Arts Count! Erasmus Project

Project Title

Arts Count!

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 2015

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Key Competences (incl. mathematics and literacy) – basic skills; Teaching and learning of foreign languages; Creativity and culture

Project Summary

The idea for this project emerged from the coordinator school’s desire to improve its students’ communication and mathematical skills, while applying an innovative approach based on artistic creativity and cooperative learning. It searched for partners who shared the same concern, which meant that all the schools involved in this project had the same goals and motivation. This project’s aim was not only to improve the students’ communicative and mathematical competences, but also to enhance their artistic creativity in order to boost the growth of cognitive, emotional, and psychomotor pathways together with attitudes of innovation, flexibility, initiative, teamwork, self-confidence, and critical thinking; to achieve this, cooperative learning strategies have been used.
This partnership also provided the teachers with the chance to get in touch with colleagues who share the same concerns and goals. So, although the project was pupil-focused, teachers exchanged ideas and methodology with partners to improve our teaching skills. We wanted our students to improve the way they search for and arrange information, to develop reading comprehension and writing skills, to better their oral presentation and public speaking abilitities and to deepen their knowledge of and appreciation for other cultures,especially their art and art history. We also sought to promote the learning of other languages,to encourage interaction through them and to enhance artistic creativity. By putting maths in context the students could see the usefulness and importance of maths in real life.
About 230 students between the ages of 13 and 16 and around 24 teachers participated in this project.The students came from different socioeconomic backgrounds.
The French students either come from underpriviledged families (such as factory or vineyard workers) or wealthier ones (such as winegrowers, doctors, lawyers) so with totally differen backgrounds. The Spanish students live in a rural area and many of their families live on ranching and agriculture or fishing. The economic level is not very high. The Croatian students live in a rural area and come from middle class families who live mostly on agriculture, mainly as winegrowers. Some of the students’ parents are retired veterans.The Swedish students also live in a rural area and their families come mainly from the middle- and working class. There is a low rate of higher education and very few students have roots from non-Swedish cultures.
The students were involved in real communicative contexts. They composed online webquests, wrote stories inspired by photos and paintings, created illustrations and graphic scripts based on traditional tales or legends . They also made and edited videos to illustrate poetry reading, composed some music for them, made their own songs from poems, wrote play scenes, participated in theatrical performances and recorded their own films.
Cooperative learning methodology was applied in order to instill in our students the idea that each individual’s success depends on the group’s success; this is not only true in terms of school tasks, without the cooperation of its members, society cannot flourish. Morover,cooperative learning is regarded as one of the best work tools for students with learning difficulties and helps to prevent early school leaving by unmotivated students.
In short, the results we pursued were to improve our students communication and mathematical skills through artistic creation and cooperative learning.
As for the impact, improvement in their linguistic skillsl meant progress in all subjects, since language is the key to knowledge. Integration of maths in the project gave meaningful contexts for students . Enhancing their artistic creativity helped their cognitive, emotional and social development. Cooperative learning strenghthened the bonds between them and they learnt to work together to accomplish shared goals. Their future employability was also improved.
The families of the students became more involved in the teaching and learning processes and in school activities.
The local communities were also enrichened by their younger members’ experiences and learning.
Longer term benefits include: the use of a more pragmatic approach to the teaching of languages and maths; the integration of art into other curricular areas will instill the students with a greater sense of emotional investment in their classes; cooperative learning groups will turn classrooms into learning communities and increase collaboration between teachers.
These innovative teaching techniques will be implemented at the schools, so their students will be prepared to be part of a society which needs creative individuals capable of communicating with each other and of working together to achieve common goals.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 100848 Eur

Project Coordinator

IES Carmen y Severo Ochoa & Country: ES

Project Partners

• Trönningeskolan
• Osnovna skola Zmijavci
• COLLEGE JEAN MONNET
• 60.Yil Ortaokulu