, Turkey held an exhibition including pencil drawings and photographs about the mentioned topic. Greece had a presentation based on the chosen topic (Early school leaving due to child labour and adult working students) and shooted a short film. Spain organized a teacher training based on "Applications to prevent and reduce early school leaving in European countries". Italy had a presentation about the chosen topic (Early school leaving due to child labour ) and created a Giant Starfish pattern including five stories about drop out students through virtual mobility. Romania had debate presentation on influence of online studying on students' early school leaving in our countries and institutions, and an interview with real drop out people were organized through virtual mobility. We didn't prefer a second presentation based on early school leaving due to marriage and pregnancy in early ages like we did in Turkey C1 because Covid 19 pandemy brought new point of views to education and we would like to see positive or negativedrop our results of online lessons.These activities contributed participants to improve digital, social and foreign language skills, develop team work, provide high self esteem, tolerance to different cultures, knowledge about European Union, life style and education of partner countries and local cultural knowledge of their own country. Moreover; awarenesses towards our main topic eary school leaving raised. In the first year two learning/teaching/training activities were held, one in Turkey and one in Greece, in the second year there would three learning/teaching/training activities one in Spain, one in Italy and one in Romania. But due to Covid 19 pandemy we were able to carry out only Spanish mobility physically. We got 12 month extra duration but we could implement Italian and Romanian mobilities virtually. Both teachers and students took place in these learning/teaching/training activities. Methodology to be used to be in carrying out the Project: All the participant pupils did the duties by using their abilities under the leadership of their teachers.Presentation, group/pair work and demonstration techniques and learning-by-doing method were carried out. Thanks to these LTTs communicative and cooperative language learning, task-based language learning, constructivism and also Bandura's Social Learning Theory were stimulated. Teachers of participant countries generated strong relationships and motivation of working in a multi-disciplined team, developed digital and English skills, motivation in business field, improved project coordinating skills, knowledge of European Union and education systems of partner countries .Pupils who were integrated into activities generated self-esteem, European Union knowledge, interest and tolerance towards cultures of partner countries, strong relationships with pupils of other partner schools and motivation of teamwork, developing digital and English skills and hopefully our expectations came true. Potential longer term benefits were sorted like this : Drop out rate may decrease because we generalized our project outcomes via booklets, videos, seminars to parents and students. These outputs will help us to study on drop out issue at our schools. Furthermore; our project will be a good example and alter negative attitude towards school and necessity of education positively. Pupils experiencing the huge opportunity of interacting in different cultures and international learning environments will be good examples to other students for motivation and education.