Combating under-achievement in Reading and Numeracy basic skills through the team-teaching of entrepreneurial skills Erasmus Project

Project Title

Combating under-achievement in Reading and Numeracy basic skills through the team-teaching of entrepreneurial skills

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: Early School Leaving / combating failure in education

Project Summary

Our project ‘Combating under-achievement in Reading, Number and literacy basic skills through team-teaching of entrepreneurial activities’ or ‘Cre8’ is designed to tackle the problem of under-achievement in the basic skills in literacy and numeracy in both schools. This issue was highlighted for Hook Norton Primary School in their latest Ofsted report and the staff at Västra Parkskolan are struggling to tackle the problem in their school too. The project will directly include around 20 teachers and 520 children from the ages of 4-12 years. The classes from both schools will work together to tackle the issues they face surrounding the basic skills in literacy and numeracy and the progress of their most and least able children.The project aims to tackle under-achievement in the basic skills of literacy and numeracy through a series of enterprise activities with teachers and children across phase. Teachers will work together to plan activities for children which in most cases they will teach in their separate schools and in some cases they will teach together during a student exchange. The teachers can discuss the issues faced in basic maths and literacy skills in their individual classes during the project meetings and design an activity which will not only teach these basic skills but also give the children the opportunity to apply them in a real life setting. The children’s motivation will be increased as they will have the opportunity to put their skills into practice in a practical situation where their main objective is to make money through their project designs. They will face problems which they will need to overcome, be given the opportunity to make decisions for themselves and have to work together to make their designs work. The teachers and children can share their progress with their partners using our online platform or Skype, thus enhancing their communication and literacy skills. For each activity the children will have to write instructions on how to make their product, calculate expenditure and profit margins, market and try to sell their products. All groups of children will be included with a focus on underachievers and most and least able children who should all be challenged sufficiently to help them to achieve their potentials.During the planning of these activities we feel that it is of paramount importance that teachers should spend time observing outstanding practices. The staff from Hook Norton Primary School are keen to spend time with some of the specialist teachers in Västra Parkskolan. They are interested in how they could use the expertise of the Maths, literacy and craft teachers in particular to help them to design an enterprise with their children that would tackle the under-achievement in basic maths and literacy skills. The staff at Västra Parkskolan are especially interested in the way in which the Hook Norton Primary School staff teach their lessons in a cross-curricular way and how they are able to incorporate different areas of the curriculum to teach basic skills of maths and literacy. They would like to see how this approach motivates children and how teachers manage the approach. Cross curricular planning will be very important when planning the enterprise activities.Throughout the project, every class will be writing either a class letter or an individual penpal letter to their partner school each term. The focus for the letters will be influential businesses, inventors, influential people or innovative ideas they’ve had. They could talk about things that they have made to sell at school. The letter writing should include some mention of mathematical processes. The purpose of the letter writing is to improve literacy and communication skills and motivate children to want to learn the skills as they may discuss ideas for their class’s activity if their activity. The older children from Year 6 and Class 5 will also enhance their communication skills using Skype. They will Skype their penpal every term to talk about what they have been learning in mathematics and discuss mathematical problems they have been trying to solve. We intend that our project will tackle the issue of under-achievement in the basic skills of maths and literacy and that the children who are most and least able in our schools will reach their potentials. Our wish is that the children will come away from the project with a greater appreciation of the importance of maths and literacy skills and a greater desire to succeed in these areas. Västra Parkskolan’s school vision is to be “A School for the Future” and both schools wish that their children will grow up happy and successful and we hope that our project will play a fundamental role in this. We hope that our project will make the children more employable as adults, give them a life long love of learning and arm them with skills in problem solving, forward thinking and entrepreneurial flare!

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 24160 Eur

Project Coordinator

Hook Norton C of E Primary School & Country: UK

Project Partners

• Västra Parkskolan