Legends Across Europe Erasmus Project

Project Title

Legends Across Europe

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: ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Creativity and culture; Intercultural/intergenerational education and (lifelong)learning

Project Summary

“LEGENDS ACROSS EUROPE” was a two-year project designed to enable people to become more conscious about traditional folk issues, local myths, legends, sayings, tales or poems and experiencing cultural heritage through transnational mobilities or teaching training activities and increase cooperation among four European Schools (SK, CZ, PL, RO). Sadly, the fifth partner school from London, UK, withdrew from the project at its beginning due to some administrative problems at their organization. Our group of schools represented European diversity – from rural to urban; from north to south, east to west; schools with different ethnic and religious background. We worked together to set up a vision for future education and employment needs sharing the ambitions and aspirations of our students and working to prepare for a future in which life-long learning is a central element. This project brought together students and their teachers of various subjects (English, Art, History, Geography, ICT, Religion and Ethics, Literature) We worked collaboratively to study the topics defined and trained the participants on preserving culturral heritage, improving desired basic personal skills e.g. critical thinking, problem solving, reasoning, analysis, interpretation, synthesizing information, research skills and practices, interrogative questioning, creativity, artistry, curiosity, imagination, innovation, personal expression, perseverance, self-direction, planning self-discipline, adaptability, initiative, oral and written communication using discussion, survey, brain storming, drama, group work, seminar, collaborative pair work, out of class activity, exhibition, demonstration, observation trips, project based learning and similar teaching and learning methods maximising the use of multi-disciplinary components within creative processes to allow us to identify some common elements. This was a cross-curricular project work to promote intercultural education, to increase the foreign languages learning, the linguistic diversity and to improve the collaborative work, to raise awareness among pupils and other members of the society towards becoming more conscious citizens without any prejudices as this project also aims at building cultural awareness to help us cross barriers and learn to accept different values and cultures. We managed to combine raising awareness of European citizenship and cultural heritage with an ideal for preserving our traditions and folk narrative for the next generations while focusing on preparing ourselves for a future in which technological and linguistics skills will be essential tools. Furthermore, the project stimulated the capacity for teamwork and self-organized learning through encouraging working groups and workshops. The students gathered information, evaluated it, and integrated it into the project. Those skills were useful in many contexts and are also basic principles of lifelong learning. Working on the project with partners from foreign schools increased our respect and tolerance towards all kinds of diversities. Students realized their own qualities and learnt to empathize, improve problem-solving skills and prevent the possible conflicts, found remedial solutions for major obstacles in communication. Participants got to know their own qualities and could find solutions for big problems. The outcomes or final products such as presentations, videos, working with social media tools improved ICT skills. Every activity was guided by a lesson plan prepared in each partner school for each 2-3 month activity period, outcomes were shared through presentations (PowerPoint, Word, pdf, video, conference) and uploaded on the blog / Facebook / twinspace. Newsletters were published after each mobility as well as short information and photogallery on each school website, newspaper articles were published in local newspapers, local community was informed sometimes even in local TV. We think that the project helped the students, teachers, parents, local people and authorities raise their awareness to the importance of preserving local traditions and culture, they learnt about new ones to be aware of the diversities in different cultures through first hand experience. Students were more interested in reading and writing not only in English but also in their own language or dialect beyond the limits of this project. We are also sure that the friendships started during the project among the participants will last longer. What is more, all partner schools continue our work in another Erasmus+ project in 2018-2020.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 68900 Eur

Project Coordinator

Gymnazium, Havirov-Mesto, Komenskeho 2, prispevkova organizace & Country: CZ

Project Partners

• Mulberry School forGgirls
• Gymnázium Viliama Paulinyho-Tótha
• Colegiul Tehnic Mihai Bacescu
• I Liceum Ogolnoksztalcace im.Stefana Zeromskiego