Sport und Spiele – früher und heute Erasmus Project

Project Title

Sport und Spiele – früher und heute

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 2015

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Health and wellbeing; Intercultural/intergenerational education and (lifelong)learning; ICT – new technologies – digital competences

Project Summary

“Who plays, learns! Who learns, lives! Who lives, plays!“ Nowadays, children spend more time than ever before on games. They tend to rather play digital games than active ones. The time they use continues to lack for „real“ games and the interpersonal communication within these games. Therefore, it is important to sensitise pupils for possible dangers, to focus them on „real“ games and to help them to reflect upon their freetime behaviour. This can help them to also find the right conclusions for being an active part of society. Children only have few experience in games like movement games, construction games or role plays. Our project offers the chance to make these necessary experiences as these heavily influence their personality development. This also includes a focus on health prevention methods during the project. Key competences like problem-solving competences, attentiveness and consistency as well as mental and emotional engagement for every task are being formed by games.
The aim of the project was to offer our pupils a broad, active experience in the fields of „sport“ and „games“. To work on this topic the project has been divided into three parts: „sport and games in the past“, „sport and games today“ and „playing with handicap“.
We think this project ideally fit the profile of the two involved schools. All schools have a wide variety of pupils with a multicultural, European background. Additionally, the majority of pupils are taught at the level of a secondary modern school. For these pupils, playful concepts are a good chance to build up a strong profile and to strengthen their personal competences. The project was part of a new teaching module called „intercultural learning“. We involved pupils from class 8 (aged 11 – 12).
To fullfil the need of an authentic use of the second language, the project languages were German and English. Now, after the project, both schools would like to continue their partnership to maintain their intercultural profiles and constantly prepare their pupils for a life as an European. A bigger European experience of all people involved at school as well as a strenghtening of the schools‘ profiles will also have a signal effect for the complete regions – with many imitators of this partnership.
Plato already knew: “In a game, you can learn more about a person within one hour than by talks in one year.“ Despite possible language barriers, the “games” have been a nice way to start an intercultural dialoge and to exchange “good practices“.

During the project, there were four reciprocal visits and a reciprocal job-shadowing part by the teachers.
Before and during these visits the pupils experienced their own and the other one’s cultural background, they dealt with typical games and its rules and then they set up their own instructions.
These also contained necessary competences, framework conditions as well as an evaluation. The visits also included participating in lessons, discussions (e.g. advantages of digital games), topical excursions (e.g. olympic stadium Amsterdam, laser tag, …).

Besides the experience of changes in gaming behaviour – and the conncted cultural change – the pupils learned something about addicition prevention and possible control mechanisms (e.g. one day of digital gaming will be contrasted to a day of active sport). Furthermore, the pupils learned what it is like to play with a handicap. This showed them how to deal with those children who more and more will be part of their daily (school) life.
The main „intellectual output“ of the project is an own created website. There you find all of the projects outcomes. One of these outcomes is a „sport and games index“ (sorted by competences, etc.). This can be used for the schools‘ own projects (e.g. „pupils mentors“, social learning) as well as other interested schools. The whiteboard material which has been set up during the project can also be found on the website. Another outcome is the curriculum for the „intercultural learning“ module in which you find all the needed content, materials, etc.

To monitor the pupils‘ progress and to gain something “lasting“, we developed some individual certificates for our pupils which can be used for work orientation after the actual project (e.g. job orientation).

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 45320 Eur

Project Coordinator

Oberschule von-Ravensberg-Schule & Country: DE

Project Partners

• Stichting Christelijk Onderwijs Groningen