21st century skills and CLIL for learning about Cultural heritage Erasmus Project

Project Title

21st century skills and CLIL for learning about Cultural heritage

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 : Strategic Partnerships for school education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Teaching and learning of foreign languages; Intercultural/intergenerational education and (lifelong)learning

Project Summary

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.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 76302 Eur

Project Coordinator

Osnovna skola “Zarko Zrenjanin” & Country: RS

Project Partners

• Istituto Omnicomprensivo D.Alighieri
• Scoala Gimnaziala Nr 13