Learning to Live, Living to Learn Erasmus Project

Project Title

Learning to Live, Living to Learn

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 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Health and wellbeing; Cultural heritage/European Year of Cultural Heritage; Inclusion – equity

Project Summary

Our project has been the result of careful negotiation, building on 6 years of partnership activities and European projects between our two schools. Health and Well Being issues have been beginning to play a more important role in the opportunities afforded to our children and their educational attainment. Scotland has been awarded the unfortunate moniker of “the sick man of Europe” within the UK as life expectancy and other major health indicators fall below the UK average. In some parts of Glasgow, life expectancy is on a par with developing countries. Obesity is on the rise and there has been a huge demand on children’s mental health services which health authorities are struggling to meet. In Valencian province, they are seeing a huge rise in health problems associated with obesity and the reporting of children’s mental health problems are at a record high. Our project seeks to explore these issues with children but within the International context and by creating a project which seeks to address all aspects of childrens health. That is – physical, emotional and nutritional. It also seeks to raise aspiration for children from deprived backgrounds and develop the confidence of children from migration backgrounds. There is not a strong culture of female participation in sport within the wider community of Pollokshields and our project aims to address this, particularly in the selection of participants.
We feel that our project is rather unique in the holistic approach it will take to Health and Well Being education and its attempts to address the key issues of social inclusion, the social and educational value of European cultural heritage. Our project will also build on the incredibly strong international partnership between Pollokshields and Colegio Hernandez and will develop the schools capacities to be ambassadors for International Education throughout the local authority and nationally.
Our project aims to include our whole school populations, not just the children who will get to travel and take part in exchanges. This is reflected in the Learning Teaching Training activities that we have chosen to do. This will further develop our teachers skills in adopting international strategies in the classroom. The activities have also been carefully selected to ensure they tie in with the Scottish and Valencian curriculum. They are just doing this in a more innovative and impactful way.
eTwinning will play a huge role in this project from presentation of classroom work and results to the innovative online clubhouse that we are planning to launch. This is a new and sustainable way for children to discuss issues that are pertinent to them in a safe and inclusive manner whilst also improving their language skills in English and Spanish. This element of the project will seek to build a capacity for our children to deal with change, particularly in connection with the transition to secondary education which many children find challenging and stressful.
Built within the project are a two pronged approach to looking at all aspects of Health and Well Being whilst also focusing on European cultural heritage. This will be done by celebrating the food cultures of both countries during the exchanges and the sharing of national sports and past times whilst having the chance to take part in our Erasmus European Championships. Children will get the chance to enjoy new sports like Colpbol and rugby and improve their physical health during an outdoor residential week.
Sustainability is built into every aspect of our project. The online clubhouse is something that can be continued year on year for children in the final year of their primary education. The new resources developed for studying food journeys can play an important part in our curriculum as we move forward. New sports can be practiced alongside traditional ones in our PE programmes and the development of our schools growing spaces/allotments is something that we will build on. This is important as it develops our teachers skills and confidence in sharing food journeys with our children. It will also give our children their first opportunities to plan menus and create dishes. This is an important life skill that they can take forward.
The strong relationships that have already been formed between our two schools mean that we are confident in our methodologies and in our partners ability to deliver. Our activities can play an important part in future school improvement planning and we aim to share our work with the wider educational community. We recognise that all our work has to fit into our respective curriculum but we relish the freedom to do this in an international context. We have seen the benefits it delivers to our children over the years in terms of their self esteem and sense of achievement and believe that LTL2 gives them a special chance to further develop this.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 11455 Eur

Project Coordinator

Pollokshields Primary School & Country: UK

Project Partners

• COLEGIO HERNÁNDEZ S.L