Developing Abilities to Socialize – Teaching and learning new perspectives by sharing Erasmus Project

Project Title

Developing Abilities to Socialize – Teaching and learning new perspectives by sharing

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 school education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2014

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Overcoming skills mismatches (basic/transversal); Early School Leaving / combating failure in education

Project Summary

Our project “Developing abilities to socialize. Teaching and learning new perspectives by sharing” aimed to create lifelong learning situations where students would build confidence and communication skills and furthermore, would be eager to challenge themselves and teachers would develop their teaching through collegial sharing based on up-to-date research and ICT.
The participants were six schools in Turkey, Romania, UK, Poland, Spain and Sweden with pupils aged 12-18 years and their teachers.
The quick attachment to new technology has changed patterns of young people´s communication and has affected face to face interactions and our way of teaching.
The virtual media challenges us, teachers, to develop our students’ skills in ethic communication and to create interactive, authentic learning situations for our students. Throughout our project we intended to train our students’ abilities to socialize in both the virtual world and in reality and in addition increase their communicative strategies. Our approach was CLT, Communicative language learning, to encourage students to use English during all activities and have authentic, interactive tasks to work with.
The aim was to educate students in inclusion and tolerance promoting intercultural awareness; to develop their social skills and abilities, promoting linguistic skills through participation in team activities shared with our European partners. All together this promoted a greater understanding of each other and in turn gave more democratic acting in real life and in the virtual world when using different ICT.

The activities in the project aimed to, as mentioned before, develop social abilities and consisted of exercises in communication, cooperation and teambuilding. Role play, case studies, discussions, acting and argumentation were some of the methods that were used.
We created a 9-steps model of activities based on the curriculums of each country with a common base in CEFR (The Common European Framework of Reference):
We started with a get-to-know-each other activity. A treasure hunt, geocaching using GPS-Ipad/mobil to build teamwork and a feeling of belonging to a group; the Erasmusfamily”. (PE, geography, English, ICT)
“I´m good enough” the students worked with their self-esteem building self-confidence through creating self-portraits and hand sculptures (art, English)
”Sing a song” the students made a music video getting the same instructions but having different outcomes. Aim to strengthen cooperation, tolerance. (Mother tongue,music, English,ICT, other languages)
“Let´s solve Math together – a challenge where students worked with think,pair,share when solving mathematical problems from easy level to difficult level. (math, English, mother tongue, ICT)
“Read a film” Using reciprocal teaching when watching a film we shared the same study guide and had group discussions on Skype about similarities, differences, religion, refugees etc. (English, ICT/Skype, mother tongue)
“Role model”: the students were inspired to write about an important person in their life. To inspire to and reinforce good behaviour regardless of background. Individual and shared work, writing (History, English, Social sciences, ICT)
” I like my home town” The students took photographs of their towns, the bus stop exhibitions –discussions on similarities and differences. Aim to create security in identity.
“What to do if….” The students were trained in taking a stand for and against through debates, cases and argumentation about values, consequences, conflict, moral courage, anti-discrimination. (English, mother tongue, Social sciences, Ethics)
Forumplay: play another role, acting and improvising, discussion on how the stories (roleplay) continue. Case studies Subject: mother tongue, English – Social Sciences, Ethics

The expected outcome was that the students would become better achievers in all subjects. They would gain self-confidence and motivation for further studies and that is, as we believe the best way to prevent dropouts and promote school attainment.

Our European exchange project have inspired not only the participants but also schools, authorities, organizations and other actors in society on both local, regional and national level. Examples of this lifelong learning and dissemination are the widely spread ICT language tools KAHOOT and Quizlet (which was not known among the teachers until our workshop in Sweden), Skype, geo-caching, pedagogical methods such as reciprocal teaching when watching a film(reading strategies), think pair share- method/peer learning, technologies when making film (music video and claymation).

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 178965 Eur

Project Coordinator

Vasaskolan & Country: SE

Project Partners

• Yalova Anadolu Lisesi
• Gimnazjum nr 2 im. Polskich Noblistów w Gostyninie
• Smiths Wood Sports College
• I.E.S. Los Moriscos
• Colegiul National Pedagogic Regina Maria