BREAKING WALLS Erasmus Project

Project Title

BREAKING WALLS

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 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Inclusion – equity; Early School Leaving / combating failure in education

Project Summary

European societies are diverse, and so happens inside the educational institutions where there are increasing needs of inclusion. In our schools it has been perceived that making changes in the use of spaces and methodologies may lead to a better response of these needs. Our project is proposed as an integrating experience of different cultures, languages and curriculum areas. All these aspects favour multilingualism as the foundation of union in diversity.
Four educational institutions and their need to favour spaces for inclusion are involved in it:
IES Maria Moliner (Spain), coordinator institution, 492 students . There are some linguistic, cultural, educational and social needs that require attention and educational changes. We have an “Open Classroom” with 8 students with special learning needs that are educated by two teachers and a social educator. These students are included in ordinary groups for some subjects in some occasions.
Skoerping Skole (Denmark) primary and lower secondary school, placed in the biggest Danish forest, gives unique opportunities regarding working outdoors. It has 794 students, 65 of them attend the department of special needs.
Tallina Teknikagümnaasium (Estonia) 700 students, aged 7 to 19, member of the worldwide network of UNESCO Associated School, part of the Eco-Schools and the Baltic Sea projects. The school has an active sport-life. They have students with special needs who are attended at different levels.
AE Madeira Torres (Portugal) is a school cluster with 2,963 students, 247 of their students have special learning needs and some of them attend 3 learning units for pupils with autism spectrum disorder, served by 6 teachers and 7 assistants, sometimes they are integrated in ordinary classrooms.
This project will focus on the management of indoor, outdoor and surrounding spaces, because the main objective will be to achieve a physical transformation of the available spaces if possible, or transform them with innovative uses and methodologies that favour inclusion.
We also want to create a student environment where the student will be able to identify itself as a main character in the educational community. The student should be autonomous to be able to create empathy with its partners and offer its help in whatever situation he/she may face and in its own daily life.
We propose activities of:
– Reflection : ” How inclusive we are?”, ” European way”, ” Here and There”…Our students will carry out activities with partners who face similar situations and needs and will find the strategies to find some solutions for their institutions needs
-Design and creation of inclusive spaces: ” STEAM Corner” : This section will be the box of artistic creation in which inclusion is always present and the space to learn design software to be used in activities during the mobility. We will create a photo contest with the title ‘ Spaces and Inclusion’ . This graphic content will be useful to carry out awareness on inclusion in the surrounding spaces. With a selection of twelve photos a calendar of year 2022 will be edited.
-“Sustainable spaces” With this activity each school will carry out team activities where they will study what we are doing in our surrounding places against climate change, working with the 17 sustainable development goals to transform our world set by UN. This survey will be included in the section STEAM of the magazine, being the main tool of dissemination of the project and it is very important to check that is updated regularly and shared by all schools through the platform eTwinning. ETwinning Myspace will be used for publishing.
We are planning to use eTwinning in the three stages of our project.We will begin using it for introduction and team working between pupils of four participants.In addition, to follow up the project, a digital interactive magazine wil be inserted during all the project in which we can see its development and improvement. As an example, we will create a photo contest with the title ‘ Spaces and Inclusion’ . This graphic content will be useful to carry out awareness on inclusion in the surrounding spaces.
The impact of the project is aimed to be towards 3 levels: students, educative institutions and local community.
The longer term benefits will permit the whole educative community ( school, family, environment, town…) a more effective teaching approach, core curriculum improvement, more accurate Intercultural perspective of our school, motivation improvement, favour the inclusive learning, the improvement to manage indoor and outdoor spaces, self-esteem improvement and the fight against school failure.
In terms of mobilities (three per institution) this project will involve 72 students and 24 teachers (18 students and 6 teachers per mobility). There is an agreement with the other schools about hosting the students at other students’ homes, so the budget for the mobilities will cover this important number of participants

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 98160 Eur

Project Coordinator

IES MARÍA MOLINER & Country: ES

Project Partners

• Skoerping Skole
• Tallinna Tehnikagümnaasium
• Agrupamento de Escolas Madeira Torres