This year we commemorate 75th anniversary of the end of WWII which influenced all the people around the world in many aspects of their lives. There was not a single family who did not lose at least one member either directly in a battlefield or in one of the death camps. Many families were separated and lost their fathers, husbands or brothers. Only in Europe 39 million people died. Many citizens were forced to leave their houses, hometowns even their homelands. Many of them had to give up their property or their property was completely destroyed. Thousands of children witnessed horrors of the WWII and many of them even died because of hunger, in the death camps or directly by being killed. After the war whole world changed either economically or politically. We consider existing curriculum to be insufficient in the context of present tendencies of more and more people towards groups supporting ideas supressing basic human rights. The first of our objectives is to create cross - curricular teams who will co-operate to produce methodologies, lesson plans and activities which will enhance students´ understanding of the reasons and consequences of the WWII and we will focus on the differences of the impact of the war in different countries. Seeing the topic globally, from different points of view will allow students to get a better insight into the topic and thus to raise their awareness of the importance of such issues like tolerance, co-operation and understanding different cultures, nationalities and races. Four schools from four different countries will participate in the project: Gymnazium Pavla Jozefa Safarika - Pavol Jozef Safarik Gimnazium from Slovakia is the Secondary grammar school which provides general education in three forms- 5 –year bilingual form, 4-year form and 8-year form. Geniko Lykeio Mouzakiou from Greece which is the largest school unit of Public High Secondary education in the municipality of Mouzaki. I.I.S.S. CANUDO from Italy which is a secondary school and I Liceum Ogolnoksztalcace im. St. Dubois from Poland as secondary school too. They will form teams of teachers of different subjects ( English language, mother tongue, history, culture and art, economics but as well IT and physics).They will select students of different abilities to participate in all the project activities. The project activities will be divided in four modules. The first module will focus on Contemporary witnesses and monuments of WWII. Within the second module” The Great Depression as one of the causes of WWII” students will learn more about the events that led to the WWII. The activities in the third module will be carried out in “Cooperation with the regional institutions representing survivors of WWII”. Here students will co-operate with regional archives. The fourth module will focus on literature connected with WWII and creation of a board game involving all the results from the meeting with the witnesses, and from the cooperation with the archives and regional institutions. Within all the modules students will interview contemporary witness of WWII and they will transform the information into a historical movie documenting WWII and different genres (e.g.: slam poetry, songs, and paintings). Through this activity students can become more familiar with the topic in the way more appropriate to their age and interests. The students will create different graphs and charts about the economic reasons and consequences of WWII and differences between the impacts on different countries and an illustrated comic will be produced about the experiences.The next outcome of the project will be a board game which will be painted in the town centres of the participating towns ( or areas appointed by the town authorities). The game will be available for all the regional schools and thus we will offer an unusual way of learning about WWII. During the projects expert teachers will prepare new innovative methodologies and lesson plans which will be available for teachers of different schools and they will focus on cross-curricular approaches involving different subjects, History, IT, physics, mother tongue, English language, economics and math. Our aim is to enhance social, communication, digital and economic competencies of the students but the main objective is to raise their awareness about such important issues as tolerance and understanding.
The project idea started as at the beginning of the project we commemorated the 75th anniversary of the end of WWII which influenced all the people around the world in many aspects of their lives. Our aim was to give our students an idea of the seriousness of WWII. Our students are surrounded by different nationalist movements, groups supporting ideas supressing basic human rights and they maybe do not understand that there was not a single family who did not lose at least one member either directly in a battlefield or in one of the death camps. Many families were separated and lost their fathers, husbands or brothers. Only in Europe 39 million people died. Many citizens were forced to leave their houses, hometowns even their homelands. The project was focused on different areas and the aim was to show the students as well the after war period which changed the world either economically or politically. The first of our objectives was to create cross - curricular expert teams who co-operated to produce methodologies, lesson plans and activities which could enhance students´ understanding of the reasons and consequences of the WWII and we focused on the differences of the impact of the war in different countries. Seeing the topic globally, from different points of view allowed the students to get a better insight into the topic and thus to raise their awareness of the importance of such issues like tolerance, co-operation and understanding different cultures, nationalities and races. Four schools from four different countries participated in the project: Gymnazium P.J.Safarika - P.J.Safarik Gimnazium from Slovakia is the Secondary grammar school which provides general education in three forms- 5 –year bilingual form, 4-year form and 8-year form. Geniko Lykeio Mouzakiou from Greece is the largest school unit of Public High Secondary education in the municipality of Mouzaki. I.I.S.S. CANUDO from Gioia del Colle, Italy is a secondary school and I Liceum Ogolnoksztalcace im. St. Dubois from Koszalin, Poland as a secondary school. They formed teams of teachers of different subjects (English language, mother tongue, history, culture and art, economics, IT and physics).They selected students of different abilities to participate in all the project activities. The project activities were divided in four modules. The first module focused on the Contemporary witnesses and monuments of WWII and the LTTA was held in Rožňava, Slovakia. The second module focused on literature connected with WWII and the LTTA was held in Gioia del Colle, Italy. Within the third module: ”The Great Depression as one of the causes of WWII”, held in Koszalin, Poland, the students learned more about the events that led to WWII. The activities in the fourth module were carried out in “Cooperation with the regional institutions representing survivors of WWII”. Here students co-operated with regional archives and the LTTA was held in Mouzaki, Greece and the students and teachers focused on the creation of a board game involving all the results from the meeting with the witnesses, and from the cooperation with the archives and regional institutions. Within all the modules students interviewed contemporary witnesses of WWII and they transformed the information into a historical movie documenting WWII and different outcomes (e.g.: poetry, songs, diaries, short stories and paintings). Through these activities the students became more familiar with the topic in the way more appropriate to their age and interests. The students created different graphs and charts about the economic reasons and consequences of WWII and differences between the impacts on different countries and illustrated comics were produced about the experiences and testimonies of WWII witnesses. The next outcome of the project is a board game which is painted in the town centres of the participating towns or on the premises of the participating schools. The game is available for all the regional schools and thus we offer an unusual way of learning about WWII. The cards for the game are available on the project website and ESEP and as well in the touristic information centre and they were distributed to the regional schools as well. Online version of the board game is available as well for the other schools and institutions. During the projects teams of expert teachers prepared new innovative methodologies and lesson plans which are available for teachers of different schools and they focus on cross-curricular approaches involving different subjects, History, IT, physics, mother tongue, English language, economics and math. The teachers used modern tools, learning apps to enrich the lesson plans and to motivate the students towards learning about history and learning from history. Our aim was to enhance social, communication, digital and economic competencies of the students but the main objective was to raise their awareness about such important issues as tolerance and understanding.