Rings of Friendship Erasmus Project

Project Title

Rings of Friendship

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 2016

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Key Competences (incl. mathematics and literacy) – basic skills; Disabilities – special needs; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

Our project took the Olympic and Para Olympic values and embedded them within planned activities across our 4 schools.The primary objective for this project was to link the Olympic values and a growing need to work together to support pupils with learning difficulties.This area of need includes pupils from areas of deprivation, those who are identified as requiring Special Educational Needs (SEN) and those who struggle to learn in a mainstream school environment.Using the Olympic values of; Friendship, Respect and Excellence and the Para Olympic values of; Determination, Inspiration, Courage and equality we worked together to explore our understanding and knowledge of these values, share teaching methods and real life situations to develop a range of teaching techniques and a portfolio of support materials and case studies.All of our resources are shared on our etwinning page for all to access. The 5 Olympic rings represent 5 areas of curriculum learning. Each ring was allocated to a partner who used this and one or two of the Olympic values as the overarching theme to a visit by all of the partners.The 5 areas of learning identified were: Science and Maths, Language and literacy, Social sciences (History, Economics, Geography etc),Arts, and Sports. Each visit reflected on our project motto and included specific social science session focusing on recent or current refugee crises and its impact on the host country. The visiting teaching staff had dedicated time within the visit to observe and discuss teaching methods, case studies and resources etc to teach Science and Maths with a focus on learning difficulties and mixed ability classes. The pupils also join in with curriculum specific activities (eg Science in Spain) and Social Science lessons as well as activities including sports focused on Friendship and Determination.Since we were all partners from a previous Comenius project, this enabled us to build upon what we had already learned and achieved from each other and through our now established friendship and respect focus on this more challenging area of teaching and support. We see this project as a further development to our partnership and complementary to the journey we are on together.We have already recognised that pupils in Primary schools with learning difficulties have a lower expectancy of attainment and are at risk of falling out of mainstream education and leaving school early.We believe early intervention at Primary school level to try and address these issues will be of benefit to the pupil in the long term.We acknowledge that this is not solely the responsibility of Secondary schools to address.Through this project we aimed to improve these pupils expectations and attainment levels. This in turn will aid their transition to Secondary school and give them the best opportunity to succeed.Each school in the partnership has similar issues and have developed teaching methods, resources and solutions to try and address these but we have not tried to investigate this together as a partnership or look for help or support on a European wide basis. It is clear from the discussion we had about this project that the teachers could see an immediate benefit to working together and were excited by the prospect and the outcomes that could be achieved.Over the two years 80 pupils and 24 teachers travelled to take part directly in each of the 4 project visits. All of the schools have a growing number of pupils with a range of learning difficulties and all are from areas of deprivation in their respective countries and these visits were fully inclusive with schools encouraged to bring mixed ability groups to the meetings. For example, 50% of the British children who travelled across Europe as part of the project were in the ‘disadvantaged’ and ‘Special Needs’ categories. This project aimed to meet and contribute to the impact of the Erasmus + programme by; Providing a greater effectiveness of activities for the benefit of our pupils; new or improved practices to cater for the needs of disadvantaged groups and to deal with social, linguistic and cultural diversity;To inspire the development of a more dynamic, committed and professional environment inside our schools.Being prepared to integrate good practices and new methods into daily activities; to be open to synergies with other schools active in different countries.To help with schools strategic planning of professional development for staff in line with individual needs and schools objectives.Each school and the project etwinning webpage posted resources that are in the public domain and provide a lasting legacy for the wider education community through the world wide web.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 97515 Eur

Project Coordinator

St Augustine’s Catholic Primary School & Country: UK

Project Partners

• Szkola Podstawowa nr 57
• I.C.S.G. Bosco- Benedetto XIII Gravina-Poggiorsini
• CEIP PARQUE EUROPA