Our project is a direct result of previous successful collaboration on a wider regional Regio project, previous experience of working with other international partners and teachers job shadowing. The aim of the partnership is to encourage both schools to collaborate and help each other to enhance pupils confidence in using a foreign language, develop key ICT skills, and improve cultural understanding. We believe that working together will help us to develop more effective methods to deal with and improve upon pupils´ low achievement in basic skills and knowledge and will help to convince staff at both establishments of the benefits of international cooperation. Learning from one another is a key aspect of this project, where we will share good practice of cooperative learning techniques and embed what we learn in our everyday teaching and learning based on the key ethical values that underpin our respective institutions. An important part of this project focuses on the collaborative work of the 40 students and 4 teachers who will take part in the transnational element of the project. Students and teachers are constantly sharing through the eTwinning platform, but we consider it necessary to plan opportunities for this collaborative work to be done physically to give it a real sense of purpose and outcome hence the transnational visits. In the learning, teaching or training activities both schools will work in mixed groups of pupils aged between 14-18 years old. Pupils will have to take on responsibilities as many will themselves be acting as teachers in the primary schools where they will participate as mini-assistants. They will deepen their learning and understanding of other cultures and will improve their social, linguistic and digital competences. Teachers will observe and assess the development of pupils during these activities. We will use a range of activities and methodologies to plan and implement the project through training workshops for staff and pupils and the mini assistants element. At the heart of these will be an emphasis on cooperative learning informed by: A1. Needs analysis: We will collect data about our students´ linguistic competence. The data will be provided by the different faculties( English/Spanish Language, Foreign Languages, faculties participating in CLIL teaching). A2. Brainstorming: Pupils, teachers, families and other stakeholders will participate through the schools' webpages, eTwinning, surveys and give ideas about the design of the project. A3. Proposal preparation: The heads of the involved faculties will be responsible for preparing a proposal for the project. A4. Debate and negotiation: The proposal will be debated in all faculties and amendments will be presented and amongst pupils. A5. Drafting: The Heads of the involved faculties, the headteacher, or project coordinator and the Head of Studies will prepare a draft of the Schools' Project. A6. Approval: The governing board of each school will approve the Project. A7. Evaluation of the Project - through observation, surveys and questionnaires of stakeholders. This innovative project will also have a positive effect on the participating institutions. Its impact will persist far beyond the EU grant. It will contribute to improve pupils´ linguistic and digital skills. It will also give teachers a clear working plan and teaching strategies in relation to developing linguistic competence through cooperative learning. We are firmly committed to sharing our experiences and findings and promoting our project to others. We are convinced that coordination and cooperation among the teachers can lead to the development of basic skills among the pupils. If the results are encouraging, our project would be easy to be transferred and exploited in regional, national, European and international level as it has scalability and can be adapted to different institutions. Dissemination of the results and workings of the project are a key feature of our planning and will be targeted at a number of audiences both within and outside our schools and both locally and nationally. We intend if successful to ensure the sustainability of our project through continued collaboration using etwinning as a vehicle.
It is to be noted that this project was taken over by Mrs Siobhan Barnes after sudden illness and subsequent retirement of Mr James Pearson. IES Fernando de Rojas is a mixed co-educational comprehensive school which serves, together with other schools, the eastern part of the city of Salamanca and its metropolitan area. Salamanca is a university city and popular Spanish language learning destination. There are approximately 1000 pupils on roll and 84 teaching staff. The School offers ESO and Bachillerato Studies which lead to degrees, similar to GCSE and A level qualifications. ESO and Bachillerato Studies pupils are aged between 11 and 18 years. Moreover, the school offers degree and professional apprenticeships to older students. In IES Fernando de Rojas 75% of the students follow the CLIL programme. They study several school subjects in English and a third part of their school curriculum is in this language. Helston Community College is a mixed co-educational comprehensive school which serves the town of Helston and its rural surrounding villages and hamlets. It is part of a co-operative trust, The Southerly Point Co-operative Multi-Academy Trust, whose work is underpinned by the co-operative values of self-help, self-responsibility, equity, equality, democracy and solidarity. There are approximately 1400 pupils on roll aged between 11 and 18 years and 91 teaching staff. The College offers a variety of GCSE, A' level and BTEC qualifications. Cornwall is a popular destination, the area around Helston being deprived with many pupils having little or no opportunity to travel abroad and experience other cultures. This deprivation is not always reflected in the number of pupils on free school meals but is very real nevertheless due to the prevalent low wage economy. We are keen to continue to develop our international links and especially to promote an exchange of pupils between the two colleges. We feel this is particularly important in order to help promote languages, raise pupils' aspirations and develop co-operation and skills by working together. A collaboration between the partner school in Salamanca and Cornwall gives our students an opportunity to put in practice their skills by participating in workshops and acting as mini assistants with the younger students of the College. Accompanying staff will have the chance to get first-hand knowledge of each other's educational systems and observe the use of the Kagan methodology and cooperative learning. The HCC teachers when in Salamanca are able to see lessons taught in English in other subjects than foreign languages thus being able to understand the principles of CLIL as well as appreciate the different pedagogy between the countries. We were keen to impact on all our students even those that did not directly participate in the mobilities as they had the opportunity to collaborate with their British/Spanish peers through e-Twinning, the blog and face-book activity created for this purpose. The students have taken part in more traditional pen-pal exchanges which is always popular with the younger students. The older students taking part have kept on-going relationships with their peers using more modern platforms. Students and visitors together participated in on-site workshops and lessons during the respective visits. We were able to ascertain the linguistic needs of the students by collecting data and by letters drafted by the students to the English teacher of the mastery in English lessons. The data was provided by the different faculties( English/Spanish Language, Foreign Languages, other faculties participating in CLIL teaching). Pupils, teachers, families and other stakeholders were able to be kept informed of the project through the schools' web-pages, e-Twinning, blogs, private communication using 'Whatsapp'. Feedback at parent's meetings and emails from parents and students provide details of their experiences, The involved heads of the faculties had face to face meetings and also emails regarding managing the project, including what activities to take part in on the mobilities.