OPEN EUROPE, OPEN HEARTS Erasmus Project

Project Title

OPEN EUROPE, OPEN HEARTS

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: Intercultural/intergenerational education and (lifelong)learning; EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy; Inclusion – equity

Project Summary

Through this project we wanted to promote a common European consciousness around the issue of immigration in our schools, raising awareness for our students that immigration could be an advantage rather than a drawback.
The main objective of this project is the integration of immigrant students in the classrooms of our schools.
The main target groups are immigrant students and students at risk of social exclusion. We work with children from 3 to 12 years and involve 5 kindergarten and primary schools, from Bulgaria, Spain, Estonia, Romania and Turkey, with teachers from different specialties.
We created different activities with the dual objective of raising awareness among immigrant students about their integration, and national students about showing hospitality and inclusion toward immigrant students. Students are at the forefront of the projects, developing their creativity, responsibility, and autonomy.
ACTIVITIES:
– A tourist brochure: Students became promoters of their city. To do this, they needed to search, design, write and illustrate a brochure.
– Our photo album and tale about our countries: we uploaded meaningful photos about our countries, our cities, our school, etc. with a brief commentary. Partner students created online albums. Then cooperatively, students created an online story.
– Our Calendar: we presented values of each society, customs, languages, ceremonies, giving special importance to the present and reflect our current society. These calendars may be advertised and promoted by our communities, for social purposes or for a non-profit immigration assistance organization.
– Photographic reports on the activities and programs carried out in partner schools : teaching and proposing new methodologies and good practices for innovation and improvement in our schools.
– Documentary Film: We produced a movie with our students. Students interviewed immigrants who shared their stories and difficulties encountered during their journey, how they had been integrated, what opportunities they were given in the host country, thereby promoting awareness of the issues surranding immigration, active citizenship and a united European vision.
We have involved many pupils in our schools and high quality results that reflect the collaborative effort of the students and their good use of appropriate tools and software.
We have used ICT as a platform to share our products which facilitate the scaffolding, development and monitoring of our project, google classroom to work cooperatively and drive spaces to evaluate and create our documents or files. This material is uploaded to our blogs and our TwinSpace.
We looked for products requiring communication, interaction and knowledge transfer between the members. The work was set by a coordinated team.
We worked cooperatively to find solutions for the integration of immigrants, as well as other foreign students, in our schools. We created and institutionalized protocols in our schools to provide efficient responses to immigration.
Coordination, cooperation and interaction have been the strengths of this project.
We had an initial visit with the school coordinators where we layed out the planning programme for the following two years. After that we had four transnational meetings, one in each partner country, in order to control and monitor.
We had six short-term joint staff training events where we had presentations about education system and current situation in each country. Teachers had six training course to elaborate our products. Staff had the opportunity to visit an NGO or an Immigrant centre in order to know its current situation.
An Erasmus commission was created in each partner school which was responsible for planning, management, monitoring and evaluating the project.
The project was evaluated after each activity through rubrics, questionnaires, surveys or various instruments. We had monthly checkpoints.
We had the opportunity to share experiences with professionals from other countries and to disseminate our entire educational community and local community.
The final products of our project are part of school resources. We also distributed our products in our communities, other schools and the local community. All these products are exposed in our libraries. Our products are available from our schools websites and our TwinSpace. All partner schools have an Erasmus corner exhibition in their schools.
We think these outcomes have changed our curriculum and achieve the values below:
– Improve our teaching methods.
– Improve the coexistence in our schools.
– Promote innovation and training in our teachers.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 109821 Eur

Project Coordinator

CEIP Reyes Católicos Melilla & Country: ES

Project Partners

• Akdeniz Ilkokulu
• Radost 20 Kindergarten
• Scoala Gimnaziala Nr.28 Galati
• Kohtla-Järve Lasteaed Tareke
• Istituto Comprensivo Confalonieri Milano