School can be fun Erasmus Project

Project Title

School can be fun

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: Early School Leaving / combating failure in education

Project Summary

By the time pupils reach higher grades of elementary school, many of them are loosing their interest for learning. There are lots of disadvantaged children at schools for whom it is harder to get the feeling of success. They may be good at things that are not particularly graded or acknowledged at school such as organizational skills, hand crafts, social skills,.. so they feel worthless and their attitude towards school changes. In our project we tried to listen to them more instead of just offering them knowledge and requiring perfect answers. We looked for and developed their life skills, found out what makes them learn easier and in more pleasurable way. Our aim was to show them educational systems, organization of schools in other countries, methods and strategies of other teachers in partner schools. We asked them to compare and analyze their experiences and to make up a model class that would give them all they need to succeed and to be aware of what they are good at. This way their motivation for higher education could rise and less children would leave school early.
We have created the maskot and the logo of the project . Travelling pupils wrote diaries. All pupils were coresponding with their peers from partners´ schools via emails and postcards.
Our group of partners was quite diverse in cultures, life styles and educational systems. All schools have had various experiences and specialism, so by sharing our schools´ priorities all participants gained new ideas, techniques, approaches and competencies which helped us make school more enjoyable for our pupils.
Organizations included in the project: We were 5 partners. Partners´ schools in Lithuania, Portugal and Holland had different structure, they included kindergarten and pupils graduated from 6th grade. Schools in Slovakia and Poland are from the 1st grade until the 9th grade. In each partner school we included in project work all children in given grades, during educational meetings we did the presentation activities for the whole school.
Other included organizations: In each partners´ country we visited kindergartens, special need classes, libraries, art schools. In Lithuania we visited high school as well. In Slovakia we invited teachers, students from bilingual high school Futurum and native English speakers and teachers from Empire language school who prepared lessons full of inovative methods and various interactive activities for our pupils and all partners. Thanks to the variety of visited institutions aquired a wider view (perspective) about the general education of kids from kindergarten till high school leaving examination.
To reach our goal, children prepared collagues about themselves and presentations about their countries, school systems and what they like and dislike about them. They presented them to their peers at partners´ schools. They also learnt about other countries´ educational systems by observing classes, making spider webs, analyzing them in mixed international groups and creating a model class fit to their needs and expectations. Teachers also took part in jobshadowing and teaching to gain new experiences and rise their competencies on European level. After each project meetnig, participant pupils shared their experiences by presentations for their classmates and teachers shared new strategies with the rest of the pedagogical staff and parents on meetings. We shared and documented our work and outcomes on web pages of schools, facebook and on the web page created for the project purposes. All our experiences and activities through the two year period of project were gathered and put together in a brochure as a result of all we had done to be shared with collegues in other schools in our home towns and regions. Pupils created a video recording of the model class showing a bad teacher at the beginning and then a good teacher at the end respecting all they want in a class. Pupils put their needs in the video themselves upon their project experiences. We created a project calendar for each partner.
The results of our work were presented in our schools magazines for our students, their parents and friends; in techers´ newspapers for all teachers and pedagogical staff in all country, on school webpages, on the project webpage we created, during teachers´ meetings, parents meetings…
This project motivated children to study and be active in learning, rised competencies of all participants, developed social, communicational, ICT and more other skills, and brought innovations and European dimension to education.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 115285 Eur

Project Coordinator

Zakladna Skola Park Angelinum 8, Kosice & Country: SK

Project Partners

• Szkola Podstawowa nr 7 im.Janusza Korczaka
• Mokykla-darzelis ,,Vyturelis”
• Agrupamento de Escolas de Freixo de Espada à Cinta
• De Bakelaar