“Play For Learning” fostered cooperation activities amongst students and teachers in the 3 partner schools, which resulted in a common educational games database to practice and develop language skills over the 2 project years, and later these will be available and free. In the process, one of our aims was to focus on the positive effects of games in foreign language acquisition and motivation for study. Children in this age group develop a high level of curiosity about the surrounding world and we consider that we can provide them the opportunity to find the information they need, engage them in a variety of game-based learning activities organized indoor and outdoor, in the traditional way as well as with the support of modern technologies. Also, this partnership aimed to develop English teachers professionally and increase their motivation for self improvement. For teachers, the project positively impacted professional development as they observed curricular differences and similarities in European educational systems, saw methodology in language learning and teaching, introduced variety and stimulating methods in their current teaching.
Language learning is, in the context of today's internationalisation and globalisation, an essential key competence for individuals to keep up with the fast pace of the developing world. Thus, language competences become valuable assets that ensure effective communication in the future. Although English is studied from early ages, there are still individuals who cannot cross the barrier of English taught at school and cannot use it in real-life situations. Thus, teachers improved their language skills in this project and as the project promotes the learning with games methodology, the teachers shared materials, exchanged learning games between countries and students played other countries' games. In the end, teachers created a site of materials, lesson plans that are used in all 3 countries and are free and available for other teachers to use. WE applied for this project to address school dropout, lack of learning motivation and poor school results.