«European Rainbow: A Guide to teach European Citizenship» Erasmus Project

Project Title

«European Rainbow: A Guide to teach European Citizenship»

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: EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; ICT – new technologies – digital competences

Project Summary

This project was conceived to promote education for European citizenship in our schools, increasing education on European values, in order to form better citizens in a near future, keeping our students away from radical ideals, by helping them to become active citizens who live by the common European values like freedom, peace, tolerance, solidarity. To reach this main goal our objective was to create a pedagogical tool, a kind of guidebook with several methods and activities to teach values to pupils from 6 to 15 years old. By the time the project was thought there was no legal framework in schools to teach citizenship.
This is the reason why and how seven schools from different countries (Portugal, Bulgaria, Greece, Italy, Lithuania, Poland and Slovakia) sharing the same concern and being aware of the relevance of education for citizenship and the lack of specific pedagogical tools and guidelines to teach values in school, worked together during three years to improve citizenship teaching and learning and created a “guidebook” for other teachers. The project was based on three main ideas:Diversity (learning about ourselves and each other for better mutual understanding), Unity (by learning about European common values shared by all European citizens) and Contribution for a better world by individual and collective action (being aware of each person’s role on making a better world, by living according to those values).
First, each school searched about its own history and culture, by studying local myths and legends and looking for the values under them; then studying local and national heroes, and visiting historical places and relating them to any national/ ethical values. This was our strategy to help students to find the European common values through the acceptance of their own traditions and cultural values.
During the second and third years all partners searched, created and gathered new methods, strategies, activities, educational games to teach and learn values at school, which were written down in a common form and tested in each school with the classes involved in the project. The methods that seemed to be efficient were shared with all partners to be experimented also in other countries’ schools. The most interesting activities were selected to be tried with groups of students from different countries during the pupils’ exchanges in Italy, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Lithuania and assessed by teachers and participants on those activities / games.
Finally, (2nd and 3rd years) all partners contributed to the booklet with the best methods and games collected and tried by all schools. This guide book with the methods to teach and learn European citizenship was made during the third year and was the main final product of the project. It was prepared in two versions: printed and digital book. This eBook was shared and spread all over the countries to be used by many schools at regional, national and European level..
This project had also a creative /artistic dimension for students, with different common activities to promote creativity and team work which produced nice material products: paintings inspired in national legends, a piece of art / handcraft inspired in culture and values (one per country), the lyrics for the project song using a Beatles’ music and the creative and collective writing during all project: students participants at the project meetings worked together, as a team, to create a collective story about an “ideal world” where all live according to the universal values. This collaborative work was done during the pupils’ exchanges, where they also learned some ICT tools to help them with the presentation of outcomes. Concerning the collective story project’s work was done in phases, one part during each pupils’ exchange meeting and finished in Lithuania (October/19) a bit later than the planned date, because students needed more time to finish it. This story was illustrated and we made an eBook and a printed version of it.
We had a strong engagement of students during the project activities, mainly the methods’ experiments to which assessment they contributed to.
Our guide book was shared and spread in all partner countries as a relevant tool for all teachers. Each partner school organized dissemination events (teachers conferences opened to local community) to spread the project product. Portuguese team made a pen drive containing the eBook and other project products and offered it to all headteachers from many schools of the region, who participated at the “Citizenship European Conference”, organized by Portuguese School, which also made postcards with the methods written on it, to send to many schools (every school year) inviting teachers to use our guidebook. The eBook was also posted on the project web site (7colours.eu), eTwinning (my twinspace) and on the project page on Facebook. All guide book contents are printable and available to any teacher.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 151537,05 Eur

Project Coordinator

Agrupamento de Escolas Morgado de Mateus & Country: PT

Project Partners

• Saint Sofia Private Primary School EOOD
• Visagino ,,Ziburio” pagrindine mokykla
• Proto Dimotiko Xanthis
• Szkola Podstawowa nr 58 im; Jerzego Kukuczki w Poznaniu
• Zakladna skola
• ISTITUTO DI ISTRUZIONE SUPERIORE OVIDIO