The Europe 2020 Strategy has identified the priority eight Key competences for pupils’ lifelong learning: literacy, languages, STEM, digital competence, personal, social learning, civic engagement, entrepreneurship, and cultural awareness and expression. Having analyzed the results of numerous national and international tests (PISA), researches of the effects of students’ applied knowledge, it has become evident that students in Serbia, Romania, and Italy, upon finishing primary education, have besides underdeveloped functional, mathematical and scientific literacy, almost neglected artistic and cultural literacy competencies necessary for further education and daily life as well as low student motivation for learning and intellectual work. Starting an international collaborative project with partner schools from Italy, Romania and Serbia is an excellent, proactive and hands-on way for all of the students to socialize and develop their European identity through getting to know and teach each other about their respective countries and their way of living, learning, history and especially culture - tangible, intangible and natural cultural heritage, develop 21st-century skills and simultaneously learn a foreign language. To emphasize the importance and broaden their knowledge about cultural heritage, they must take part in peer learning and intercultural education as well as in exchanges with other students and take a start at their lifelong learning process. At the same time, it will develop the students’ 21st-century skills - critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity and develop their cultural values. Learning a foreign language, especially using it in real life and authentic context is vital to develop students’ communicative skills and intrinsic motivation for language learning. There is hardly a better way to accomplish that aim than to engage them in a collaborative task, i.e. project with other participants from different European countries. The project is addressed to students aged 12-15 and teachers. Three short-term exchanges of groups of 5 pupils accompanied by 2 teachers, one in each country, are planned. It makes a total of 60 pupils and 24 teachers directly involved participants. Indirectly, all the teaching staff and students from the partner schools will participate in the project. Some of the activities that will be carried out during three student short term exchanges are in all three participating countries: lectures, seminars, CLIL(Content and Language Integrated Learning) lessons, creating digital stories, guided trips, exhibitions, workshops to prepare the tangible results (booklet, preparing for incoming eTwinning project photo gallery, leaflets, multimedia presentations, project website). During the project lifetime the following Intellectual Outputs will be realized: O1: eTextbook on Cultural Heritage in English with 10 lessons, a digital resource book O2: Digital stories about Mileva Maric Einstein(Serbia), Traian Vuia (Romania), and Dante Alighieri (Italia) O3: Video tutorials (short instructional video clips) on digital storytelling tools, Google classroom and creating eBooks. Furthermore, intangible results on the target groups (students, teachers, parents, students families, and relevant stakeholders) will be achieved: 1. Developed student’s 21st-century skills and soft skills; 2. Gained knowledge about the cultural heritage of all participating countries; 3. Improved participant’s cultural awareness and richness of EU countries cultural diversity; 4. Boost English language skills of all participants’ (teachers and students through the use of CLIL methodology and communication among partners). As a result, the expected impacts on the participants are beside the increased language skills and competencies, also acquired and applied innovative teaching methodology in CLIL and active learning which will lead to the increased intrinsic motivation of students and their better performance. This will transform students’ involvement from being passive into active, critically-thinking, functionally intelligent and proactive members and important partners in education with raised awareness about cultural differences/ similarities as well as the cultural heritage. The potential long term benefits of the project are: 1. Established long term cooperation among the project partners; 2. Written new joint project proposals; 3. Organized joint events such as seminars on cultural heritage regularly; 4. Gained more confidence among students’ participants.
By implementing this project, we wanted to achieve the following goals: 1. To introduce innovation into the teaching process, especially the implementation of the teaching topic of gender equality in English 2. To develop tutorials for teachers and students so that they can access them anytime and from anywhere on topics that we believe are important for the development of functional knowledge 3. To introduce the innovative CLIL methodology (bilingual teaching) in the plans and implementation of civic education classes (Serbia), social sciences (Italy) and natural sciences-physics (Romania) 4. To raise the level of students' internal motivation and their intercultural experience by using English language and by improving the language competences 5. To make teaching more interesting and suitable for students' needs by using active methods 6. To encourage and strengthen student skills of the 21st century (communication, cooperation, critical thinking and creativity) 7. To improve the building of students' identity as citizens of Europe through internationalization and familiarization with the cultural heritage of the countries participating in the project through student exchanges
As lifelong learning is part of the education development strategy, and considering the fact that students lack knowledge of cultural heritage and internal motivation for learning, our goal was to address these needs through the application of various tools and methodologies such as CLIL, digital storytelling, short-term student exchanges, in order to develop students' key competencies, enhance cultural awareness, and improve their English language skills. The project also aimed to enhance the professional competencies of teachers and encourage institutions to connect with institutions from other countries to improve their knowledge of different educational systems. The students' needs that we aimed to meet with this project were: •The need for the development of critical thinking and independence in work, as well as the ability to work effectively within a team. •Awareness of belonging to the European family. •Awareness of their own cultural heritage and the need to explore the cultures of other nations in order to promote greater tolerance, self-awareness, and the internationalization of young people, thereby combating negative phenomena such as ignorance and fear of the "other" and the "different."