Young Europeans on the move by active learning and teaching Erasmus Project

Project Title

Young Europeans on the move by active learning and teaching

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: Environment and climate change; ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Natural sciences

Project Summary

I. The project
YEMA , Young European on the move by active learning and teaching, is a strategic schoolpartnership among five schools in Germandy, Latvia, Poland, Portugal and Slovenia. Our goal was to bring more action in school lessons. YEMA started on September 1 2016 and lasted till June 30, 2018. During these 22 months there has been an intense exchange with 24 teachers and about 400 students participating in core activities.

II. Our goals
With YEMA we intended to:
raise our students interest in mathematics and natural sciences
raise our students environmental awareness regarding the resources soil, air and water
implement cross-curricular teaching
improve English skills of all participants

III. The partners
All partner schools are schools of general education which lead till year 9 or year ten.
The Ingolstadt Johann-Michael-Sailer-Schule is a Montessori School and specialist in free activity and project work.
Pumpuri Vidusskola in Jurmala is a public school specialised in natural sciences.
The Portuguese partner school, Agrupamento de Escolas de Sernancelhe is a public school in a rural area. Healthy lifestyle and healthy food is particularly important to them.
Osnovna sola Valentina Vodnika Ljubljana is the largest school of our partnership, their cores being languages, sciences and physical education.
The Polish partner, Niepubliczne Gimnazjum w Sarbicach, is the smallest school in a rural area and is specialist in Badminton. Sarbice students are very successful in national and international Badminton competitions.

IV. The activities
The main activities of the project comprised in six project weeks on particular topics: soil, air, water, climate, plant, seasonal and regional food, three international learning and teaching activities, a short term exchange for teachers and two international project meetings. At the very beginning of the project we also started YEMA on eTwinning. eTwinning was our platform for communicating and publishing. The project week took place simultaneously in all partner schools according to a detailed timetable, which had been sent to all partners at the beginning of the project. During these weeks we implemented and trained the methods from our YEMA Toolbox: Inquiry based teaching, Learning with models, Free activity and School Outside. On this purpose we organized activities like experiments, field trips and presentations. All activities were documented in photos, video reports, PowerPointPresentations and exchanged via eTwinning.
We met for international teaching and learning activities in Ljubljana in December 2016 and in Sernanchelhe/Portugal in May 2017. We were introduced to the schools, participated at lessons and made experiments. In Ljubljana we learned how to implement School Outside in every day school life. The most impressive experience we had in Portugal was the village festival. We were part of the community and learned how the Portuguese celebrated their village: with stunning hospitality, loads of traditional food, traditional music and dance. The last short term student exchange was in Sarbice/Poland in April 2018. We met to review and evaluate the activities of the project weeks and to celebrate the Final YEMA Festival and the YEMA Badminton Cup.
We met for job shadowing in Jurmala, in October 2017. We were nine teachers as guests of our Latvian partner school and had an intense exchange about teaching methods, particularly IBL – Inquiry Based Learning. We also took part in a workshop on this topic at Riga University, had an interesting field trip to the marshes and practiced team teaching.
The international project meetings took place at the coordinating school in Ingolstadt/Germany, at the beginning and in the end of the project. The first meeting was used for organizing matters, such as timetable, activities and introducing the YEMA methods. Slovenian, Latvian and German teams had prepared presentations and workshops to introduce the methods to their partners. Furthermore we had an eTwinning workshop, so that each partner was familiar with the platform. Die beiden internationalen Projekttreffen fanden zu Projektbeginn und -ende an der koordinierenden Schule in Ingolstadt statt. The second meeting in June 2018 had been organized to evaluate the entire project, to prepare the final report and agree upon the outlook of the project.

V. Results and Effect of the project
One of the most important long term results are the friendships we made during the project. Teachers and students have improved their English and were familiarized with new teaching and learning methods. We produced teaching material such as CLIL work sheets, videos and quizzes, which are available on eTwinning. Five project trees planted in each partner school and five YEMA school gardens will be looked after by future generations of students reminding them of the project.
Dissemination of project results among our communities created awareness of European identity.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 100505 Eur

Project Coordinator

Johann-Michael-Sailer-Volksschule Ingolstadt & Country: DE

Project Partners

• Agrupamento de Escolas Padre João Rodrigues, Sernancelhe
• Pumpuru vidusskola
• Osnovna sola Valentina Vodnika Ljubljana
• Niepubliczne Gimnazjum w Sarbicach