The project has been designed for students 5-10. We found out that nowadays the attention spans of students are decreasing and they have problems to manage feelings.When so much information is available at the click of a button, it can be a lot harder to capture and hold their attention, you have to pique their curiosity to encourage them to learn. We realize that students are not able to take concentration for a long time they go so fast and usually jump from a task to another without getting enough time for reflection. In some case, they are not able to manage the relationship and collaborate with pairs without conflicts. With this project we want to : -develop Emotional intelligence as the ability to read one's own inner world and that of others -increase the sophisticated development of critical thinking defined as internalized quality. -develop soft skills and ability to apply critical thinking, creativity, and collaboration, -use STEAM activities to try to apply problem-solving to daily life situations -Improve self-awareness, decision-making and collaboration skills. Due to the age of students involved we won’t go through complex topics involving abstract concepts but, using Stories and Fairy tales and well-known literature for kids, we will give the students the possibility to start critical thinking, creativity, and collaboration. Planned activities will also encourage children to express feelings and emotions in a supportive environment. Through Stories and Fairy tales we would give young children a safe way to explore the world, grapple with the conflict between good and evil and develop their self-esteem. But that’s not all. Stories also inspire curiosity, creativity and problem-solving, making them a natural fit for the STEAM (STEM + arts) and Storytelling and help students to develop soft skills. Using STEAM and Storytelling we want to develop transversal skills such as : -Collaboration: Teamwork working productively with the classmate, foreign students and this will be also for teachers working with peers and foreign peers; -Communication and interpersonal skills developing excellent communication skills. If students learn to present ideas in a logical manner and are well-received, they will have a serious advantage to manage the situation in their future life. They will learn to Speak – Listening – understanding and empathizing with others’ points-of-view; -Problem-solving: to Guide the students at thinking outside the box and have excellent critical thinking skills. These qualities are important in today’s information economy, being able to solve problems will be useful in any sector. Also Creativity and Critical thinking are basic skills: imagining new approaches to a problem and developing a systematized method to handle tasks; -Concentration and Time management: are both important in managing energy and attention to accomplish more; -Leadership: In the young age leadership means to manage the situation, It means to get a different role if it needs and guide a group in the areas they have been assign. It means to be able to work in a group without conflicts and to share successes and fails at the same level. By developing learning environments that allow students to develop skills through the use of networks, joint reflection and cooperation among European students and teachers will enhance the promotion and innovation of best practices. This project will be cross-curricular. Active learning and collaborative learning will be the main methodology. Tinkering and making will be taken up by partner schools as potentially rich intellectual activities, and as tools for broadening engagement in a variety of disciplines, including STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math), literacy, literature and the arts. Organizing educational experiences around tinkering involves a radical emphasis on the process of creating and learning, and an effort to bring skills and concepts alive in the context of children’s creative pursuits. All activities we planned, are designed in order to develop valuable skills, such as generating and testing ideas, gathering and making sense of evidence, developing possible solutions, and evaluating processes and outcomes, improving their critical thinking skills through issues which can be investigated, develop emotional intelligence and act without fear. Activities develop skills transferable across the curriculum: asking questions, playing with ideas, trying out ideas, finding out, predicting, reflecting, interpreting, linking ideas, searching for information, critical thinking, problem-solving. The project gives a meaningful context to the collaboration amongst the countries ensuring a much greater sense of achievement. and will give us the possibility to develop all mentioned soft skills above because students will be engaged all the time in collaboration not only with their own classmate but also, and more, with abroad classmate
The project has been affected by the Covid 19 pandemia. The project started in September 2019 so we had only the opening meeting in November 2019 and then all went down. Despite this, the partnership was so strong, since the beginning that the project run regularly even if only online for the first two years. As The project has been designed to develop soft skills we can say that the challenge was really hard but in the end, we won because step by step students learned to manage relationships and collaborate with pairs without conflicts and by distance. In The situation of isolation, the project helped students and teachers to stay connected and continue to work even in pairs. We can say that with this project we and our students reached : -the ability to apply critical thinking, creativity, and collaboration and Emotional intelligence as the ability to read one's own inner world and that of others expressed their maximum during the lockdown time. -the Improvement of self-awareness, decision-making and collaboration skills. -the ability to apply problem-solving to daily life situations Due to the age of students involved, we used Stories, Fairy tales and well-known literature for kids, we have given the students the possibility to start critical thinking, creativity and collaboration. They expressed feelings and emotions in a supportive environment developing their self-esteem. STEAM ( STEM + ART) and Storytelling were important topics we developed together helping students to develop soft skills and transversal skills such as : -Collaboration: Teamwork working productively with the classmate, and foreign students and this was also for teachers working with peers and foreign peers; -Communication and interpersonal skills developing excellent communication skills. -Problem-solving: Guided the students in thinking outside the box and have excellent critical thinking skills. -Concentration and Time management: managing energy and attention to accomplish more; -Leadership: It has meant getting a different role if it needs and guiding a group in the areas they have been assigned. It has meant being able to work in a group without conflicts and to share successes and failures at the same level. We used active learning and collaborative learning as the central methodology. Tinkering and making were used by partner schools as potentially rich intellectual activities. Students made many products in a coordinated way not only in STEAM but also in literacy, literature and the arts. All activities we planned, have been designed in order to develop valuable skills, such as generating and testing ideas, gathering and making sense of evidence, developing possible solutions, and evaluating processes and outcomes, improving their critical thinking skills through issues which can be investigated, developing emotional intelligence and acting without fear. It was essential during the isolation and all project activities were helpful to manage the situation. Teachers made the Rubrics which helped them to evaluate the progress in each project area