Let’s Make School a Nice Place to Be Erasmus Project

Project Title

Let’s Make School a Nice Place to Be

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : School Exchange Partnerships

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: International cooperation, international relations, development cooperation; Early School Leaving / combating failure in education; Inclusion – equity

Project Summary

The partner countries England and Sweden withdrew their participation at the beginning of the project work without giving any reason, so that finally Portugal, Turkey and Germany carried out the project.
The first mobility took place in Germany. Pupils and two teachers from Portugal and pupils from Turkey travelled to Meinersen. The pupils were accommodated in host families, the teachers in a hotel.
The preparations for the first mobility took place in the respective partner schools. The theme of the first exchange with groups of pupils was “traditional games”. For this purpose, the German school organised friendship tournaments for individual grades, in which the host students were involved. The 5th classes played dodgeball, the 6th classes football, the 7th classes handball, the 8th classes basketball and the 9th and 10th classes volleyball.
On another day, each country presented common (children’s) games of their country, which were then played by everyone together.
Playing together created a very harmonious sense of community. In the course of the project, the pupils communicated more and more freely and informally with each other in English, and the inhibitions that initially existed due to the use of the foreign language diminished more and more.
The social programme of the exchange included visits to the Autostadt in Wolfsburg, which is very important for this region, and a visit to the cities of Braunschweig and Celle.
Many students from the German school were involved in the tournaments. The students who hosted guest students benefited particularly. Some friendships developed that were maintained beyond the project via chat groups, email or other online platforms.
The second mobility was an exchange of teaching staff and took place in Tomar, Portugal. Five colleagues were involved in this mobility.
The content focused on robotics, exploring the surroundings of Tomar, lectures on digital teaching and testing different learning apps.

The third mobility, entitled “Dance”, was prepared in the individual countries. The German group practised a hip-hop dance in cooperation with a local dance school. The German group did not take part in the exchange because of the uncertain political situation in Turkey at the time, so only Portugal and Turkey were involved in the mobility.
The fourth exchange was supposed to take place in Portugal, but was cancelled due to the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. This resulted in a delay of one year in the implementation of the project and the other exchanges were organised virtually.
The long delay of the project meant that a large number of the students involved had already left school at the time of the last projects or were in the final exam phase and would no longer be available for all activities. Therefore, we had to recruit new students who first had to be informed about the previous activities. On the other hand, this also enabled us to reach a larger number of participants over the whole project period.
The virtual form of exchange was an additional challenge for all participants, as this form of communication was new to everyone. Despite initial technical difficulties, the two virtual three-day events were successful and enriching for the participants.
Each country presented a virtual tour of their school and its surroundings. Afterwards, a quiz was solved by all.
The German students, in cooperation with a local artist, had made installations out of modelling clay that represented their wishes for a pleasant school environment. The wishes were not only about space and furnishings, but also about how to interact with each other.
The Portuguese school instructed the students in traditional Portuguese tile painting in a video workshop that was created in a pottery.
The final event focused on the theme of music. Each school presented musical pieces played by the individual school bands. This was followed by a writing workshop in which the participating pupils wrote texts on the topic of “What is a good school for you”. They created flow texts, mind maps, poem forms and word pictures, which were then presented and shown in the video conference.
Finally, the whole project was reflected on by everyone.

Project Website

https://smileerasmusmais.wixsite.com/smile

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 61966 Eur

Project Coordinator

Realschule Meinersen & Country: DE

Project Partners

• mehmetçik anadolu lisesi
• The BRIT School for Performing Arts & Technology
• Västerås City Gymnasiet
• Agrupamento de Escolas Nuno de Santa Maria