The pace of rapid change demands individuals to have a series of competences and skills that can be useful in a wide range of areas. The Institute for the Future (IFTF) claims that 85% of the jobs that exist by 2030 have not been invented yet. In this frame, the question that arises is how schools nowadays prepare students for the future. The project reunites schools from Italy, Romania, Turkey, Bulgaria and Poland and targets students aged 10-15. Partners brought their contribution to create the application, deciding the project objectives, designing the activities and methodology. The team of five coordinators communicated via WhatsApp during for almost 8 months to create the project’s final version. We compared our schools needs, shared institution development plans and observed that in all partner school students’ interest in learning is decreasing and the school curricula need to be refreshed. Each coordinator organized focus group discussions with their students to get a better insight on their needs and the common conclusion was that it is needed to develop students’ basic skills. Through this project, we intend to create practical models of working with students that affect their intrinsic passion for self-directed learning and to develop basic skills, creativity, problem-solving skills, and emotional intelligence. Daily life shows us that social skills are so much needed in a globalized world. The project aims to develop basic skills and key competences of 400 students from 5 European schools during 24 month project. Objectives: -to increase social responsiveness, cultural awareness, sense of initiative and entrepreneurship among students from 5 EU schools from 5 EU countries by August 2021 -to activate students' emotional intelligence and social skills -to encourage peer learning and communication -to expand students’ international competencies and self-expression We planned 1 short-term joint staff training event and 4 short-term exchanges of groups of pupils. Each meeting will have a different topic (Romania- Outdoor and indoor activities. Sports; Turkey - Talent Show. Music; Bulgaria - Photo stories; Poland - Students on stage. Theatre) and focus on achieve project's objectives from different perspectives. The project is addressed to a total number of 500 students from which 88 participants (40 teachers and 48 students) will be direct participants. The group of indirect participants is formed by parents, school staff, stakeholders, representatives of educational institutions, NGOs, of the City hall, the mayor, school inspectorates, parents, school staff. The tangible results of our project will be the project webpage and logo, audio-visual materials: “My school and city”, “How fun is your school?”, common exhibition: My school is Fun, fun-puzzles, “Student life” comics, five scrapbook project-diaries, e-photo album, two e-school magazines, an international concert, five photo-stories, photo-travel guide, six theatre plays, bookmarks and toolkit: outdoor and indoor sport activities. The joint activities will reunite our students to do sports, play outdoor and indoor activities, sing together, explore the nature for taking photos, be actors of their own play scripts and create project products. This will foster social inclusion, developing their communication skills, a sense of cohesion and openness. The interdisciplinary approach will encourage students to work together successfully, become aware of diverse viewpoints, and of the variety of people present within the group. Our past experience as educators showed us that Peer-Assisted Learning Strategies (PASL) engages students in the learning process increasing their inner motivation to develop themselves as individuals. Applying PALS at an international scale will make our students feel part of a European community, increase cultural awareness and give an international dimension to our schools. The aim is to use PASL at a local level for giving our students confidence and courage to work with their peers from the EU partner schools. This experience will broaden participants' mind, skills, motivation and desire to develop themselves as individuals. Having motivated teachers and students is a key aspect that will contribute to the school's development and increase the quality of the educational process. The school curricula will be broadened by including into teaching the project results, schools will have an international dimension by developing the educational process having teachers with hands on experience regarding other EU educational systems, who will also have had the chance to expand their teaching skills thanks to international experience
Our project "we have fun together"was a school project that linked schools in Italy, Romania,Turkey, Bulgaria and Poland to mainly use fun in schools activities,as the title of our project suggests,to motivate students(aged 10-15),to have school environments renewed in the curricula ,to prepare students for their future in an increasingly globalized and dizzying world in which it is necessary to develop basic skills and abilities to be used in wider contexts of our society.Through this project,we created hands-on models of working with students, influenced their inherent passion for self-directed learning,and developed horizontal- basic skills and key competences-cultural awareness,sense of initiative and entrepreneurship - activated students' emotional intelligence and social skills - encouraged peer learning and communication - expanded international competencies and self-expression among 500 students from schools from 5 EU countries by August 2022The project was implemented in 36 months,because the lead coordinator asked an extension of the project due to the healthy emergency situation of covid19,to permit the partnership to finish it.Our goals were to collect the best practice activities which were included in the fun learning centres and the main field of the projects: sport,music, photo stories and theatre.Each meeting had a different topic and achieved the objectives from different perspectives.We had 1 short-term joint staff training event and 5 short-term exchanges of groups of pupils,the Polish exchange was in presence and also virtual.We started with a coordinating meeting in Italy (November 2019) to get to know each other,to set dates and certain tasks for the upcoming meetings We teachers thought that it would be great to include an Erasmus Village presenting typical national specialities to the welcoming event at school on the first dayFurthermore everyone presented the country,city and school to get a deeper insight into the other schools.After that meeting the covid spread throughout all over the world and we had a year of virtual activities as we can see in our etwining project, after having,the extention we decided to anticipate or postponed the mobilities according to the incidence of lower cases in the various European countries,in fact we anticipated the Polish mobility first (February 2022).It dealt with theatre students on stage,each team showed a sketch,the scripts were prepared and given in advance to the partners by the Polish coordinator.She was very creative to involve the teachers on stage mixed to students.The next meeting focused on photostories was held in Bulgaria all the teams exchanged their own photostories ,shared some photos of the school, town of the two previous mobilities and took new ones in the nature to create the common photostory book.The third meeting focused on outdoor and indoor activities.Sports in Romania (May 2022)Each team created fun puzzles and board games,the Unesco game and sports competiton among teams.The final meeting, focused on talent show music,was held inTurkey (May 2022).Each school prepared traditional dances,songs and its own verse for the common song which was presented at various opportunities and also recordered to have data.The meeting in Istanbul was to finalize the e-magazines,the website,the e-twinning project and work on the final report.Here we also wanted to emphasize the impact attained and the tangible results which are our schools digital magazine https://wehavefuntogether.blogspot.com ,webpage https://sites.google.com/view/wehavefuntogether/home logo, audio-visual materials: common exhibition:my school is Fun,fun-puzzles,“Student life comics,five scrapbook project-diaries,e-photo album, an international concert, five photo-stories,two travel guides,five theatre plays,bookmarks and toolkit:for outdoor and indoor sport activities,most of these works are in etwinning ID20367.We envolved more than 500 students,there were 117 direct participants (54 teachers and 63 students,but also indirect onesThe joint activities reunited our students to do sports,play outdoor and indoor activities,sang together,explore the nature for taking photos,be actors of their own play scripts and created project products.This fostered social inclusion,communication skills,a sense of cohesion and opennessThe interdisciplinary approach encouraged students to work together successfully, became aware of diverse viewpoints the variety of people present within the group.This experience broadened participants' mind,skills motivation and desire to develop themselves as individuals and also the school curricula by including into teaching the project resultsThrough the project we had very motivated teachers and students,schools reached an international dimension by developing the educational process having teachers with hands on experience regarding other EU educational systems, who have had the chance to expand their teaching skills in international contests