8 Strings To Our Bows Erasmus Project

Project Title

8 Strings To Our Bows

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: Disabilities – special needs; Creativity and culture; Early School Leaving / combating failure in education

Project Summary

Many of the five partner school’s students are from poor socio-economic backgrounds or have other disadvantages through learning and physical difficulties. Early school dropout is common among the mainstream partners and students leave without adequate problem solving skills. The academic success of most of our students is comparatively low to national standards and they struggle coping in general. This project stemmed from the need to engage students and find an approach that included all types of learners and the multiple intelligence theories supports us in achieving this. When Howard Gardner proposed the Theory of Multiple Intelligence he said that “the extent to which students possess different kinds of minds and therefore learn, remember, perform, and understand in different ways,” and this “challenges an educational system that assumes everyone can learn the same materials in the same way”. Students would do better if subjects could be approached in a variety of ways and learning assessed through a variety of means which are equally valuable to traditional subjects such as mathematics and language. This project aims to discover a student’s innate abilities and help them to use this strength in other areas of the curriculum.
During the development of our project all schools will encourage everyone to realise the importance of using their inherent strengths to approach different topics and reflect on their favoured style of learning.Through different activities, interaction and exchange we will motivate our students to understand how their new skills can be used in everyday life and make less preferred subjects more accessible. Through overseas exchanges they will also learn to accept customs, culture, and heritage to see that we are the same even in our differences. Students will develop the activities within their school subjects during regular classes and also some extra-curricular activities may take place. Teachers from different subjects and students from different classes will be involved to allow integration of MI into curriculum areas via a wide representation of activities.
The results will develop the schools’ curricula beyond the two years of the project and MI practices will be sustained into future timetables and articles concerning the partnership will be published in local/regional newspapers and on local/regional websites. A project website/blog will be created to put the news, results and project progress information on the Internet. Project results and activities will be made available to the parents during parents’ meetings at schools. Results will be disseminated as widely as possible. The partner schools will work together on the eTwinning platform Twinspace, develop the activities and create new tasks even after the end of the EU funding. Finally, the staff can compare their students’ attitudes to lessons and education in general from before and after questionnaires.
The experiences and success stories of participants will be shared with other teachers, students and parents and disseminated though seminars and informative meetings. Data analysis will be conducted where there is concrete data to measure but also soft data will be gathered about attitudes and engagement in school. If funding is given we will determine branding and literature explaining our aims and objectives to all stakeholders which will include brochures, logos, sharing all documents related to the project on the school web site, questionnaires and surveys, and where possible communication with the Directorate and non-governmental organisations will be used to support dissemination activities.
It is intended that at least 300 regular students will participate but including staff, families, community this number could extend beyond 1000 participants across the five organisations.
With our project we intend to:
– raise skills of all particpants
– develop relationships and intrapersonal skills
– Know and appreciate other cultures
– Improve knowledge of other languages.
– pro-actively engage parents in their students’ learning
– use ICT as a learning tool and classroom resource
– Strengthen capacities: attention, imagination, creativity, interest
– Improve and develop attitudes of tolerance, coexistence, solidarity and responsibility.
– Explore the importance of our MI knowledge and develop healthy mind and body
– become global citizens with shared interests
– reduce early school dropout
– offer high quality CPD for teaching staff incolved
Through this project we envisage a stronger engagement and cooperation between teachers, students and parents who will become confident in using or trying new methods and techniques. Ultimately students will have a personal journey which documents their preferred learning pathways and a ‘toolbox’ of skills to attempt new topics or subjects with confidence.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 61368,89 Eur

Project Coordinator

Pendle Community High School & College & Country: UK

Project Partners

• Sredno Opstinsko Uciliste Ljupco Santov p.o. Kocani
• BALIKESIR ADNAN MENDERES ANADOLU LISESI
• Agrupamento de Escolas de Aljustrel
• ISTITUTO D’ISTRUZIONE SUPERIORE “R. PIRIA”