‘Communication in action’ is a project with 6 schools in 5 different countries to improve social inclusion. The diversity on several levels and ways in each school, in each country grows. Living together on a positive, respectful way in a class, in a school, in a community becomes a big challenge. With this project we will take this challenge toghether. This project has started from the common needs from the six participating schools. We noticed that the input of pupils in our schools became different, year after year. There are more and more children with a migration background from various countries, different native languages, different parenting situations, different religions, different standards and values,... and the group of pupils with special needs becomes bigger in each school. That leads to a group of pupils with a big diversity on several levels. Living and learning toghether in this context is not self-evident. This needs special attention. The school and the teachers have to learn to deal with this. That's why we choose this project, to learn to communicate on a positive way, in different ways, ... 'communication in action'. We are going to work at 6 topics during 2 years. We are doing the same activities in each school and communicate with eachother (pupils and teachers of different schools) in between. We also use eTwinning to communicate and to exchange information and experiences. In the beginning of the first year we want to know each other better by pesenting every school. To reach that we will use the creativity of teachers and children to surprise other schools. It could be by movie, a surpise box, ... We will make the participating countries visible in every school. The second part of the first year we will work around expressing feelings. In a community full of diversity we all feel the need of a good communication. Children have to deal with a lot of new different ways of online communication, but on the other hand we feel that they are stucked in real life communication. For that reason we want to teach them skills and words to learn how to express their feelings in different situations to understand each other better. This skill is also usefull at the playground. We want our children to have a good time outside where they can play and relax in a positive way. The last part of the first year, we will have our focus on that topic. We want to learn from each other and exchange good practices so we all could grow. Another very important thing to reach our aims is to look to the rules of group formation. When you make a conscious effort to form a good class group, the well-being of everyone increases and you can work together more positively. When children can communicate better with each other, the trust in each other increases. This makes better cooperation possible what results in better learning results. The theme of the next part is 'solving conflicts'. We want to make children stronger and provide tools to be able to communicate correctly in difficult and different situations. Everything they have learned about giving words to express feelings can be applied here. Role plays are a way to deal with this topic. In the last part of the entire project, students and teachers from different countries will come together in Spain. We want to exchange experiences and learned successes from the project at child, teacher and school level. By bringing children from 6 different schools into contact with each other, they can experience in real life what it is like to communicate with each other without speaking each others language. On the other hand we will make 2 final products. One on the level of the pupils and one on the level of the teachers: 1) Each pupil will be making a me-book, a portfolio that grows during the 2 years of the project. The topics are the same as the projecttopics. In the me-book the children will write, draw, … their feelings, theie experiences, … 2) On the teachers-level we will make a book with good practices and new tools and methods we discover during the project. This book can be used as inspiration for other schools and for ourselves to work further on social inclusion in the futur. We believe that this project helps us to take the challenge of living toghether in a positive way in a divers world. The teachers become stronger to deal with the problems, they learn how to manage this challenge with a group of children. This will help them to coope with it in the future. Because we work with the whole school, in 5 countries, the subject becomes a school-subject. It’s not the initiative of an individual. This is also a key to succes for the futur. For this matter we decided that the principal of each school will participate the first mobility. We know that this project is not the final answer of all the social difficulties we are dealing with, but it will for sure have a positive impact on pupils, teachers, parents and schools.
‘Communication in action’ is a project with 6 schools in 5 different countries to improve social inclusion. The diversity on several levels and ways in each school, in each country grows. Living together on a positive, respectful way in a class, in a school, in a community becomes a big challenge. With this project we have taken on this challenge toghether. This project has started from the common needs from the six participating schools. We noticed that the input of pupils in our schools became different, year after year. There are more and more children with a migration background from various countries, different native languages, different parenting situations, different religions, different standards and values,... and the group of pupils with special needs becomes bigger in each school. That leads to a group of pupils with a big diversity on several levels. Living and learning toghether in this context is not self-evident. This needs special attention. The school and the teachers have to learn to deal with this. That's why we have chosen this project, to learn to communicate on a positive way, in different ways, ... 'communication in action'. We worked at 5 topics during 3 years, due to COVID. We did the same activities in each school and communicated with each other (pupils and teachers of different schools) in between. We used eTwinning to exchange information and experiences. You can find results and images here until September 2022. After that, the eTwinning platform changed so the last part of our project could no longer be completed on this platform. In the beginning of the first year we learned to know each other better by presenting every school. To reach that we will used the creativity of teachers and children to surprise other schools. The second part of the first year we worked around expressing feelings. In a community full of diversity we all feel the need of a good communication. Children have to deal with a lot of new different ways of online communication, but on the other hand we feel that they are stucked in real life communication. For that reason we did teach them skills and words to learn how to express their feelings in different situations to understand each other better. This skills are also usefull at the playground. We want our children to have a good time outside where they can play and relax in a positive way. The last part of the first year, we had our focus on that topic. We learned from each other and exchanged good practices so we all grew. Another very important thing to reach our aims is was look to the rules of group formation. When you make a conscious effort to form a good class group, the well-being of everyone increases and you can work together more positively. When children can communicate better with each other, the trust in each other increases. This makes better cooperation possible what results in better learning results. The theme of the last part was 'solving conflicts'. We wanted to make children stronger and provided tools to be able to communicate correctly in difficult and different situations. Everything they have learned about giving words to express feelings can be applied here. Role plays were a way to deal with this topic. In the last part of the entire project, students and teachers from different countries came together in Spain. We exchanged experiences and learned successes from the project at child, teacher and school level. By bringing children from 6 different schools into contact with each other, they experienced in real life what it is to communicate with each other without speaking each others language. On the other hand made 2 final products. One on the level of the pupils and one on the level of the teachers: 1) Each pupil made a me-book, a portfolio that grew during the 2 years of the project. The topics are the same as the projecttopics. In the me-book the children wrote, drew… their feelings, their experiences, … 2) On the teachers-level made a book with good practices and new tools and methods we discovered during the project. This book can be used as inspiration for other schools and for ourselves to work further on social inclusion in the futur. This project helped us to take the challenge of living toghether in a positive way in a divers world. The teachers became stronger to deal with the problems, they learned how to manage this challenge with a group of children. This will help them to coope with it in the future. Because we worked with the whole school, in 5 countries, the subject became a school-subject. It was not the initiative of an individual. This is also a key to succes for the futur. For this matter the principal of each school participated at the first and last mobility. We know that this project is not the final answer of all the social difficulties we are dealing with, but it had a positive impact on pupils, teachers, parents and schools.