Small Researchers – Great Discoveries Erasmus Project

Project Title

Small Researchers – Great Discoveries

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 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Key Competences (incl. mathematics and literacy) – basic skills; Early childhood education and care

Project Summary

In the last decades, we see a lot of changes in the society, in areas which influence the lives of our young ones. Mundy and Manion (2008) are convinced that a modern school has the task to give a child knowledge, skills and competences for collaboration in the globalized world. Gabor, Kos and Tašner (2016) state that the educational systems need not only provide traditional skills and knowledge, but to involve and integrate competences which stimulate the development of an individual. The European Commission advises that the society demands collaborative, problem solving and communication skills, critical thinking, digital literacy, creativity, entrepreneurship and the ability to learn by self. These abilities will contribute to our future life and new ideas, theories, products and know-how (European Council, 2018a). Upon identifying common critical areas and future challenges, we determined that all partners face the same lack in their kindergarten curricula and when it comes to the transfer of knowledge to primary schools. The curricula don’t cover the development of STEAM, digital skills and language (thus communication skills) in a sufficient way, so we identified those as crucial for our partnership. Development and strengthening of such competences is in the focus of our developed Erasmus+ project, where we want to develop the most important horizontal skills and competences of pre-primary children with objectives:
– developing language skills in native and English language of educators (new innovative approach, like learning STEAM-related vocabulary and utilize it),
– involving English learning in kindergarten by students from primary school as a new approach,
– developing digital skills of educators and simultaneously children by using computational thinking concepts and with the aid of IT and robotics (suggested tools: CS unplugged, robots like Lego, beebots, Scratch Jr., code.org, cubetto, 3D printing, virtual reality, code and go, etc.),
– STEAM-related skills and literacy by various scientific approaches towards learning about nature and science and developing the related vocabulary,
– developing informal ways of professional competences of educators, which is obligatory in 5 European countries,
– strengthen the quality of early childhood care and education by purchasing and active application of new technological and IT tools.
Mentioned objectives will be carried out with LTT activities and the transfer of ideas into our daily curricular work. We will use the approach of computational thinking. We will actively engage teachers and children to be part of everyday activities using STEAM and English language by means of IT tools, robotics, coding, problem solving, creativity, collaborative work, structured work, experiments, observing natural phenomena, learning about nature, sharing on Twinspace (database of project results – materials, documentation) and in an online project journal, which will be a summary of undertaken activities, open for the public.
Our project will involve all kindergarten and some primary school teachers, children from participating kindergartens and partner kindergartens, parents of children, professionals from higher education institutions, the local community and the wider professional and non-professional audience. Our project will focus also on participants with lesser opportunities, we want to provide enriched learning environment for them. We expect to reach at least a number of 1500 participants through out project activities.
In practice, totally six European schools will organize international workshops for teachers and 2 for students. Each workshop has a topic related to STEAM with digital tools, IT and English vocabulary. Pre-planned and concrete pedagogical activities, organized in concert with partners, professionals from higher educational institutions and parents, will offer children genuine experiences of participation. We will measure the impact and influence by interviews, opinions, proofs of learning activities, potrfolios, journals (qualitative methods) and quantitative methods (participants, activities, lessons, dissemination activities) etc.
All stakeholders will get new ideas and examples how to develop teaching and crucial competences and to enrich their daily lessons. In addition, we will share the produced learning material in national and European public networks/platforms, such as eTwinning. The project will develop children’ basic skills such as STEAM literacy and foreign language. At the end we will have a final international conference and we want to connect topics from several projects (Erasmus+ and national projects). This will have the largest impact in long-term on local, national and some extent international level. We see an added value and sustainable impact of our project in providing ideas on using STEAM and connect it with foreign language learning and computational thinking in daily activities.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 132632 Eur

Project Coordinator

Osnovna sola Prezihovega Voranca Bistrica & Country: SI

Project Partners

• OBS Jan Harmenshof
• OSNOVNA SOLA JANEZA KUHARJA RAZKRIZJE
• Preilu Briva skola
• DIADRASTIKO EUROPAIKO SXOLEIO
• Osnovna skola “Ljubica Radosavljevic Nada”