Learrning by doing is a project in which six European schools will work together on various topics dealing with environment/nature and science. The schools come United Kindom, Romania, Portugal, Finland, Poland and Italy. The coordinator of the project will be Stockwell Primary School from London, UK. The project addresses students aged 6 to 11/12 years old originating from six schools. Approximately 350 teachers/adults and 150 other staff members will be indirectly involved in the project.Approximately 2800 students from all six countries involved in this project will be indirectly involved. The main goal of the cooperation is to raise awareness and stimulate debate between the countries on how to best deal with the different aspects of learning school subjects in the nature and our immediate surroundings Other important goals are related to the development of our schools and to identify methods to promote inclusion of disadvantaged students in community activities Learning by doing means learning from experiences resulting directly from one’s own actions, as contrasted with learning from watching others perform, reading others’ instructions or descriptions, or listening to others’ instructions or lectures. Of course, watching, reading, and listening are actions, but they are not the kinds of doing referred to as learning by doing because they yield direct experience with demonstrations or descriptions of actions rather than with actions the learner actually performs . Both year project will be based on concrete tasks which will be carried out in all the schools each year, and every time, the students doing the tasks will change.The concrete tasks include,contents preparation to study about extinction animal, studing the characteristics of the island endemic plants and continent plants, from seaside or mountains, rivers or parks, studing about healty food fro nature, making a herbarium, measuring the forests with mathematical tools, studing about volcanous,measuring the sun bright through science subjects,studying about seasons, having a photo contest, making field trips, visiting UNESCO heritage, parks and botanical gardens and learning about nature conservation by looking for information on the internet. We need to strengthen the students' as well as teachers' team-work skills and to make better use of modern entrepreneurship education methods.Another important thing is to open the school towards the surrounding community and enhance active citizenship, dealt with in any international cooperation, is tolerance towards different kinds of people. Through this project we want to teach our students to accept and respect every person. Another educational goal will be the development of our students' and teachers' English and ICT skills.The project concentrates on the issue of social inclusion. To achieve our aim of inclusion, we will implement in schools and during free time activities new strategies and methods of teaching using collaboration and inclusion The partners recognize that children learn best through direct experience. When students experimenting, exploring and creating with a range of materials, learn about problem-solving in situations where there are no set or ‘right’ answers. Learning outside the classroom can help to make subjects more vivid and interesting for pupils and enhance their understanding. It can also contribute significantly to pupils’ personal, social and emotional development. Schools participation in the present partnership will contribute to their development in the long-term by the curricula expansion internationalizing it, the development of teaching qualitatively, the improvement of institutional plans and the increase of the school image within the local communities.
As the world is constantly and rapidly changing, education is becoming a problem in different countries. Therefore, the teaching process needs to be re-adjusted by giving students the expertise which can help them to adapt fast to changes and integrate into society. Independent thinking, values, teamwork and social awareness are vital skills that should be included in teaching, nowadays. To develop these delicate and flexible skills, the project coordinator identified social inclusion as the initial and essential point by working together on various topics dealing with environment/nature and science. Learning by doing was a project designed to foster and develop these kinds of skills, both in students and teachers and to promote changes in the involved schools so that they could be as organizations aware of the changes they need to implement to develop new approaches and new ways of learning and teaching. It was implemented by a group of different schools, being Romanian and Portuguese the most experienced partners and led by a British school. The other partners' schools, however, had got the spirit and the motivation to achieve the designed goals for the LBD project. Although the project had been affected by two major events during its timespan, Brexit and COVID pandemic, we believe that the project achieved its main goals and produced a real impact in all the schools involved. Throughout the project we developed the objectives defined in the beginning namely for students, 21st-century competencies or soft skills like creativity, innovation, communication, social and emotional development, experimental approaches to sciences and critical thinking and ICT skills; for teachers, the use of English as a communication language in Europe and their Europeanization skills, the openness to share classroom and methods and the skills they to improve in their student the above-mentioned skills and competencies; for schools, the know-how to accommodate innovation in their classrooms and the flexibilization of structures and traditional practices to grant the room for new approaches for teaching. All of these were achieved under the values of promoting inclusion, diversity, equality and gender balance and non-discrimination. The project in the six partners schools involved directly students from 6 to 12 years old (around 1200 students), teachers and staff (around 300) and the administration boards of all schools. Indirectly, LBD, by sharing new approaches, new practices in the classroom, new ways of thinking and facing Erasmus had reached much bigger numbers and a wider impact in each country, going around above 3000 (students, staff, teachers). Besides this figure, we had also promoted families, parents, communities, and local partnerships involvement that enriched our project and increased the project’s impact in all the six partner schools. To achieve our aim of inclusion, we implemented in our classrooms and during free time activities, new strategies and methods of teaching using the 4th TOPICS: TECHNOLOGY, LEADERSHIP, STEM and TEACHING & INTEGRATION. Teachers’ work also included the creation of 24 lesson plans with the help of an interdisciplinary approach which afterwards were integrated into the e-toolkit. They also created the “FLORA, FAUNA & HEALTH FOOD” book, based on activities with children. When students were experimenting, exploring and creating with a range of materials, they learn about problem-solving in situations where there are no set or ‘right’ answers. Learning outside the classroom helped to make subjects more vivid and interesting for pupils and enhance their understanding. It also contributed significantly to pupils’ personal, social and emotional development. The social and emotional approach helped students and teachers participating in the project to gain knowledge and skills, develop attitudes necessary to understand and control their personal feelings and emotions, set individual goals, increase their empathy perception and create positive relationships. Schools participating in the present partnership contributed to their development in the long-term by the curricula expansion internationalizing it, the development of teaching qualitatively, the improvement of institutional plans and the increase of the school image within the local communities. In terms of results, the LBD project was a very enriching project, since it produced articles for the e-magazine, quizzes, presentations, videos and brochures, besides a toolkit with 24 teaching materials that mirrored the tailor-made lesson plans about the main project topics and dissemination sites (webpage, TwinSpace, newspapers and blogs). All these materials had a strong daily impact in each partner school when they experienced different apps and ICT resources to create learning environments. But, the impact of the project was much wider than concrete results: teachers become aware of new practices and approaches to teaching, overcoming their initial reserve about being able to actively join an European project, they learnt how to cooperate with each other even in different classrooms, realize that different school environments are possible and they also produce rich teaching and learning environment; Students were able to work and learn collaboratively online with students from the partner countries – even before the pandemics online learning – with meeting concerning several topics to show and share their findings and discoveries in different project’s topics, to share thoughts in a foreign communication language and valuate differently outdoors learning environments; Schools gained a new dynamic towards innovation by welcoming the partners and by preparing mobilities among teachers and also resources to develop new technological approaches to learning (the project had a very relevant contribution for partner schools’ performance during the pandemics); and School Communities gained deep conscious of their value in a Europe focused on diversity.