Our school, our playground! Erasmus Project

Project Title

Our school, our playground!

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: New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Early School Leaving / combating failure in education; Pedagogy and didactics

Project Summary

The idea of this project started when a group of teachers realized that school could be much more fun and much more effective if there were games involved in the teaching process. Playing is only natural for children and what the modern pedagogical theory tells us, is that games at school may serve a twofold purpose: on one hand they help children cultivate social and emotional skills like cooperation, team spirit and contesting without strongly antagonizing one another and on the other hand they can be suitably customized to support pure educational goals and parts of the curriculum. This idea was so strong between the teachers of our schools that we decided to propose for an Erasmus+ project about game playing.
The two basic target groups of the project were the teachers and students of our schools. As far as the teachers were concerned, the project aimed to empower them to use games in classroom in order to find more enjoyable ways of teaching even traditional topics, make their teaching more inclusive and face disadvantaged students effectively. Regarding the students, the project aimed to help them acquire modern skills, use technology in meaningful ways, cooperate with each other and make learning more engaging for them, preventing early school leaving.
The project was implemented by eight partner schools from 8 different countries, namely Greece, Turkey, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Italy, Romania, Spain and Poland. Some of the schools had already cooperated in previous Erasmus and Comenious projects but there were also two new partners. The schools differed in many ways: number of students (from 50 to 2000), area of living (urban vs countryside), years of experience in European projects, etc. However, they all had teachers that they were passionate to explore new possibilities in their teaching methods.
The main activities undertaken, were to define a set of games to be played in classroom and to integrate these games in their teaching methods by designing suitable learning scenarios. The teachers’ communities that were formed in each school collaborated and shared these scenarios as a set of good practices. Students also cooperated both at local and transnational level and exchanged their experience of playing games in classroom (and not only). There were also dissemination events that took place in each school, like the game days where all the teacher and student community together with invited parents had to play games inside or outside their classrooms.
All the scenarios created by the teachers were gathered at the end of the project in a deliverable and uploaded on the web site of the project. Because the games played at our schools exceeded the scenarios created by the teachers, there was a second deliverable documenting most of them in the form of good practices (also uploaded on the web site). It is estimated that about 150 game activities were played in our schools throughout the project. At the end of the project we performed a project evaluation for teachers and students. Before that, many of our partners had already performed local evaluations in their schools.
The main events of our project were disseminated through the web page, the blog of the project and the eTwinning workspace. We also created a Facebook group, were teachers from other schools were also invited to participate and get informed about the activities of our project. In every school not only the Erasmus+ team members, but basically the larger part of the school communities, including parents were aware and supported this project. Also, at a regional level, educational and administrative authorities provided us with great help by sponsoring our events, sending representatives to our meetings and dissemination events, providing promotional material and informing the local press about our activities.
Most of our teachers and students found the project satisfactory in terms of results and they declared that they would like very much to continue implementing or participating in game learning activities. Teachers from other schools have consulted us on how they could implement similar methods in their schools and take advantage of the experience that we gained throughout the project.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 98400 Eur

Project Coordinator

11th Primary School of Chalandri & Country: EL

Project Partners

• Sredno uchiliste “Hristo Botev”
• ISTITUTO COMPRENSIVO “SANTA CHIARA – PASCOLI – ALTAMURA”
• NTRA.SRA.DE LOS DOLORES
• Szkola Podstawowa Stowarzyszenia Przyjaciol Szkol Katolickich w Myslowie
• Dimotiko Sxoleio Apesias (Perifereiako Eniaio Oloimero)
• Scoala gimnaziala Vasile Parvan
• Sehit Sait Erturk Ortaokulu