The Way People Live In Different Countries Erasmus Project

Project Title

The Way People Live In Different Countries

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 Schools Only

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Creativity and culture; International cooperation, international relations, development cooperation; Intercultural/intergenerational education and (lifelong)learning

Project Summary

The project The Way We Live in different Countries involved teachers and pupils from six comprehensive schools in the Czech Republic, Finland, Greece, Cyprus, Romania and Poland. As Poland quit the partnership, we remained five countries. The aim of the project was to introduce the participants to their own cultural habits and to present them to cultural habits of other countries throughout Europe. To ensure cultural diversity, the northern, southern and central European countries were involved. Children with their teachers travelled to the participant countries and they cooperated on various workshops together during each of the visits. We met once in each country with our pupils.
The participants came not only from different European countries, but also from different conditions. Some live in small villages, others come from the capital city, we had participants who have experience with international projects and also those, who were taking part for the first time. We all were enthusiastic about taking part in the project and willing to learn and share our skills and experiences.
There were two or three teachers travelling from each school and two to four pupils, so there came 100 visitors to all mobilities. Additionally, there was a group of home participants who created the background of the workshops and took care of the foreign guests. The children were accommodated in host families to learn as much as possible about the country they visited. As Cyprus didn’t bring students to mobilities, the guest students were accommodated in hotels during the meeting in Cyprus. The workshops took place at the host schools, with few planned trips to visit close environment and landmarks.
The activities we planned to work on were: presenting our home countries and schools (we created presentations and posters), guided the guests around famous and interesting sights (with children as guides), learning and teaching national dances and songs, having cooking classes and learning how to prepare national dishes, having History and Geography CLIL classes , studying legends and fairy tales of the host countries and creating a comic, collecting memorabilia and information during the travels and creating travel diary of each participant country, using also e-learning and teaching approach, especially with our Cyprian partners, creating an etwinning space and a Facebook group and keeping them up-to date. During the first transnational mobility, we decided to create an etwinning space instead of a project website, and however the results of the project were posted on each school website.We believe the children developed tolerance to diversity, higher motivation to travel and learn, healthy curiosity that is essential for increasing knowledge, improved language skills, increased their social literacy and also learned to appreciate their own culture and uniqueness of diversity, which can still be found in European cultures. We are sure that the participants also built friendships and will keep in touch even after the project finished.
The methods that are going to be used are: peer teaching, communicative approach, CLIL, ICT learning and teaching.
The results were: questionnaires (that were distributed before and after the project to help us evaluate the results and progress), a cookbook containing traditional dishes of the participant countries, a comic with national legends and fairy tales, travel diaries continuously created by the pupils during their foreign trips, CLIL lessons plans, worksheets and handouts (which were available online for downloading and further usage), itineraries of the sightseeing trips with information about important places we visited, dictionary of basic phrases in all languages of the participants, videos and pictures of the dances and songs we learned and taught with lyrics, presentations and posters on the home countries, schools, housing, etwinning and Facebook group, that were kept up-to-date and served as basis for uploading the materials we created. The etwinning space will be used even after the project finished as it can be updated with the follow-up information about how the materials form the project are used, and what changes has the project led to at our schools.
The project had impact not only on the direct participants but also on family and friends, the local schools and helped to raise awareness of local people about the schools and education level. It can inspire other teachers to try a similar cooperation as well, therefore, after the project, we would like to share our experiences via seminars, meetings with parents and school partners and dissolve the information about the project in local media and our school webs.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 91190 Eur

Project Coordinator

Zakladni skola Chomutov, Na Prikopech 895 & Country: CZ

Project Partners

• Scoala Gimnaziala Nr.7
• Oloimero Dimotiko Scholeio of Analipsi Hersonissos
• Publiczna Szkola Podstawowa nr 2 im. Henryka Sienkiewicza
• DIMOTIKO SCHOLEIO MAKEDONITISSAS 2
• VARPAISJÄRVEN KOULU