Mirror Mirror on the Wall Erasmus Project

Project Title

Mirror Mirror on the Wall

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 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy; Inclusion – equity; Disabilities – special needs

Project Summary

The M²OtheW” project, (Mirror, Mirror on The Wall) was a partnership between 4 schools in Germany (coordinator), Cyprus, Greece and Finland, designed to promote the social inclusion of pupils through the provision of an active citizenship education. A total of 780 pupils with 40 teachers participated in the project, of which 198 pupils had special needs.
All participating schools faced challenges regarding the inclusion of special needs pupils in school life (i.e pupils from various ethnicities, social and economic backgrounds, different abilities and problems in social communication and academic areas). The inclusion of these different individuals was thought to be vital for their academic success and the prevention of early school leaving. That’s why the project emphasized social inclusion through the creation of new activities which empowered pupils with competencies to help them be active citizens. Each pupil was empowered to make their own reflections on various aspects of life so as to work hard for its improvement.
The above goal of our “M²OtheW “project arose from our common needs assessment. Our project work consisted of common, well defined monthly activities in all the schools regarding the objective of social inclusion, in particular the inclusion of all pupils through active citizenship as well as other country-specific activities that were set by each country to address individual needs of its pupils. In each school three weekly mobility-student learning activities took place, with the participation of pupils of at least three countries at a time, which were organized to enrich the program of activities offered nationally to the pupils. At the same time these training activities were a way of immediate communication between countries, necessary in order to reduce linguistic barriers, prejudices against children with special needs, and xenophobia as well as to come into an educational exchange regarding special pedagogical methodologies and didactics. In these activities pupils learned together through shared experiences and came closer to each other independently of their country of origin, their previous experience and their talents.
Student–centered methods of active learning were used to empower children with knowledge and competencies to act as active citizens in the sense of inclusion and be included in the school life at the same time. Differentiation techniques were also extensively used because every pupil was regarded as a unique learner starting from a different level from his or her classmates. Furthermore, the metaphor of the Mirror was used throughout the project units as a method to reveal the prior knowledge and attitudes of pupils to aspects of their lives (self, family, school, community, country, Europe, world). There were results at the beginning, during, and the end of the project. These results included the evaluation of the policies on inclusion, the establishment of an eTwinning Platform for sharing any results of the project and an electronic evaluation platform for collecting the project’s evaluation data, the creation and dissemination of the handbook of effective practices of inclusion and the creation and dissemination of the common final story that addressed issues of inclusion and active citizenship. One can note the valuable results that were apparent in our pupils’ personalities after the completion of the project, such as their ability to use a foreign language, to cooperate, to do a constructive dialogue, to accept the different, to act as active citizens and reflect using the philosophical “Mirror-reflection” in life. A specific evaluation plan was used for measuring the effectiveness of every activity that included the value added methodology, questionnaires, interviews, observations, diary reflections and portfolios. The evaluation data that was gathered was saved in an electronic platform and was used extensively for decisions regarding the rethinking of the project’s effectiveness and future activities.
The responsibilities for achieving the aforementioned results were shared between all the partners who strongly believe that the M²OtheW” project had a great impact on the local, regional, national and European level. More specifically the project helped the stakeholders of the participating schools to design and implement active citizenship activities and implement them by using differentiated teaching strategies to achieve their aims. It lead to valuable implications for the development of national policies for promoting social inclusion through active citizenship activities and helped other schools design effective programs in the future.

Impressions, material and results can be found at:
https://twinspace.etwinning.net/47613/pages/page/340439

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 82855 Eur

Project Coordinator

Grundschule “Astrid Lindgren” & Country: DE

Project Partners

• 2nd PRIMARY SCHOOL OF SERRES
• DIMOTIKO SCHOLIO AGIU DOMETIU III
• Jäälin koulu